Show Notes
The European Union is ASEAN’s third largest trading partner after China and the United States and its third largest source of direct foreign investment, with last year’s total merchandise trade reaching about $320 billion. It’s a formidable number, which both sides would like to improve upon and the EU is negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines after successfully signing such deals with Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Chris Humphrey, executive director of the EU-ASEAN Business Council, spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about the status of current FTA negotiations and issues including counterfeit goods, labor rights, environmental standards, and protectionism. In regards to counterfeit goods, he noted that ASEAN’s top six economies – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam – lost as an estimated $13 billion to illicit tobacco products over the past two years. Indonesia accounted for more than $5 billion of those losses while more than half of cigarettes sold in Malaysia were illicit – making it the only market where illicit cigarettes outnumbered legal sales. “So there are things that need to be resolved. But to be fair to the ASEAN member states, they are working to resolve them,” he said. Negotiations with Myanmar for an FTA were initiated in 2014 but are on hold amid the civil war and Humphrey also points to organized crime and scam compounds as damaging its image abroad, in a similar way to Cambodia and Laos. But he remains optimistic about Cambodia and its plans to leave the ranks of the least developed countries by the end of the decade, if it can purge the country of scam compounds and human trafficking networks. “Cambodia has got one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia. It will naturally start to attract more foreign direct investment going forward. But companies will be wary of dealing with a country that has reputational damage,” he said. Humphrey, who has run the EU-ASEAN Business Council since its formal inception in 2014, also spoke about the impact of the conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, the closure of their border, and its impact on trade. He also talks about the disproportionate affects the Israel-U.S. war in Iran is having on the region, particularly in terms of inflation and its impact on the broader economies from the price of energy to food costs.
More from Beyond the Mekong
Marcus Tantau is a senior associate at Templeton Research with a focus on Indonesia, which is beset by El Nino-fueled wildfires, political ructions amid a cabinet reshuffle, and confusing signals over the economy. This month's reshuffle was the biggest since President Prabowo Subianto took power two years ago and Tantau says the Indonesian leader is clearly focused on shoring-up support ahead the next election, which is not due until 2029. The reshuffle also sidelined supporters of former president Joko Widodo, who helped Prabowo win the vote in 2024. It came amid intense speculation regarding the state of the country’s finances and its efforts to combat the wildfires, which politicians are attempting to justify. But arguments that food security and rice production justify the burning-off and clearing of land remain out of step with the region, where climate change and this year’s El Nino weather phenomena are taking a heavy toll. “The mood towards Prabowo isn’t that great,” Tantau said. “It's all these issues, around job security. The rupiah has declined significantly since Prabowo came to power. It’s all of these issues that are linked to one another. “But I think Prabowo is mostly focused on improving or consolidating his political hold on Indonesia. And we saw that recently with the cabinet shuffle where he was, for all intents and purposes, sidelining Joko appointees.”
Kim Aris has conducted a concerted campaign for the release of his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, ever since she was detained in early 2021, when Myanmar’s military ousted her elected government and tipped the country into a bloody civil war. Her meeting last month with an official from the International Committee for the Red Cross, following Kim’s Proof of Life campaign, did little to calm fears for the Nobel laureate’s health and safety amid claims that the meeting was staged, and at this point her whereabouts remain a closely guarded secret. Kim Aris spoke to The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about his mother’s fate, the National Unity Government (NUG) in exile, and the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) battling it out with the military in a conflict that has now killed more than 100,000 people. He also talks about the recent diplomatic tour by the regime’s president Min Aung Hlaing to neighboring countries and his administration, which he described as a “parody of democracy," since one-sided elections were held in January. "Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it,” he said. “Min Aung Hlaing claimed that Myanmar remains on the path to democracy. That’s just a calculated attempt to pacify domestic resistance and offer foreign governments an easy diplomatic off-ramp to normalize relations or justify inaction.” He also discussed the recently formed Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union, which combines the NUG, key EAOs, and parliamentary bodies, describing it as an important step toward a genuine federal democracy in Myanmar.
Eunice Barbara Novio is a Thailand-based journalist and an English lecturer at Vongchavalitkul University who has has written extensively on human trafficking in Southeast Asia, particularly focusing on Filipino victims trafficked to Myanmar. A veteran writer for Inquirer.net, she has reported about how trafficking networks lure Filipinos with false job offers, only to exploit them in scam hubs or forced labor situations. Novio has also helped victims of organized crime escape from their ordeal, particularly from compounds operating inside Myanmar and close to the Thai border. She told The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt that the current scam compound phenomenon had its roots in the Philippines dating back to 2016, when Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, commonly known as POGOs, took hold and flourished in places like Bamban – a small agricultural town north of Manila.
Singapore-based Bertha Chan heads Trust and Safety Global Engagements across the Asia-Pacific for Google, focusing on the safeguards and considerations needed to prevent AI misuse while keeping pace with the technology. Her remit covers jurisdictions and partnerships with governments and civil society, as well as combating the ever-evolving online scam industry, which is already adopting the latest advances in AI, especially the production of deep fakes. Chan says that the foundation of all innovation and technology adoption has to be trust and that Google aims to protect its users at every part of their “entire digital journey,” adding that its email product, Gmail, stops 90 percent of spam phishing and malware from ever reaching an inbox. “So that’s what we call all safety by design,” Chan told The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt, adding that Google has deployed research teams seek to establish policies and frameworks aimed at safeguarding children and families from dangerous and sexual content, and preventing fraud. “These experts are advisors that specialize in a very wide range of expertise, for example, developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, human development, youth culture [and] youth behavior – when it comes to technology more,” Chan said. “So with their expertise we collaborate and understand and seek to really fine tune our products.” Prior to Google, Chan drove digital transformation and international relations initiatives within the Singapore government. She holds a Master’s degree in sociology from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from University College London.
Pablo Berrutti is founder and managing director of Altiorem, a sustainable finance library, and a strategic advisor with a background in the integration of artificial intelligence measuring the impact of climate change and its impact on business. This includes banks and insurance companies and their awkward relationships with factoring in the challenges of climate change and confronting their responsibilities, which have recently been sorely tested by the arrival of a super-charged El Niño weather phenomena. In recent weeks the glacial collapse in Nepal, wildfires in Indonesia, the haze, droughts and typhoons across East Asia have taken horrible toll on human life and racked-up damage bills that will be measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Governments and financial institutions were warned. The potential for this year’s El Niño was first raised in May, formally announced on June 16 and the World Meteorological Organization says the current conditions are expected to last until February. But Berrutti told The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt that wealthy countries like Australia had spent very little on preparation and building in resilience into assets. Instead, about 95 percent of disaster funds went to recovery. “Whereas other countries, sadly, who aren’t as wealthy as Australia, a lot of Southeast Asian countries, clearly aren’t in a position to be able to build that resilience to these types of events," he said. He added that it’s not only the big events that made headlines, caused destruction, and loss of life that matter, but also the chronic effects of extreme heat, noting that more than 30,000 people had died this year from back-to-back European heatwaves. “It’s also an economic productivity perspective or a human health perspective, the knock on effects from fires and what that means from a lung disease and heart disease perspective,” Berrutti said.