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Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Govt urged to intervene as new US tariff brings jitters for businesses

 

Trying times: The tariff would significantly impact manufactures like those in Bayan Lepas, Penang. — CHAN BOON KAI/The Star

JOHOR BARU: The 25% tariff imposed by the United States on Malaysia has sent jitters through the manufacturing sector, with many warning of cancelled orders and a potential wave of business closures.

The furniture industry, for one, fears losing business to Vietnam, which faces a 20% tariff, while some other industries are even thinking of relocating.

Malaysian Furniture Council president Desmond Tan said Vietnam, Malaysia’s closest competitor in the global furniture market, produced a similar range of products and targets the same export destinations – especially the United States.

The tariff for Vietnam was reduced to 20% from the original 46%.

“Since the announcement was only made yesterday (Tuesday), it is still too early to gauge the full extent of its impact on order volumes but the council will continue to monitor developments closely,” he said.

Tan said the industry was also being squeezed by rising costs on the domestic front.

“These include the expanded Sales and Service Tax (SST), which now imposes a 5% tax on raw materials and directly drives up production costs. We also face higher labour expenses with the new minimum wage,” he added.

The new Employees Provident Fund contributions for foreign workers would add further strain while fuel and electricity prices had also gone up, he said.

The council is now urging Putrajaya to commence urgent talks with the United States to negotiate a reduction of the tariff.

He also appealed for a rethink on the new taxes and price hikes to lower production costs, and for export incentives to protect jobs.

The United States accounts for 60% of the country’s total furniture exports, totalling RM2.039bil in just the first four months of the year.

Malaysia also exports furniture to Singapore, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom, among others.

Muar Furniture Association president Steve Ong said the new tariff was a major blow, as Muar supplied more than RM4bil worth of furniture to the United States in 2024.

It made up 67% of Malaysia’s total furniture exports there, he said.

“The 25% tariff will likely lead to clients cancelling orders and local manufacturers scrambling to stay afloat. This is an urgent crisis,” Ong said.

Another industry player urged the government to act swiftly.

“If nothing is done, a globally competitive industry like ours could shrink or even collapse,” said Goh Song Huang.

“At a time like this, we need clear, steady policies and a government that understands and responds to the real pressures we face.”

In Penang, local industries are bracing for reduced demand with some considering relocation.

“Companies in Malaysia may be forced to shift parts of their production to countries with lower tariffs,” said Malaysia Semiconductor Industry Association (MSIA) president Datuk Seri Wong Siew Hai, adding that higher prices driven by import tariffs tend to suppress global demand.

“When the cost of imported goods rises, demand naturally falls. In the end, everyone along the supply chain, especially buyers of raw materials, will be affected,” he said.

Earlier, it was reported that semiconductor exports would be exempt from the tariffs but it is unclear whether exemptions will remain under the new tariff regime.

“Vietnam’s tariff is at 20%, which gives them a pricing advantage. US buyers may look for cheaper alternatives, putting Malaysian exporters at a disadvantage,” he said.

Federation of Malaysian Manufacturing (FMM) Penang chapter chairman Datuk Seri Lee Teong Li said the 25% tariff would significantly impact exporters to the US.

“It’s a substantial amount. For local manufacturers shipping to the US, it will reduce profit margins. Costs will rise, and customers may start sourcing from other suppliers.

“Even when the 24% tariff was announced in April, it was already a heavy blow. We had hoped for a reduction, not an increase,” he said.

He noted that for now, the strategy was to ship out as much as possible before the Aug 1 deadline.

Meanwhile, the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM) is urging the government to temporarily lower the expanded SST to 4% to ease the financial burden on businesses and preserve Malaysia’s competitive edge.

Its president Datuk Ng Yih Pyng said the government should reduce the expanded SST rate from the current 6%-8% for the first two years of implementation.

He said businesses, already grappling with higher operational costs driven by multiple government-imposed measures, would now have to face the the tariff headwinds and global uncertainties as well.

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https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2025/07/10/govt-urged-to-intervene-as-new-us-tariff-brings-jitters-for-businesses

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Thursday, June 5, 2025

Surge in Covid-19 cases recorded, Asia registers Covid-19 spike



  Virus making a comeback in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and US, Indonesia, Malaysia


PETALING JAYA: As society becomes more relaxed about the perceived threat of Covid-19, the coronavirus has started to resurge in many countries, leading to an increase in reported cases.

Between May 25 and 30, Thailand reported 65,880 new Covid-19 cases with three fatalities.

Indonesia’s Health Ministry issued a public health advisory following a resurgence of cases in several Asian countries. It urged citizens to remain vigilant and adopt precautionary measures.

Both Hong Kong and the United States have reported an uptick in Covid-19 cases linked to the NB.1.8.1 variant.

