“At the moment, I don’t believe the US is making it difficult for Malaysia to stay neutral. During our conversations, there has never been a request to choose sides,” he said in an interview with US broadcaster CNBC today.
“If there’s a request, it’s more about technology security, and about ensuring that trade imbalances are addressed. As you know, Malaysia has a trade surplus with the US.”
Tengku Zafrul was asked if Washington was “making it difficult for Malaysia to stay neutral” in the spat between the rivals.
On April 2, US president Donald Trump announced stiff reciprocal tariffs on scores of countries, including Malaysia.
With financial markets crashing, Trump did a U-turn on Wednesday by pausing implementation of the duties for 90 days on all affected countries except China, which has been punished with a 145% tariff for “showing disrespect”.
China has since retaliated with a 125% tariff on US imports.
“It’s still early days. What we welcome is the reprieve (pause) as it gives us the opportunity to explore and negotiate with the US,” said Tengku Zafrul.
Earlier, he refuted the claim that Malaysia had imposed a high tariff rate on US imports.
“We have been very clear we are not imposing such high tariffs on the US. In fact, our applied tariff rate on the US is just 5.6%,” he said.
While announcing the reciprocal tariffs at the White House, Trump held up a board showing a list of countries with high tariffs on the US, with Malaysia featured prominently at 47%.
The government had previously stated the US’s basis for calculating Malaysia’s tariff rate at 47% is “fundamentally flawed”, resulting in Malaysia being incorrectly imposed a reciprocal tariff of 24%.
Tengku Zafrul reiterated that Malaysia is taking a bilateral and also a multilateral approach, via Asean, to deal with the US tariff issue.
“Both Malaysia and Asean have said we are going to engage the US, and we do not believe in (taking) any retaliatory tariff action.
“We also agreed that the rule-based multilateral trading system is the way to go,” he said, adding that Malaysian officials in Washington DC have reached out to their counterparts in the US administration.
He said foreign minister Mohamad Hasan has been engaging with US secretary of state Marco Rubio on the tariff issue.
In 2024, total US-Malaysia trade amounted to US$80.2 billion (RM354.7 billion). Of this, US exports to Malaysia totalled US$27.7 billion while Malaysia’s exports to the US reached US$52.5 billion.
This resulted in a trade deficit of US$24.8 billion for the US in 2024, although the deficit narrowed by 7.6% compared to the previous year.