(April 16): Singapore’s business lobby has joined the government in pushing back against a sweeping US trade probe that alleges manufacturing overcapacity and failures to enforce bans on imports linked to forced labour.
A day after the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) defended its trade regime as being aligned with international standards, the Singapore Business Federation said it has filed a formal response of its own.
“We urge the US administration to recognise our shared commitment to fair, market-oriented trade and to avoid measures that would disrupt the deeply intertwined supply chains,” Kok Ping Soon, the chief executive officer of the federation, said in a statement on Thursday.
Singapore is among more than a dozen economies targeted by investigations launched in March by the Office of the US Trade Representative. The probes centre on apparent overcapacity in key manufacturing sectors and alleged shortcomings in enforcing forced-labour import bans.
The intervention by the city state’s main business chamber underscores concern within industry that the US move could ripple across tightly integrated production networks, raising the risk of unintended consequences for the trade-dependent economy.
“Singapore’s trade profile reflects its role as a global hub, not domestic overproduction,” the federation said in a statement. “Import restrictions on Singapore would raise costs and disrupt supply chains for US companies that use Singapore as a regional base and logistics node.”
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Singapore does not engage in practices that contribute to structural overcapacity, the MTI said earlier, outlining its existing measures to enforce prohibitions on imports linked to forced labour.
In its written submission to the US, the MTI said Singapore takes a “firm stance against forced labour” and has a comprehensive framework to enforce against such illegal practices.
The ministry said in a separate response to the probes that market indicators show “there is no excess capacity in Singapore’s industrial property sector”.
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Over the past five years, both industrial property prices and rentals have seen robust compound annual growth rates of approximately 5%, “driven by sustained demand for industrial spaces in Singapore”, the MTI said.
Furthermore, industrial tenders for land and land-based factories have consistently attracted strong market interest. “These trends are not consistent with the presence of excess capacity in Singapore’s industrial property sector,” it said.
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