Taiwan-Malaysia trade suffers, asian economies won't recover without US

From the Business Times:

TRADE between Taiwan and Malaysia is expected to be at US$10 billion (US$1 = RM3.50) this year, a decrease from the US$12.3 billion posted in 2008.

According to the Taipei Economic and Culture Office in Malaysia, this is due to the global financial crisis.

"The decrease is not much as the Taiwanese government has been trying to help local manufacturers continue exporting while providing opportunities to promote their products," director of the economic division, Lin Min-Li said yesterday.

In 2008, Taiwan's imports from Malaysia were at US$6.8 billion while exports stood at US$5.5 billion.


Besides that, Lin said the Taiwanese government was also helping and encouraging investors to look at five important markets in South East Asia - the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

"Among the five countries, Malaysia is the most successful for investment. We prefer Malaysia due to the stable political climate, as well as good manufactured products.

"There is still room for Taiwanese investors to come to Malaysia," he added.

According to Lin, Taiwan ranked number three in terms of foreign direct investment in Malaysia for the first five months of this year.

We see a 20% drop in trade between Malaysia and Taiwan. When you look at Malaysia's largest trading partners, Singapore, US, Japan, China, and Thailand, each one of them have based their policies on growth through exports, with the exception of US. Even worse, each one of these countries' largest trading partner is the US. Like I said before, this is exactly the reason US needs to recover first for Malaysia to recover. It takes more than talk to say the world economy has diversified itself away from the US, especially Asia.