If we take what the white house says at face value, Malaysia and Cambodia basically agreed to look into banning products form Xinjiang, and banning any products from companies on the US entity list.The US will not stop trying to ruin China (until either country is utterly defeated and in a state of collapse).
The Global South will not stop playing both sides, both because it is the best way to extract benefits, and because they fear the long-arm, extra-territorial jurisdiction of the US (e.g. color revolutions, assassinations, drone strikes, etc.), which China is presently not in a position to really stop.
Petty rulers can hardly afford to get on the bad side of the US. Unless they live in a fortress like North Korea, they know they are expendable and that the US can target them by many different means.
There's no end to opportunists in Global South countries who'd willingly work with the US to overthrow their governments, and even if there are no promising candidates for the time being, it's nothing a couple of missiles can't fix.
The reality is, unless you're already on the US's **** list and have nothing to lose, it takes a lot of courage to openly defy the US.
That's pretty insane. Especially given the foot print some of these companies have in Malaysia.
I wonder if this will be implemented at all or even in the way trump envisioned. I suspect either the white house is over exaggerating what they got out of the deal or Malaysia will never properly police or implement it.
Same with Cambodia. I mean giving up all that for 20% tariffs?
Long term I see less economic dependency on the US from all these countries. Asking japan and south Korean to pay 300 and 500 billion in protection money to the US doesn't bother me much because it just makes Japan and South Korea weaker and I don't think trump will be good with the money to make it useful. Same with Australia.
But forcing other countries to enforce the US entity list is dangerous. I'm Sure if it hurts china, china will respond. I mean they are signing the FTA between China and ASEAN 3.0. On Tuesday. Hope that goes through as planned
