(ASSOCIATED PRESS) — President Donald Trump plans to burnish his reputation as an international dealmaker on Sunday by solidifying a trade agreement with Malaysia and overseeing the signing of an expanded ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, two nations that skirmished along their disputed border earlier this year.
The two accords could be finalized while Trump attends the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is being hosted in Kuala Lumpur. It’s the first stop of a three-country swing across the continent, with visits to Japan and South Korea and a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The Republican president is scheduled to touch down in Kuala Lumpur around 10 a.m. local time and will attend a ceremony marking the agreement between Cambodia and Thailand, which he said he had been proud to broker.
Trump had threatened to withhold trade agreements from the two countries after five days of combat in July that killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Cambodia and Thailand have competing territorial claims, and violence periodically flares along their border.
Trump’s display of economic leverage has been credited with spurring negotiations. A shaky truce has persisted since then.
“The fact that Trump was holding the tariff card was actually very, very significant,” said Ou Virak, president of Phnom Penh’s Future Forum think tank. “That’s probably the main reason, if not the only reason, but definitely the main reason why the two sides agreed immediately to the ceasefire.”
Now, he said, “there’s a ceremony for Trump to be in front of cameras” so he can be “seen as the champion that brings an end to wars and conflicts,” giving him ”more ammunition for his bid for Nobel Peace Prize.”
Trump has explicitly campaigned for the honor, continuously adding to a list of conflicts that he either helped resolve or claims to have ended.
Дата на публикация: 29 октомври, 2025
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