Malaysia will roll out three key follow-up actions – an exporter outreach programme, regulatory reform and a nationwide supply chain mapping initiative – following the recent tariff renegotiation agreement with the US, which reduced tariffs on Malaysian goods from 25% to 19%.
Investment, trade and industry minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz said the agreement, effective Aug 1, was achieved after “months of intense but thorough as well as methodical negotiations”.
“Most importantly, we achieved this without conceding on our red lines in key areas,” Bernama reported him as saying in his keynote address at The Edge Malaysia Centurion Club Awards 2025 today.
Tengku Zafrul said these red lines included foreign equity limits in strategic sectors, legal safeguards in digital companies and halal standards.
“The key point is that the negotiation package was a full-of-nation offer: not just the government, but all (of you). Many companies contributed to that.”
Tengku Zafrul said the outreach programme will support industry players and exporters.
“Some of you in this room may be impacted, but again we will engage the whole exporters’ ecosystem – not just the multinationals, but all the small and medium enterprises that are supporting the major exporters.”
He said the government also aimed to accelerate industrial reforms by cutting bureaucracy and reviewing regulations to eliminate overlaps, outdated provisions and irrelevant processes.
“Thirdly, we need to strengthen the resilience of our supply chain by fortifying specific industries’ role in the global supply chain.”
Tengku Zafrul said Malaysia is making good progress on a supply chain mapping project, which aims to identify every player involved in the economic activities of key industrial sectors.
He also said Malaysia’s mid-cap companies – defined as listed companies with a market capitalisation of between RM100 million and RM1 billion – remained critical to the country’s growth ambition under the New Industrial Master Plan 2030.
