00:00And the reality is, this is a fluid situation that develops by the day, by the hour and so on.
00:08And at the end of the day, I think that's why when we look at it from an ASEAN point of view,
00:13we look at it from a Malaysia point of view, we go back to core principles.
00:18And in our core principles, we are a core promoter for multilateralism.
00:24We are a core promoter for free trade along the way.
00:27We also encourage good, clear dialogues in order to come to a relation that we can work through our problems along the way.
00:37I think that's important.
00:38In the short term, of course, there will be a lot of things that will populate the headlines and the news and everything along the way.
00:46We should not overreact on news and things along the way.
00:52But we should look at things that we can peel and act on things that we have in our control.
00:59Therefore, from an ASEAN point of view, what do we have in control that we can work through?
01:05We can work on making the ease or doing business better among ourselves.
01:09Because there's an untapped potential that we can work through.
01:12And we can continue to promote that within the principles that we all agree.
01:16that multilateralism is important, more trade coming along this is important, free trade mechanism is important,
01:24and simplification and doing more in terms of ease or doing business is important.
01:30And I think that's what are controllable.
01:32And the controllable ones, you do a lot more.
01:34And you step up.
01:35In areas that we may not have had enough integration, we may not have had enough relations, we work towards that.
01:43And again, I think the ASEAN philosophy has always been an economy that has centrality.
01:50We trade with everyone.
01:52We want to be able to do it because a much more open trading world creates more prosperity and more wealth for everybody along the way.
02:01So we will push.
02:03We understand that there will continue to be challenges.
02:06We understand there will continue to be attempts to do a lot of other things along the way.
02:11But we react with what tools that we can do along the way.
02:15And we promote balance and things to make sure it's better.
02:21It's beholden on all governments to try to create mechanisms that the long-term future is better for everybody along the way.
02:31It's also a responsibility of all governments to look at what we can do to manage the situation as what we have.
02:38So I think all governments are looking at that.
02:39And even the Malaysian government is looking at the impact that it's going to take.
02:43But we should not take decisions without working through how the impact is best managed.
02:50So I know you want me to answer very difficult questions, take positions in it.
02:56But as I said, these are positions that are evolving by the day, evolving by the hour.
03:02Work on things that you have in your control.
03:05Work on things that provide resilience to your economy.
03:09Work on things that you can actually create more opportunities that actually help us be better.
03:20Work on things that you can accomplish.
Comments