“We have to accept the fact that our dependence on the US as an export destination may one day end,” Malaysia’s deputy trade minister Liew Chin Tong told parliament on Monday.
“The US now does not want to import much from our country and Asean nations. So we need new markets, we need new partners,” Liew added, referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Malaysia was poised to sign a memorandum of cooperation with Brazil to collaborate on semiconductor development, and was pursuing a similar deal with India, Liew said, but did not elaborate.
As more nations seek to break into the US-led club of high-end chip manufacturing, experts have said that this could include sharing Malaysia’s expertise in intermediate semiconductor assembly and tapping India’s deep pool of tech experts in related areas such as integrated circuit design.
