Jomo: Malaysia mustn’t betray trading partners by signing TPPA
Sean Augustin, fz.com
Malaysia must not betray her trading partners by becoming a signatory to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, a prominent economist cautioned.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram said the objective of the TPPA was to keep Malaysia in the “good books” of the USA which is an important trade partner.
It was important, Jomo said, to not go out of the way to offend them with scurrilous remarks.
“But you don’t go from one end of the pendulum to the other by embracing the US and turning our backs on our other trading partners,” he said when asked to elaborate on his stand on the controversial agreement.
Jomo was speaking to reporters here last night after launching his book, co-authored by Wee Chong Hui entitled “Malaysia@50”.
The purpose of the TPPA, Jomo explained, was to isolate China, which is the country’s number one trading partner. He said that it was not good to get into a bilateral deal with one partner against another.
Options should be kept open, said Jomo, who is the founder chair of the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs). He noted that the TPPA was drawn up when the US was running a huge trade deficit against China.
Malaysia, he pointed out, has a trade surplus with China.
“You don’t get involved in their fight by taking sides. We stand to lose, not to gain,” he said. As the deficit has since closed, rendering it “yesterday’s problem”, Malaysia should not get stuck in it.
Malaysia, Jomo warned, had a bigger problem in the form of an “economic NATO” between the US and Europe which would weaken the World Trade Organisation.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is an intergovernmental military alliance where its member states agree to a mutual defence in response to an attack by an external party.
“We should be thinking ahead of the challenges we are going to face instead of looking back,” he said.
On the argument that the country would lose out if it did not take part in the TPPA, Jomo said that if certain quarters wanted to find trouble, they could always look for problems, citing the example of Vietnam being barred from exporting its catfish to the US after joining the WTO.
