US, China must compromise on trade deal to benefit the whole world, Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong says
- Lee reiterated Singapore has not ‘banned Huawei’ despite US pressure on Southeast Asian nations to exclude Chinese tech firm
- He also said code of conduct between Beijing and other claimants in South China Sea was preferable to ‘coming to blows’
Lee told Bloomberg “both sides have to make quite basic adjustments”. The US, he said, must decide whether to create rules that allow “the best man” to win or only let America come out on top.
“America First means you do the best for the United States,” Lee said in Davos, Switzerland, while attending the World Economic Forum. “So do you do the best by prospering in the world and there are other countries who are doing well, or do your best by being a big country in a troubled world? And I’m not sure that the second is a very good answer.”
China, on the other hand, must decide whether they are going to be “constructive players” in world affairs and accept that “rules which were acceptable to other countries when they were smaller and less dominant now have to be revised and renegotiated,” Lee said.
“It’s not so easy for them to concede and voluntarily step back from what they feel they can hold on to for a while longer,” he said. But if they make that adjustment, “there’s some possibility of working out a modus vivendi which will be stable and constructive for the world,” he said.
Singapore, a city state heavily dependent on trade, had been one of the most outspoken countries in Asia calling for the US and China to reach a trade deal. Lee has warned that Southeast Asian nations might one day be forced to choose if the world economy gets pulled apart into different blocs.