The facility is set to be built beside Subic Bay, where a former US naval base north of Manila once housed the largest American military installation in Asia before it was closed in the early 1990s and converted into a free port.
The revelation confirms that the project – seen by both sides as a keystone of defence and economic cooperation – has advanced beyond preliminary discussion. However, it has already stirred domestic political opposition, most notably from Marcos’ own deputy and estranged political rival.
A day earlier, Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio urged Filipinos to reject the project after Jose Manuel Romualdez, Philippine ambassador to Washington and a cousin of Marcos, touted it as a “good way of being able to help a combination of both defence and economic cooperation”.
