00:00Power has always shaped trade, but today it increasingly defines it.
00:06Across the world, tools used, once used, to generate growth are now wielded to pressure, isolate, and contain.
00:16Tariffs, export restrictions, and investment barriers have now become the sharpened instruments of geopolitical rivalry.
00:27This is no passing storm. It is a new weather of our time.
00:33Now ASEAN must confront this reality with clarity and conviction.
00:38We must read the landscape clinically, speak with coherence, act with foresight.
00:45Our cohesion must not end at declarations.
00:49It must be built into our institutions, our strategies, and our economic decisions.
00:55I therefore urge even closer alignment between ASEAN's foreign and economic policy tracks.
01:05Our foreign and economic ministers must move in concert in facing challenges.
01:12This imperative is fully aligned with ASEAN's Vision 2045, which calls for greater synergy across pillars and sectors.
01:22We must build habits of coordination that match the realities we confront.
01:29And as we navigate external pressures, we need to fortify our internal foundations, trade among ourselves, invest more in one another,
01:40and advance integration across sectors with resolve.
01:44To build a stronger, more connected ASEAN economy is a strategic imperative that will anchor our relevance and resilience for decades to come.
01:56We must also reject the idea that the world can be carved into spheres of influence,
02:02and that decisions about our region can be made elsewhere.
02:06We are a region that charts its own costs deliberately, coherently, and with purpose.
02:16ASEAN will not be spoken for in absentia.
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