President Donald J. Trump’s 100 Days in Office: Where Are We At?

The 100th day of Trump’s presidency was on April 29, 2017. To mark this day, AMCHAM invited speakers with experience in global, regional and local political economic affairs to share their views on Trump’s journey, his administration and its impact on Malaysia.

Audience was given a brief background on how and why Trump won the Presidency, followed by Trump’s administration and his policies. The positions in his administration are still open and his cabinet has very little government experience which is very similar to his background.

His trade agenda is still much to be determined on new enforcements and new trade agreements. Though multilateral trade is preferred in the global chain system, this administration seems to prefer bilateral trade. With the withdrawal of U.S. from the TPP, the speaker informed the audience that the remaining 11 countries have the option of going ahead with the TPP without the U.S. and at at the same time, they could do a FTA with the U.S. on an individual basis. The other option was for them to move to Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Generally, there is still much uncertainty.

The speakers felt that the diplomatic, political ties and trading partnership with Malaysia will remain strong and there will continue to be focus on Asia as the Trump administration has made visits to this part of the world.
AMCHAM would like to thank the speakers, Steve Okun (Director of Asia Pacific Public Affairs at KKR); Professor Dr Roy Anthony Rogers (Senior Lecturer & Head, Department of International and Strategic Studies, University of Malaya); Dato’ Steven CM Wong (Deputy Chief Executive at Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia) and Hans Vrien (Managing Partner at Vriens & Partners).