Malaysia Trip Quotes

OBAMA’S FRUSTRATION WITH HIS critics boiled over during a lengthy trip to Asia in the spring of 2014. In the region, the trip was seen as another carefully designed U.S. effort to counter China. We’d go to Japan, to bring them into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—weaving together twelve Asia Pacific economies into one framework of trade rules, environmental protections, and labor rights. We’d go to South Korea and discuss ways to increase pressure on North Korea. We’d go to Malaysia, something of a swing state in Southeast Asia, which we were bringing closer through TPP. And we’d end in the Philippines, a U.S. ally that was mired in territorial disputes with China over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea.

When he returned from a September 2014 trip to India and Malaysia, Abbott had made exactly as many overseas trips as Kevin Rudd in his first year. Eleven.

Like the other giants in its class, the Marie Maersk was built for the profitable Asia-Europe route: from Busan and Kwangyang in South Korea, then along the eastern and southern Chinese coasts, down to Malaysia, across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal to Tangier and southern Spain, then up to Scandinavia by way of the Netherlands and Germany. Then back again; the round trip takes around six months. The kaleidoscopic cargo might include iPads, smartphones, cars, bulldozers, baseball caps and T-shirts from Chinese factories; then, on the return journey, fruits, chocolates, wine, watches and whisky.