NONTHABURI – US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross is confident the trade in the Indo-Pacific region will continue to grow despite the ongoing US-China trade war.

“As we gather again in future years, our numbers will only get bigger,” Mr Ross said at the Indo-Pacific Business Forum, which is being held on the sidelines of the 14th East Asia Summit and the Asean Summit taking place just outside Bangkok.

Emphasising that the Trump administration is “extremely engaged and fully committed to the region,” Mr Ross said, adding that the US remained the largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Indo-Pacific region, a geopolitical area spanning two regions of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean making up almost 4 billion people or about half of the global population.

He said US investment in the region was US$866 billion (S$1.17 trillion) as at the end of last year, adding that this was far higher than that of China which stood at US$504 billion as of 2017, of which US$381 billion went to Hong Kong.

Mr Ross is the most senior US official attending the meetings in Thailand.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not turn up in what was widely perceived as a snub by Washington and led to downgraded Asean representation at the Asean-US Summit on Monday, with only the heads of state from Thailand, Vietnam and Laos attending.

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