KUALA LUMPUR: Thailand’s prime minister will travel to Malaysia to sign a ceasefire deal with Cambodia that U.S. President Donald Trump is set to witness after he pulled out of the ASEAN Summit due to the death of the kingdom’s Queen Mother Sirikit on Saturday.
Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were meeting on Saturday to start 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 said he had asked for the ceasefire ceremony to be held on Sunday morning, after which he would return to Thailand.
Anutin said he would also miss next week’s APEC Summit in South Korea.
The Thai cabinet is scheduled to meet on Saturday morning to discuss the funeral arrangements.
At its annual meeting, ASEAN 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 the U.S.‘s second-largest trading partner were abruptly cut off over an advertisement issued by Ontario’s provincial government that featured former President Ronald Reagan saying tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
Trump has called the video fraudulent.
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