{"id":328118,"date":"2025-10-24T03:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T03:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328118\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T03:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T03:25:11","slug":"as-trump-makes-rare-visit-to-malaysia-pm-anwars-balancing-act-faces-test-donald-trump-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/328118\/","title":{"rendered":"As Trump makes rare visit to Malaysia, PM Anwar\u2019s balancing act faces test | Donald Trump News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia \u2013<\/strong> When US President Donald Trump lands in Malaysia for Southeast Asia\u2019s headline summit this weekend, he will be delivering Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim a diplomatic coup.<\/p>\n

US presidents rarely visit Malaysia, a multiracial nation of 35 million people sandwiched between Thailand and Singapore, which for decades has maintained a policy of not picking sides in rivalries between great powers.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

Trump is just the third US leader to travel to the Southeast Asian country, which is hosting a Sunday-to-Tuesday summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), following visits by former US Presidents Barack Obama and Lyndon B Johnson.<\/p>\n

After skipping ASEAN summits in 2018, 2019 and 2020, Trump, whose disdain for multilateralism is renowned, will be attending the gathering of Southeast Asian nations for just the second time.<\/p>\n

The US president will be joined by a host of high-profile leaders from non-ASEAN countries, including Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n

Opting not to attend are Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who Trump is expected to meet in South Korea at next week\u2019s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s visit, in many ways, is emblematic of the delicate balancing act that Anwar\u2019s government has sought to maintain as Malaysia navigates the headwinds of the heated rivalry between the US and China.<\/p>\n

Malaysia is deeply entwined with both the US and Chinese economies.<\/p>\n

The US, which has a large footprint in Malaysia\u2019s tech and oil and gas industries, was the Southeast Asian country\u2019s top foreign investor and third-biggest trading partner in 2024.<\/p>\n

China, a major purchaser of Malaysian electronics and palm oil, the same year took the top spot in trade and was third for investment.<\/p>\n

But Malaysia\u2019s efforts to walk a fine line between Washington and Beijing have become increasingly fraught as the superpowers roll out tit-for-tat tariffs and export controls while butting heads over regional flashpoints such as Taiwan and the South China Sea.<\/p>\n

\"KL\"The ASEAN logo is displayed with Kuala Lumpur\u2019s skyline in the background ahead of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 23, 2025 [Hasnoor Hussain\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

\u201cOptimally, Malaysia wants to productively engage both China and the US on a variety of issues,\u201d said Thomas Daniel, an analyst at the Institute of Strategic & International Studies in Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is in our interest,\u201d Daniel told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Anwar has cast Trump\u2019s visit as a chance to bolster economic ties, champion regional peace and stability, and elevate ASEAN\u2019s standing on the international stage.<\/p>\n

Anwar has also pledged to use the rare\u00a0opportunity for face time\u00a0with Trump to constructively raise points of difference between\u00a0Washington and Kuala Lumpur, particularly the Palestinian cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe through-line is autonomy: avoid entanglement, maximise options, and extract benefits from both poles without becoming anyone\u2019s proxy,\u201d Awang Azman Awang Pawi, a professor at the University of Malaya, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s visit, US tariffs on Malaysia, currently set at 19 percent, and China\u2019s mooted export controls on rare earths are expected to be high on the agenda.<\/p>\n

For Malaysia, the priority is preserving \u201crules-based\u201d trade that allows for countries to deepen economic ties despite their political differences, said Mohd Ramlan Mohd Arshad, a senior lecturer at the MARA University of Technology in Shah Alam, near Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n

A prolonged economic cold war between the US and China is the \u201cworst thing\u201d that could happen to Malaysia, Arshad told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Trump, who has made no secret of his ambitions for the Nobel Peace Prize,\u00a0is also expected to witness the signing of a peace accord between Thailand and Cambodia, which engaged in a brief border conflict in July that left at least 38 people dead.<\/p>\n

For Anwar, who has led a multiracial coalition of parties with diverse and competing interests since 2022, the balancing act also involves political considerations at home.<\/p>\n

\"Gaza\"A man steps on the US flag during a pro-Palestinian protest outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on October 2, 2025 [File: Mukhriz Hazim\/AFP]<\/p>\n

US support for Israel\u2019s war in Gaza has been a bone of contention in Muslim-majority Malaysia, where the plight of Palestinians has inspired frequent public protests.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to the summit, critics have demanded that Anwar rescind Trump\u2019s invitation over his role in supporting the war, which a United Nations commission of inquiry last month determined to constitute genocide.<\/p>\n

\u201cA person like Trump, no matter how powerful, should not be welcomed in Malaysia,\u201d former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar\u2019s former mentor-turned-nemesis, said in a video message last month.<\/p>\n

Defending the invitation, Anwar has stressed his view of diplomacy as \u201cpractical work\u201d for advancing his country\u2019s interests \u201cin an imperfect world\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt demands balance, discipline, and the courage to stay the course even when the ground shifts beneath us,\u201d he told a conference in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\"Trump\"US President Donald Trump gestures to the media after attending the ASEAN Summit in Manila, the Philippines, on November 14, 2017 [Bullit Marquez\/ pool via AFP]<\/p>\n

As a small power, Malaysia has always put pragmatism at the centre of its foreign policy, said Sharifah Munirah Alatas, an independent scholar and researcher who previously taught international relations at the National University of Malaysia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnwar and Malaysia cannot afford to do otherwise,\u201d Alatas told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd given the current highly unpredictable\u00a0Sino-American tension induced by the Trump 2.0 era, ASEAN will remain actively non-aligned, without taking sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awang Azman, the University of Malaya professor, said that while Trump\u2019s visit will elevate Malaysia and ASEAN\u2019s profile by itself, the true test of the summit\u2019s success will be tangible outcomes on issues such as the\u00a0Thailand-Cambodia conflict and trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a photo op if a ceasefire accord and concrete trade language land on paper,\u201d Awang Azman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf either track stalls, the visit is still symbolically significant \u2013 given the rarity of US presidential trips to Malaysia \u2013 but the narrative will revert to optics over outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia \u2013 When US President Donald Trump lands in Malaysia for Southeast Asia\u2019s headline summit this…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":328119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[13214,74,69,79,13790,8372,50,80,8304,67,72,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-328118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-international-trade","13":"tag-malaysia","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-trade-war","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-us-canada","19":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115427012321577602","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}