BANGKOK — Southeast Asian nations should band together to deal with the U.S. “reciprocal” tariff policy, said a former director-general of the World Trade Organization.
Supachai Panitchpakdi, who led the WTO from 2002 to 2005 and was Thailand’s deputy prime minister and commerce minister during the Asian Financial Crisis, told Nikkei Asia in a phone interview on Tuesday that ASEAN members are likely to suffer serious damage from the U.S. tariffs and are probably not strong enough economically to retaliate by raising their own tariffs on U.S. imports.
