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Trade spat tops Jokowi’s agenda at ASEAN, G20
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is to attend two high-level meetings, the ASEAN and G20 summits, with trade tensions between the United States and China high on the President’s agenda
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span>President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is to attend two high-level meetings, the ASEAN and G20 summits, with trade tensions between the United States and China high on the President’s agenda.
Jokowi is to be at the 34th ASEAN Summit in Bangkok on Saturday and Sunday, during which he is scheduled to attend a series of ASEAN leader meetings.
The scheduled meetings include ASEAN Leaders’ Interface meetings with youth and business councils, as well as the ASEAN Summit Plenary Session and Retreat.
Speaking during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Jokowi said he hoped the ASEAN Summit would unite ASEAN countries in a single stance to safeguard ASEAN’s economy amid tensions between the US and China.
“We have to persuade ASEAN countries to stand united for anticipating [the adverse impacts] of a trade war between the US and China so that the stability of the ASEAN economy will be maintained,” said Jokowi at the Presidential Office in Jakarta. “It is very important for us to persuade ASEAN countries to stand united.”
That statement was later echoed by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir when he said that one of Indonesia’s missions at the summit was to push forward the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) — a proposed free trade agreement comprising all 10 ASEAN member states plus Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
Kicked off in 2012, negotiations on the RCEP have reached no agreements so far, with resistance from some of ASEAN’s partners, including Japan.
“The first issue [we will encourage] is RCEP. We want its negotiations be finished soon so that it can help strengthen the resiliency of ASEAN’s economy and its neighboring regions amid the ongoing trade war,” Arrmanatha said.
Many experts, along with ASEAN’s current chair and Thailand’s permanent representative to ASEAN, Phasporn Sangasubana, say that ASEAN has the potential to exploit opportunities from the tensions between the US and China.
They say that the regional bloc can and, thus, should convince multinational companies to relocate operations to Southeast Asia to achieve “positive impacts” from the trade rift.
In addition, the acceleration of a peace process in Rakhine state in Myanmar would be one of the issues raised by Indonesia during the ASEAN Summit, said Jokowi.
Arrmanatha added that apart from the RCEP, Indonesia would also encourage other ASEAN members to accelerate negotiations over the Indo-Pacific — an Indonesian initiative for cooperation that is hoped to be adopted by the regional group.
Jokowi was scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with Thailand and the Philippines on the sidelines of the summit, during which he would likely talk about the Indo-Pacific concept, as well as bilateral trade and economic matters with the leaders of the two countries, Arrmanatha said.
The Foreign Ministry’s director general for ASEAN cooperation, Jose Tavares, said the ASEAN Summit would result in 16 outcome documents.
The major ones, he said, were the ASEAN Leaders’ Vision Statement on Partnership Sustainability, the ASEAN Indo-Pacific Outlook, the Bangkok Declaration on Combating Marine Debris in the ASEAN Region and the ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on the ASEAN Cultural Year 2019.
After the ASEAN Summit, Jokowi is to attend the G20 Summit, which was scheduled to be held in Osaka, Japan, on June 28 and 29.
The focus of the two-day meeting would likely be on the highly anticipated meeting between US President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping, as Reuters reported that officials from the two countries had laid the groundwork for the two leaders to meet during the G20 Summit.
In addition to the main agenda item concerning the trade conflict between the US and China, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said Indonesia would also participate in discussions on wide-ranging topics raised by host Japan.
“They [Japan] will also discuss the issue of aging problems and universal healthcare coverage. There will be a finance ministers’ and health ministers meeting [on the issues],” Sri Mulyani said after Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, adding that Japan had proposed that the issues be raised in a leaders-level meeting during the G20 Summit.
She said Indonesia would also follow other discussion agenda items during the G20 Summit, such as international taxation cooperation, particularly on the digital economy, infrastructure financing and issues concerning technology such as artificial intelligence.
