Is Pakatan smart enough to see what Najib has accomplished for the country?
Lim Sian See
Many people may not have realized but Najib’s international relations skills may help Malaysia evade possible economic disaster.
Malaysia had always exported way more to the USA than they export to us – meaning Malaysia has registered big surpluses.And this figure has been increasing.
We also registered a trade surplus of US$21.7 billion and US$24.8 billion for the years 2015 and 2016.
For the first 7 months of 2017, Malaysia imported about US$7.8 billion from USA while exporting US$21 billion and already registering a trade surplus of US$13.2 billion.
Hence earlier this year in March, Trump had identified Malaysia as one of the 16 possible “trade cheats” and signed an order that could have led to anti-dumping and trade penalties against us.
Khazanah had already opened an investment office in San Francisco in Sept 2013 and had already made investments – including US$400 million in the US listing of Alibabab 2014 that it made a five fold profit.
EPF, which at the end of last year had 29% of its investments overseas and had said that their overseas investment had out-performed local investments in the past 2 years, ALREADY had US$7 billion in investment in US shares and may invest another US$3 billion to US$4 billion.
If anyone had noticed (and as Trump pointed out and congratulated us), the US stock exchanges have been hitting record highs over the past two years as they recover from the Global Recession – so EPF would have been really dunggu if they did not have any investments or exposure over there.
MAS had already bought 25 Boeing 737s last year and had needed to buy these planes anyway as part of their turn-around exercise and growth plans since their fleet was getting old and MAS wanted to expand their international segment which has seen good double digit growth.
These were ALREADY DONE DEALS IN THE PAST.
So, what is wrong with the Prime Minister highlighting these to the US President that Malaysia also had invested and bought from the USA?
Should Trump had gone ahead and imposed penalties and anti-dumping laws against Malaysia, this would have the effect of greatly affecting Malaysian exports to the USA – which will cause of us tens of billions US$ in losses every year.
Do we really want to lose exporting to the world’s largest economy? Or should Najib had said… “eh, come invest and buy more from us lah” even though Trump already complained the surplus is too high? Would Pakatan have said this?
Do Malaysians and the Pakatan Harapan even understand or appreciate what Najib has done?
Is Pakatan only good at calling the USA President a Dunggu and slamming the USA for inviting Najib?
Do they know or care about the economy and the possible losses to our economy?
Are these people smart enough to see the big picture or not?
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31 Mar 2017: Malaysia on Trump’s list of ‘trade cheats’
http://www.thestar.com.my/…/malaysia-on-trumps-list-of-tra…/
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5570.html
Source: www.facebook.com/lim.siansee
