Thailand’s prime minister will travel to Malaysia on Saturday to sign a ceasefire deal with Cambodia and meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, but will cut short his attendance at the ASEAN Summit there due to the death of the Thai Queen Mother Sirikit.
Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were meeting on Saturday at the start of a weekend of global diplomacy in Kuala Lumpur, with teams from the United States and China holding trade talks alongside the summit.
Trump is due to arrive on Sunday morning for the first stop of his trip through Asia, and was set to watch Cambodia and Thailand sign a broader ceasefire deal after he helped broker an end to a deadly five-day border conflict in July.
Dozens of people were killed and around 300,000 were temporarily displaced in the most intense fighting between the Southeast Asian neighbours in recent history.
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul will arrive in Malaysia on Saturday night and attend the opening ceremony of the ASEAN summit on Sunday, the Thai government said in a statement, after earlier signalling he might have to miss the whole event.
He will then have a meeting with Trump where they will discuss economic issues, security and regional development, ahead of the signing ceremony of the ceasefire deal, which is being brought forward so that Anutin can return to Bangkok on Sunday.
“Thailand has recently received several requests for bilateral meetings at the leadership level, which will lead to the development of cooperation in various areas, including the economy, security, and trade,” Anutin said.
Earlier he said he would miss next week’s APEC Summit in South Korea due to the death in the royal family.
ASEAN, at its annual meeting, plans to press for trade multilateralism and deeper ties with new partners, while managing the fallout from Trump’s global tariff offensive.
It will also welcome East Timor, Asia’s youngest nation, as its 11th member.
Alongside the regional talks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will hold a round of trade talks with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng.
The world’s two biggest economies are looking to find a way forward after Trump threatened new 100% tariffs on Chinese goods and other trade curbs starting November 1 in retaliation for China’s vastly expanded export controls on rare earth magnets and minerals.
World leaders, including Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, will join Trump at the summit on Sunday.
The U.S. president is expected to hold a highly anticipated meeting with Lula on the sidelines of the summit, although the talks are still unconfirmed.
Lula said he plans to argue that the 50% tariffs imposed by Washington on Brazilian goods were a “mistake”, citing a $410 billion U.S. trade surplus with Brazil over 15 years.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Asia that he would consider reducing tariffs on Brazil under the right circumstances.
Trump stated that he does not intend to hold a similar meeting with Carney and that he is “satisfied with the deal we have” with Canada.
Trade talks with Canada, the United States’ second-largest trading partner, were abruptly cut off over an advertisement issued by Ontario’s provincial government that featured former U.S. President Ronald Reagan saying tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
Trump has called the video fraudulent.
Source: Reuters
--Agencies
