BANGKOK: Thailand and China will permanently waive visa requirements for each other’s citizens from March, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said on Tuesday (Jan 2). Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, which relies heavily on tourism, in September waived entry requirements for Chinese tourists until February this year. “This will upgrade theContinue Reading
Authorities expect excise tax losses to be offset by higher tourist spending
PUBLISHED : 2 Jan 2024 at 17:11
The cabinet has approved tax cuts on alcoholic beverages and entertainment venues to boost tourism, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The excise tax on wine will be reduced from 10% to 5% and on local liquor from 10% to zero, Chai Wacharonke told reporters, adding that the excise tax on entertainment venues would be halved to 5%.
The tax measures will expire at the end of this year, he said.
The announcement comes after authorities last month extended opening hours for entertainment venues by two hours to 4am in Bangkok and other key tourist destinations. Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is considering expanding the extended hours to other locations as well.
Losses of tax revenue would be offset by additional tourist receipts, said Lavaron Sangsnit, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance.
In the 2023 fiscal year that ended on sept 30 last year, the Excise Department collected 177.6 billion baht in alcohol, beer and beverage taxes. The figure included 64.17 billion baht from alcoholic beverages, 86.5 billion from beer and 26.95 billion baht from other beverages.
Tourism is a key driver of Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy. Last year, the country reached its target of 28 million international tourists, generating 1.2 trillion baht, government data showed.
In 2024, it is targeting more than 34 million foreign arrivals, Mr Lavaron said.
The Move Forward Party has been outspoken in its support of small-scale local brewers and distillers, saying that current tax and other regulations prevent all but a handful of giant players from competing successfully.
It has championed what it called a Progressive Liquor Bill that would remove some of the impediments in the current laws.
KMT senior officials including Mr Ma have also been making trips to China to meet with key figures in the Chinese government, noted Dr Huang. If Mr Hou wins, the KMT officials in charge of these visits would be “very quick to adapt to the situation” and occupy key cross-strait government positions.
“I think there’s probably going to be an emphasis first on forging pragmatic cooperative ties on functional issues,” he said. This could include jumpstarting trade agreements or having some sort of understanding that there will be greater international space for Taiwan in public health and, possibly, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
Such issues would enable the KMT to show it is a government able to bring tangible benefits to the electorate.
The “most sensitive part, this question about what ‘one China’ actually is”, may not be talked about immediately, Dr Huang reckoned.
For the US, a KMT win is “not a bad development either”. It reduces the likelihood of having to “worry about Taiwan and getting drawn into an unnecessary conflict in the Taiwan Strait”, he said.
There may, however, be the concern that Taiwan would be “pulled into China’s orbit more closely and so it would lose its strategic ally and partner”.
Taiwan will continue to buy arms from the US to improve its defence capability, as Mr Hou would still need the US and other countries’ support in resisting Beijing’s unification efforts, said Dr Qi.
For Southeast Asia, a win for Hou would mean less pressure to choose between supporting Beijing, or supporting Taiwan or the US, in the unlikely event of a conflict, the analysts said.
“If the KMT government were to be elected, I think there would probably be a temporary sigh of relief for most Southeast Asian governments (which) don’t have to be wedged in between this conflict between China and Taiwan,” said Dr Huang.
Mr Hou, a career police officer, has said he wants to expand the New Southbound initiative to encompass the entire Indo-Pacific region, noted Dr Jing Bo-jiun, senior research fellow in Taiwan Studies at the University of Oxford.
At a press event in December, Mr Hou said the DPP’s New Southbound Policy was not working as claimed by the ruling party, and proposed expanding its focus.
GROWING THE PIE
In those days, his viewership could be best described as modest. “Initially, there were only about 10 views, mostly from friends. Afterward, friends shared my videos with others in the university, saying, ‘Hey, this guy makes fun videos. Check him out. Even though he plays games, he’s really funny.’”
His viewership grew slowly but organically as the videos started garnering more shares and were sometimes posted on websites sharing memes. It took about six months to get up to a thousand views and another one to two years to reach 10,000 views.
These numbers may seem inconsequential to those in the big leagues today but this metric was a lot less daunting in the early days. “Back then, having 1,000 to 2,000 views was not that bad. It was not considered slow because fewer people watched YouTube then so 1,000 to 2,000 views were considered quite good,” said Phan.
“There were days when viewership would reach 13,000 to 14,000, which was fantastic but now, if a video does not get a million views, it feels quite disappointing and sad.”
MANILA: Foreign ministers of Southeast Asia’s regional bloc ASEAN on Saturday (Dec 30) expressed their concern over growing tensions in the South China Sea which they said could threaten regional peace and urged for peaceful dialogue among parties. “We closely follow with concern the recent developments in the South ChinaContinue Reading
Build track record as purpose driven, investor friendly social enterprise
Gearing up for next fundraising focusing on infra, community, human capital
Ending 2023 on a high note, youth-led social enterprise Accelerate Global Sdn Bhd, which in Nov 2021 raised US$102,400 (RM470,000) from 69 investors via equity crowdfunding with Ethis Malaysia, stayed true to…Continue Reading
JAKARTA: Indonesia will impose a new tax on e-cigarettes from Jan. 1, adding to an excise tax to help curb vaping, the country’s finance ministry said on Saturday (Dec 30). Southeast Asia’s largest economy has set the additional tax at 10 per cent of the excise tariff for electronic cigarettes,Continue Reading
The United States is less than a year away from its next presidential election. Although former president Donald Trump faces numerous civil and criminal indictments, he will most likely be the Republican Party’s nominee for the third election in a row. Incumbent President Joe Biden will run for re-election from the Democratic Party, hoping that the country’s strong economic performance will ease voters’ concerns about his age and fitness for office.