ALSO READ: Covid-19: Health Ministry monitoring situation closely

Singapore reported over 14,000 cases between Apr 27 and May 3.

In Malaysia, the Health Ministry said an average of 600 cases were reported each week between Apr 14 and May 10. Malaysia reported over 11,000 cases between Jan 1 and May 10. These are the last available numbers released by the ministry.

Prof Dr Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s professor of Public Health Medicine, said people have become lax as Covid-19 is no longer seen as a major threat now. People should be aware of the mutation of the virus and the new variants that would appear, she added.

“The most recent designated variant under monitoring (VUM) is NB.1.8.1, and it is considered highly transmissible but does not indicate higher virulence, or risk of hospitalisation or deaths. It has been stated that the current vaccine’s coverage also covers the current strain and those at high risk such as the elderly, young children, pregnant women and those with high comorbidity need to be vigilant,” she added.

ALSO READ: Remembering war-like Covid-19 pandemic

She said high-risk groups should wear a mask when they are outdoors or if they develop symptoms. Those with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) should not miss their medication schedule.

“If you have Covid-19-like symptoms, it could also be adenovirus (usually mild), Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and/or influenza,” she said.

This can be determined by testing for Covid-19, or by visiting your healthcare provider for treatment and admission if necessary. “The symptoms may mimic each other, or you can catch two diseases at the same time which is rare, but can occur,” she added.

She said this new variant seems to cause symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat, fatigue, headache and gastrointestinal distress.

“Besides antigen testing, you may need to get a chest X-ray and blood test for confirmation to rule out pneumonia. Covid generally presents as non threatening symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection and no need to follow up with MySejahtera app (like before),” she said.

Former Health Ministry official and public health expert Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar said the rise in cases could be due to decreasing immunity either from natural infection or immunisation and people no longer observing precautionary measures like before.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on May 28 that since February, global SARS-CoV-2 activity has been on the rise, with the test positivity rate reaching 11% - levels that have not been observed since July 2024.

“This rise is primarily observed in countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions. Since early 2025, global SARS-CoV-2 variant trends have slightly shifted. Circulation of LP.8.1 has been declining, and reporting of NB.1.8.1, a VUM, is increasing, reaching 10.7% of global sequences reported as of mid-May.”

Recent increases in SARS-CoV-2 activity are broadly consistent with levels observed during the same period last year.

However, there still lacks a clear seasonality in SARS-CoV-2 circulation, and surveillance is limited, it said.

WHO also advised all member states to continue monitoring and applying a risk-based and integrated approach to managing Covid-19.

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Asia registers Covid-19 spike


Healthcare facilities in Indonesia instructed to prepare for rising cases

The country’s health ministry has urged healthcare facilities to stay alert and increase surveillance of Covid-19 amid a surge in cases caused by a more transmissible but less deadly Omicron sub-variant in several countries across Asia.

health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin met with President Prabowo Subianto to discuss the rising number of Covid-19 cases across Asia on June 3.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said that “cases are indeed increasing, but the rise is caused by variants that are relatively less deadly”.

his statement came after his ministry issued a circular last week to warn healthcare facilities to stay alert after a rising Covid-19 trend in Thailand, hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, largely driven by the more transmissible but less severe Omicron subvariant JN.1.

The circular instructed regional health agencies, hospitals, community health centres (Puskesmas) and other health service facilities across the country to monitor case trends through routine surveillance, report any unusual occurrences and raise public awareness about the need for vigilance.

According to the latest data from the health Ministry on June 3, Indonesia reported seven confirmed cases last week with the positive rate declining to 2.05% from a peak of 3.62% the previous week.

Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, said the warning should be taken seriously by the broader public.

“This is a good measure as an early warning to create awareness,” he told The Jakarta Post on June 3.

he said while it would no longer become a pandemic since mass vaccination has built herd immunity among the Indonesian population, he urged people to maintain caution.

“We must maintain the clean and healthy habits that were developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as regularly wearing masks, washing hands, maintaining physical distance, adopting a healthy lifestyle and ensuring proper air circulation.”

Dr Dicky also suggested that the government heighten its alert systems, especially in vulnerable areas with large elderly populations.

Dr Masdalina Pane of the Indonesian epidemiologists Association (PAEI) predicted that the newest sub-variant JN.1 has likely already entered Indonesia, but the surveillance system has been unable to detect it in real time.

“Unfortunately, it is not easy to identify suspects at ports and airports,” she said, suggesting that the government should focus on travellers from affected countries instead.

“Governments can also implement random rapid diagnostic checks based on certain criteria while considering ethical aspects,” she added.

Among the hardest-hit nations in the current wave is Thailand, which reported over 65,000 cases and three deaths in the last week of May, according to The Nation.

