A senior Republican senator on Friday called for a free trade agreement (FTA) between the US and ASEAN.
“The United States should proceed to develop a comprehensive strategy toward engaging ASEAN in serious FTA discussions,” US Senator Richard Lugar said in a statement.
The proposal comes at time when many business groups are complaining US President Barack Obama does not have an agenda to open new markets for US exports.
“China, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea have already finalized FTAs with ASEAN and are sharpening a competitive edge over the US in Southeast Asia,” Lugar said.
Obama will visit Singapore next month for the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Most of the 10 members of ASEAN — Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — are also members of APEC.
The US has extensive trade restrictions on Myanmar but “that should not deter US efforts to reach an FTA with the rest of ASEAN,” Lugar said.
There was no immediate reaction from US Trade Representative’s office to Lugar’s proposal, which he said he planned to introduce in the Senate next week.
Former US president George W. Bush proposed creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, building on existing free trade pacts with Chile and Singapore.
However, the Obama administration has not decided whether to proceed with that.
The White House also has not made a push to win approval of free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea left over from the Bush administration.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day