Malaysia may seek to sell palm oil, petroleum and its infrastructure expertise to more African nations, experts say, as US trade barriers inject urgency into the hunt for new markets.
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Malaysia faces the prospect of a 24 per cent duty by US President Donald Trump’s administration. Its top commerce official is set for talks in Washington on Thursday over ways to ease the pain before the 90-day tariff pause ends in early July.
But ahead of those negotiations, China – the Southeast Asian nation’s second-biggest buyer – has warned its trading partners not to cave to US demands, especially if they involve commitments to disrupt Chinese supply chains.
That has made fresh export markets all the more important. And as the tariff chaos pummels the plans of economic tsars everywhere, Uganda is hosting an expo in Kuala Lumpur, pitching for deeper trade and investment in agriculture, tourism, energy and minerals.
The two-day expo is the first of its kind organised by an East African nation in Malaysia, offering investors direct access to “the people shaping Uganda’s economic future” including the nation’s finance and energy ministers.
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Uganda exports coffee and tea, and also has deep resources of gold, copper and lithium.