But Thai Public health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin said on June 2 that the outbreak in the country has already passed its peak and was expected to ease.

hong Kong saw a downward trend in its positive rate from 13.6% in the week of May 11 to 17 to 11.22% in the following week, although its health department still warned that case levels might remain high in upcoming months. — The Jakarta POST/ANN

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Sunday, May 4, 2025

Trump’s tariff fight with Xi reveals China’s great divide

 

Going strong: China has become less reliant on American consumers since Trump’s first trade war in 2018. — Reuters

HOW does an escalating US-China trade war affect people’s well-being? In China, it depends on who you ask.

Some are energised by the fight. Electric-vehicle makers are in hyperdrive, pushing out luxury new models, self-driving features and battery-charging technologies that allow drivers to recharge almost as fast as filling a petrol tank. Instead of selling cars to Americans, the likes of BYD are taking on Tesla in growth regions such as South-east Asia.

There’s also talk of an “engineer dividend” – credit to President Xi Jinping for his focus on higher education in sciences. The success of DeepSeek’s reasoning model, released in late January, gave rise to a realisation that China is not just a manufacturing powerhouse whose status is being challenged by President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Rather, Beijing may have found a fresh growth model. It can grab market share in software services, which the US excels at. Almost every week, Chinese tech firms have been releasing new artificial intelligence models and applications.

In part because of a stock market rebound, luxury home sales in Shanghai are booming. Property markets in tech hubs such as Hangzhou and Shenzhen are also seeing a revival, a welcoming reprieve after a four-year downturn.

After all, China has become less reliant on American consumers since Trump’s first trade war in 2018. Exports to the US accounted for just 15% of the total in 2024, versus 20% a decade earlier. The economy will shrink by only about 3%, even if the entire trading route to the US gets wiped out.

Beneath that stoic defiance, however, are genuine concerns about how to make a living, especially among blue-collar workers. A decline in exports, until now a rare bright spot in an otherwise anaemic economy, will only create more competition for low-skilled jobs. Already, demand for their labour is diminishing due to factory automation and the end of a decade-long property boom. In 2024, the manufacturing and construction sectors absorbed just over 40% of migrant workers, versus more than half a decade earlier.

Apparel is the third-largest category of US imports from China, after communication devices and electronic equipment. On average, the textile industry hires more than 25 people for every one million yuan (RM589, 846) in gross domestic product generated. About 16 million jobs could be lost thanks to Trump’s tariffs, according to Goldman Sachs Group estimates.

What these displaced might do next matters to the rest of the 425 million-strong blue-collar workforce. In recent years, people have been moving in droves into the gig economy, working as housekeepers, drivers, delivery workers and social media influencers.

Already, some of these sectors are getting crowded. In 2024, the number of ride-hailing drivers jumped by 27% to 38 million, prompting some local governments to warn about overcapacity. No surprise, their average monthly pay fell.

Or consider the 18 million social media live streamers, often young people who want glamour in their work. Most of them aren’t getting rich – they are barely getting by. A recent academic survey shows that 93% make less than 3,000 yuan a month, not even half of what an average delivery person earns.

It’s unlikely Beijing will launch the kind of bazooka stimulus witnessed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC), the last time China’s exports registered double-digit declines. Back then, more than a third of migrant workers, or over 80 million, were employed in manufacturing. The magnitude of job losses was much larger.

Barring mass street protests, the government’s attitude towards blue-collar labourers has been that since many have few skills, they can be flexible. Manufacturing jobs gone? No problem, they can go into the services sector, or back home to the farm. During the GFC, at least 20 million laid-off migrant workers returned to rural areas. This attitude is unlikely to change just because of Trump.

In fact, this trade war only exacerbates a separation of the elite from the grassroots. For the skilled and well-to-do, US tariffs barely touch their lives, and they are thinking of new money-making opportunities now that Trump is tearing up the existing world order (Gold, anyone?). But millions of others are only getting more anxious. – Bloomberg Opinion/TNS

by Shuli Ren, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets.

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US economy in Q1 shrinks amid new tariff policies; US reportedly actively engaging with China through multiple channels

Friday, April 4, 2025

Trump tariffs pile stress on ailing world economy; China to impose tariffs of 34% on all US goods from April 10

US President Donald Trump. — Reuters

The latest round of US trade tariffs unveiled on Wednesday will sap yet more vigour from a world economy barely recovered from the post-pandemic inflation surge, weighed down by record debt and unnerved by geopolitical strife.

Depending on how President Donald Trump and leaders of other nations proceed now, it may also go down as a turning point for a globalised system which until now had taken for granted the strength and reliability of America, its largest component.

