Survivor~Stage IV

A free trade agreement between the United States and Malaysia would also improve U.S. access to Southeast Asian economies. Malaysia has already concluded free trade agreements with Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam under the ASEAN Free Trade Area, and ASEAN is close to concluding a free trade agreement with India. It has a free trade agreement with South Korea and Pakistan, an economic partnership agreement with Japan that covers most of merchandise trade, a partial free trade agreement with China, and it negotiates free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand and discusses a free trade agreement with India. On 19 April 2007, Chile and Malaysia announced that they would open negotiations in June for a bilateral free trade agreement with the first round of talks in Kuala Lumpur.80 Public Citizen. Global Trade Watch. CAFTA: part of the FTAA puzzle. www.citizen.org/trade/cafta Another negative sign of the progress of the negotiations was the lack of a decision on the date and location of the next round table. The United States stated that there was agreement on the “next steps” – communication on a range of issues that remain to be resolved and setting the dates for the next round of discussions.27 Minister Rafidah said of the progress of the negotiations: “Whatever issues can be resolved first, they have been resolved.

We don`t need to see each other again. 28 The eighth round of negotiations took place from July 14 to 18, 2008 in Washington, D.C. The Malaysian delegation was led by the Secretary General of the Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Abdul Rahman Mamat. The chief negotiator of the U.S. government was the deputy USTR Weisel. The negotiations covered the themes of six working groups on agricultural trade, trade in services, investment, IPR, health and plant health measures (SPS) and legislation. In the services sector, the United States has used the negative list approach to determine which sectors are excluded from the agreement63. On 22 January 2007 in Kuala Lumpur, the AFL-CIO and the Malaysian Trade Union Congress signed a joint declaration on a free trade agreement between the United States and Malaysia, which states that any agreement “must lead to widely shared benefits for workers and communities and should not simply extend and impose the power and privilege of business.” For more information, see “U.S. Unions Opposes Free Trade with Malaysia,” by Anil Netto, Inter Press Service News Agency, January 22, 2007.

Sectors of particular interest to U.S. exporters include the removal of Malaysian trade barriers for automobiles and certain agricultural products, provisions to enforce intellectual property rights, and wider access to Malaysian services such as financial services, telecommunications and professional services. This report discusses the proposed free trade agreement between the United States and Malaysia. It provides an overview of the current state of the negotiations, a review of the 2008 discussions, a review of key issues ahead of the negotiations, a review of U.S. interests in the proposed agreement, a summary of the possible consequences of a free trade agreement on bilateral trade, and an overview of the legislative procedures to be followed when the proposed free trade agreement is submitted to Congress for approval.