Lee Hsien Loong: When Liberation Day came, not the May 1 but the April 2, that was not a complete surprise to us because Trump had signaled very clearly and over many years that he wanted to do tariffs and he wanted to equalize America’s trade deficit. He believes in tariffs since he was a young man. He had said during this campaign repeatedly that he comes in, he is going to put tariffs on everybody—it’s “the most beautiful word in the vocabulary.” And the first time he was president, eight, nine years ago, he had imposed some tariffs so that he was going to do something was not a surprise. But even then, what happened in the Liberation Day was more drastic than expected.
So it’s a fundamentally different kind of world which the US is looking for and pushing for. And the approach is not win-win, but win-lose. […]
In other words, the US wants to do well for themselves. They really don’t mind whether you the other countries do well for themselves or not. And President Trump recently is on record saying, “if we can make a really fair deal and a good deal for the United States, not a good deal for the others, this is America First. It’s now America First.” So this has very major implications for Singapore, very major implications for the world. Läs talet