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  • 11 months ago
Malaysia is targeting to finalise its Reciprocal Trade Agreement (RTA) with the United States before the 47th Asean Summit in October, said Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Asean Economic Ministers (AEM) meeting on Thursday (Sept 25), Tengku Zafrul said the agreement was nearing completion, with only a few details left to be resolved.

He added, however, that the issue of reducing the current 19% tariff on Malaysian goods had not been discussed during the talks.

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Transcript
00:00What was your meeting with Jameson Greer just now?
00:02Yes, we had a good bilateral meeting with the U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador Jameson Greer.
00:08He had met with the Prime Minister earlier.
00:11And of course, yesterday, we also had a good session between EU and U.S.
00:16And we also had another session, bilateral session between Malaysia and U.S.
00:22We discussed about preparation on economic deliverables during President Trump's visit.
00:29In the end of October, so we discussed about the agreement that we have striked recently.
00:37We want to finalize that in writing.
00:39So that is being worked on.
00:41I think the Prime Minister was also brief about it by Jameson Greer.
00:45So Ambassador Jameson Greer also talked about how we need to try and conclude the agreement
00:51by the time of the visit of President Trump.
00:56And we also talked about improving trade and investment within the two countries
01:01because the U.S. continues to be a major investor.
01:03In fact, the largest investor through Malaysia.
01:06And in fact, yesterday, we also discussed about ASEAN and U.S.
01:08And U.S. is also the largest investor into ASEAN.
01:11So we heard about some of the concerns that we had.
01:19We talked about the importance of trade within Malaysia and U.S.,
01:23especially in the few sectors, the key sectors, one of them being semiconductor.
01:27So it was good in terms of, you know, it enabled us to talk about issues that we feel very strongly about
01:39and especially when U.S. is still our largest export market as well for Malaysia.
01:45Mr. Is there any room left to be able to travel the tariff rates in Malaysia?
01:49Mr. We didn't discuss that.
01:53Of course, it's up to the U.S. administration.
01:56But for now, we want to finalise what we have agreed.
02:00The details of that will be in the agreement.
02:03We've announced what we have agreed at a very high level.
02:09So now, once the agreement is out, then we have to go line by line on what we agreed during the announcement that we made
02:17and also what we want to agree going forward.
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