Finance Secretary Ralph Recto on Thursday said it is hard to tell this early the impact on the Philippine economy of a Trump presidency in the United States but expressed hope the newly-elected leader of the world’s biggest economy will be good for global security.
“If President Trump will be good for global security, and if you have less geopolitical tensions and less wars, that should be good for everyone,” Recto said at a fireside chat of the Pilipinas Conference in Makati City.
Recto also expressed hope US President-elect Donald Trump will see the value of the Philippines’ strategic location in the region.
“I was watching the market last night, it appeared that the victory was good for equities, bad for the bond market… rates have been going up. Maybe (this is) temporary. You have a strong US dollar at the moment,” Recto said.
In the same forum where he was a panelist, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, chairman of Ayala Corp.,was asked what the business sector should be prepared for.
Zobel responded in the context of the election of Trump, known to have nationalistic and protectionist stand.
“All (have) been quite glued on watching the US election and the philosophy of whatever leadership could be (if) President Trump won, and I think it’s going to continue a trend. Personally, I regret it,” Zobel said.
For one, Zobel said he has always been a believer of globalization and the interlinks between countries and building on each other’s competitive advantage.
“But there is a tendency now to have a bifurcation of technology, particularly between China and the Western countries, which saddens me. A decade or two ago, China and the US would do research together, particularly in the life sciences. People would study in each other’s universities, and the world was brought together by a spirit of commonality, with respect to encouraging trade, building on each other’s strengths, and allowing a global movement of services and products to take place,” Zobel said.
Zobel said putting up barriers and creating a “move back to a more centralized, more personalized, more nationalistic point of view, rather than building on each other” is worrisome.
“The world prospers when we encourage trade between each country and build on commonalities of spirit and work off each other’s strength. It worries me when barriers get put up and we go back to nation states closing the door. That’s one area that I think will affect many of us,” Zobel added.
He continued:”If you look at the elections in the US, it’s (a) difficult thing to comprehend what the driving forces were. One thing that I noticed, which we are sensitive to in the Philippines is, is this area of making sure that there is an inclusivity in the way the vast members of the population get included the economic system. The moment people feel they’re disenfranchised in one way or another… and globalization has shifted manufacturing to other countries and left many Americans with a difficult situation with respect to employment, we should be sensitive to these things so that they don’t happen to countries like ours. “
Ernest Bower, former president of the US-Asean Business Council, in the same forum said there will be ways the Philippines can increase its trade with the US to effectively reduce the trade deficit that stands at about $10 billion.
Chris Humphrey, executive director of the EU-Asean Business Council, said Europe thus needs to step in trade with the Philippines
“It is very welcoming that the negotiations on the EU-Philippines FTA (free trade agreement), are progressing extremely well. That deal will become vitally important for the Philippines going forward, especially because of (its) economic growth… it will lose (its) trade preferences with Europe without their FTA,” Humphrey said.