The 2024 presidential election campaign comes at a moment of uncertainty in international politics. The United States and China are searching for a new footing, Israel continues its invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’s terrorist actions and war crimes and Ukraine continues to mount a successful armed resistance to Russia’s illegal invasion. The Indo-Pacific security architecture is also changing, with new initiatives such as AUKUS and the Quad bringing Australia closer to the United States as a central player in the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy.
The outlook of a second Trump presidency for US allies in the Asia Pacific is grim. Trump has a serious chance of being re-elected. He is the face of the Republican Party, and current polling shows Trump neck-and-neck with Biden. Although horserace polls this far in advance of the election are notoriously unreliable, the signals they are sending should not be ignored.
Trump’s second term may well be more extreme than his first term. Trump’s central policy concerns are domestic, driven by his belief that he will face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted of even a subset of his crimes. But he also understands that his political supporters would gleefully endorse dictatorial methods if used against Democrats, progressives, Muslims, immigrants or their allies.
Trump has reportedly pledged to appoint loyal supporters to positions that have traditionally been nonpartisan and professionalized. He allegedly plans to surround himself with sycophants who will implement his most dangerous ideas about how to use federal power to crush his perceived enemies at home.
Unlike during his first term, Trump understands now that his personal fate depends on his ability to act decisively against core US institutions. This is not a secret; this is his campaign platform. He has a political team that will enable him to do this as soon as he takes office. Having failed on 6 January 2021 to overturn American democracy from the outside through seditious conspiracy, he will try to overturn it from the inside, using executive power.
Because the federal government is central to US diplomacy, defence and foreign policy, such actions will reverberate far beyond US borders. Given Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin, his willingness to sacrifice Ukrainian national security for his personal benefit and the decline of the moderate internationalist Republicans in Congress, many options are on the table for US policy in Europe. They include a unilateral withdrawal from NATO and a permanent end to military support for Ukraine. This focus on NATO and Russia means that the United States’ European allies stand to lose the most from Trump’s second presidency.
Trump is similarly uncommitted to maintaining the status quo security architecture in the Asia Pacific. Yet it is not clear how much he understands or cares about the region beyond his casual anti-Chinese rhetoric and curiosity about Kim Jong-un. Trump’s relative indifference to Asia suggests that US allies in the Indo-Pacific may not fare as poorly under a second Trump administration as European allies, but uncertainty itself is a threat to the regional strategic order.
Although the emerging Hamas–Putin partnership complicates Trump’s Middle East policy, Trump will likely align himself with segments of the Israeli society that seek a maximalist solution to the conflict. This solution may include a permanent reoccupation of Gaza, even more settler violence in the West Bank, massive and permanent displacement of Palestinian civilians and a decisive end to the fragile status quo in Jerusalem’s holy sites.
Any one of these outcomes would strain US alliances. There is no appetite for more dead civilians and the settler movement has no durable support outside of Israel.
Biden’s foreign policy leadership has largely been a boon for allies and partners around the world. Despite the Afghanistan withdrawal, the subsequent return of the Taliban and the AUKUS rollout that generated concerns from NATO allies in Europe, Biden believes in multilateral institutions. He understands that the United States has built a global order that provides security and prosperity for Americans. That same order has also provided stability, security and prosperity for key allies in the Asia Pacific like Australia.
Biden has steered the United States through a difficult period in global politics. Despite his errors and inherent biases of superpower diplomacy and foreign policy, Biden undoubtedly understands the principles of multilateralism and follows them when he can.
Because Trump is an inherently oppositional figure, his politics are rejectionist. If Biden supports US leadership, multilateral institutions and foreign policy cooperation, Trump will pursue the opposite. While immediate consequences are likely to be worse for US allies in the North Atlantic, partners in the Indo-Pacific should plan for what a Trump presidency might look like, and how they will respond to safeguard their security and prosperity at home.
Thomas Pepinsky is the Walter F LaFeber professor of government and public policy and director of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University.
This article was originally published by East Asia Forum. It is republished under a Creative Commons license.
Opportunity for cohort to run Proof-of-Concept projects with industry partners
Fikra Ace lays foundation for future innovation & collaboration in Islamic finance
FIKRA ACE, an extension of the Securities Commission Malaysia’s (SC) Islamic Capital Market (ICM) ecosystem efforts since 2021, is dedicated to advancing Islamic fintech through systematic approaches by identifying innovative fintech companies, supporting…Continue Reading
A case in point is the 2022 US Commerce Department investigation into eight solar panel companies in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia) accused of skirting US tariffs on Chinese-sourced materials.
That the US is heavily reliant on these four countries for photovoltaic panels – accounting for about 75 per cent on imports in 2021 – was not enough to defend against bipartisan determination to crack down on “unfair” Chinese trade practices.
Not only did the Commerce Department find the exporters guilty of skirting tariffs, but the US Congress voted to reinstate tariffs of up to 254 per cent on solar panels from Southeast Asia. President Joe Biden vetoed this legislative bid, but his waiver on retroactive tariffs only extends until June 2024.
In effect, Southeast Asian firms are caught between a rock and a hard place. They might be forced to choose between Chinese expertise and the lucrative US market, limiting their ability to grow and support their home country’s green transition.
The costs of a failed green transition are especially stark for Southeast Asia. One model by Deloitte predicted that the region could lose US$28 trillion over the next 50 years in losses from tourism, services and manufacturing if its carbon emissions are not addressed.
While these challenges are steep, they are not insurmountable. There is still room to leverage the competition between the two superpowers to support the region’s green transition.