“Trump’s tariffs carry the risk of destroying the global free-trade order the United States itself has spear-headed since the Second World War,” said Takahide Kiuchi, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute.

But in coming months it will be the plain and simple price-hiking – and therefore demand-dampening – effects of new levies applied to thousands of goods bought and sold by consumers and businesses across the planet that will prevail.

“I see it as a drift of the US and global economy towards worse performance, more uncertainty and possibly heading towards something we could call a global recession,” said Antonio Fatas, macroeconomist at the Insead business school in France.

“We are moving into a world which is worse for everyone because it is more inefficient,” said Fatas, who has acted as a consultant for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would impose a 10% baseline tariff on all imports and held up a chart showing higher duties on some of the country’s biggest trading partners, including 34% on China and 20% on the European Union.

A 25% auto and auto-parts tariff was confirmed earlier.

Trump said the tariffs would return strategically vital manufacturing capabilities to the United States.

Under the new global levies imposed by Trump, the US tariff rate on all imports jumped to 22% – a rate last seen around 1910 – from just 2.5% last year, said Olu Sonola, head of US economic research at Fitch Ratings.

“This is a game changer, not only for the US economy but for the global economy,” Sonola said. “Many countries will likely end up in a recession.”

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva told a Reuters event this week she did not see global recession for now.

She added the IMF expected shortly to make a small downward “correction” to its forecast of 3.3% global growth this year.

Different impact

But the impact on national economies is set to diverge widely, given the spectrum of tariffs ranging from 10% for Britain to 49% to Cambodia.

If the result is a wider trade war, that would have even larger repercussions for producers like China, which would be left hunting for new markets in the face of wilting consumer demand across the globe.

And if the tariffs push the United States itself towards recession, that will weigh heavily on developing countries whose fortunes are closely tied to those of the world’s largest economy.

“What happens in the United States doesn’t stay in the United States,” said Barry Eichengreen, professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The economy is too big and too connected to the rest of the world via trade and capital flows for the rest of the world to be unaffected.”

The knock-on effects for policy-makers in central banks and governments are also potentially large.

An unravelling of the supply chains which for years kept a lid on prices for consumers could lead to a world in which inflation tends to run “hotter” than the 2% which central bankers currently agree is a manageable target to aim for.

That would complicate decisions for the Bank of Japan, which may face pressure to combat too-high inflation with more interest rate hikes just as its major counterparts eye cuts, and as its export-reliant economy takes a hit from US duties.

Auto exporters Japan, hit with a 24% reciprocal tariff rate, and South Korea, which was imposed a 25% rate, have signalled plans to take emergency measures to support businesses hit by the higher US levies.

Economies with weaker output growth would leave governments struggling even more to pay down the world’s record US$318 trillion debt load and find money for budget priorities ranging from defence spending to climate action and welfare.

And what if the tariffs do not bring about Trump’s oft-stated goal of encouraging business to invest in domestic US manufacturing, given the domestic labour shortages already facing a country with close to full employment?

Some see him seeking other ways to remove the US global trade deficit that riles him so much – for example by demanding that others join in a re-balancing of foreign exchange rates to the advantage of US exporters.

Risky moves

“We are going to continue to see him putting out there potentially more risky ways of dealing with the continuous strength of the US dollar,” said Freya Beamish, chief economist at investment strategy firm TS Lombard.

Such moves could jeopardise the privileged position of the US dollar as the world reserve currency of choice – an outcome few predict, if only because there are for now no real alternatives to the US dollar.

Nonetheless, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde on Wednesday told an event in Ireland that Europe needed to act now and accelerate economic reforms to compete in what she called an “inverted world”.

“Everyone benefited from a hegemon, the United States, that was committed to a multilateral, rules-based order,” she said of the post-Cold War era of low inflation and growing trade in an open global economy.

“Today we must contend with closure, fragmentation and uncertainty.” — Reuters

Mark John, Francesco Canepa and Leika Kihara write for Reuters. The views expressed here are the writers’ own.

China to impose tariffs of 34% on all US goods from April 10


The Chinese national flag is seen in Beijing, China April 29, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

BEIJING: China on Friday announced a slew of additional tariffs and restrictions against U.S. goods as a countermeasure to sweeping tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Finance Ministry said it would impose additional tariffs of 34% on all U.S. goods from April 10.

Beijing also announced controls on exports of medium and heavy rare-earths, including samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium to the United States, effective April 4.

"The purpose of the Chinese government's implementation of export controls on relevant items in accordance with the law is to better safeguard national security and interests, and to fulfill international obligations such as non-proliferation," the Commerce Ministry said in a statement.

It also added 11 entities to the "unreliable entity" list, which allows Beijing to take punitive actions against foreign entities. - Reuters 

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