Aurelia Butler

Hello from Trade Secrets. In today’s main piece, we look at how the Ukraine war, as well as finally giving the EU some geopolitical backbone (though how firm that will be in the longer run remains to be seen), has helped transatlantic co-operation on trade-related security issues. Charted Waters looks at one of the reasons why co-operation with China will still be necessary.Vladimir Putin, the great transatlantic unifierI’ll be honest: when the EU and US set up the Trade and Technology Council last year I feared it would disappear into the bulging “fruitless transatlantic trade gabfest” folder and never be seen again. In theory it’s a good idea — take newer, often behind-the-border issues such as AI, foreign direct investment (FDI), semiconductor production, media disinformation and so on and put them into a flexible discussion forum rather than have them slowly suffocate in endlessly stalled formal trade negotiations. In practice it involves a lot of issues (security screening of FDI being a classic one) where the two sides have different approaches and the EU doesn’t have collective competence to set rules anyway.The first meeting in Pittsburgh last September didn’t hugely change my mind. For one, the build-up was dominated by a big scrap on the EU side where French internal markets commissioner Thierry Breton, semiconductor industrial interventionist supreme, was cross at not being invited and France had a semi-serious go at postponing the entire meeting over the Aukus submarine deal. (Remember that?)I had various conversations following the meeting suggesting that the sides were engaging in good faith but a long way from agreeing coherent binding transatlantic co-ordination. And then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has overturned a bunch of certainties, particularly about the EU’s ability to act collectively on issues involving national security. It seems like the second meeting of the council, which will be in a tech and business hub on the outskirts of Paris in the middle of May, might be quite a bit more constructive than the previous one. Breton is allowed to come, which will help.As an example: imposing trade and financial sanctions and export controls has been a sore transatlantic spot for a while. The US is often keener on slamming on restrictions than the EU is — see Donald Trump’s blocks on semiconductor exports to China, for example, or successive US administrations’ sanctions on Iran. And Washington isn’t shy about using extraterritorial powers in effect to force European and other third-country companies to comply, to the point where the EU has constructed (rather ineffectual) mechanisms to protect them from the fallout.But along with the freeze on Russian central bank assets and going after oligarchs’ yachts and so on, one innovation of the international sanctions on Russia was the very fast imposition of export controls on an agreed list of products (from high-tech equipment used to process semiconductors to submarine engines) co-ordinated closely between the US and EU. This is a welcome reversal of the general trend of export control regimes, particularly the American one, drifting away from international standards. Now, of course it’s relatively easy to get swift action and co-operation over something like Russia during the Ukraine war. Almost from the very beginning the US and EU have stood together in terms of objectives and the means to achieve them. It probably wasn’t his original intention, but Vladimir Putin’s been great for EU unity and transatlantic co-operation. It’s going to be harder to turn this into some kind of routine system with regard to third parties like China, let alone Iran, where the EU has a considerably less confrontational strategy than the US.Still, it’s useful to have an actual example to create precedent and show that co-ordination is possible and put more impetus behind the entire TTC project. At least it’s definitely worth paying attention now. As well as this newsletter, I write a Trade Secrets column for FT.com every Wednesday. Click here to read the latest, and visit ft.com/trade-secrets to see all my columns and previous newsletters too.Charted watersGlobalisation has been broken by recent events. But even in these disrupted times (a good name for a newsletter, and you can sign up for ours here) countries need to co-operate with those they do not trust to prevent the global crisis getting worse. Not necessarily Russia, but certainly China given its position today as a global superpower.As the above chart shows, and was clearly explained by Martin Wolf in his latest column, at the very least, the west will need to co-operate with China over the management of developing country debt.Trade linksThe FT looks at how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted Europe’s breadbasket.China’s severe Covid-related travel restrictions are continuing to push up global inflation through constricting supply chains.A video of a day-long conference on the economics of Brexit hosted by the “UK in a Changing Europe” research network. Particularly enjoyable is the Peterson Institute’s Adam Posen going in double-footed on the damage to Britain’s economy from leaving the EU (starts around 30 min). Meanwhile, the UK’s deadline for actually checking imports to Britain is delayed once again.The newly confirmed US ambassador to the World Trade Organization says Washington is prepared to negotiate to reform the dispute settlement system it has put into the deep freeze, but as usual offered no details about how that might happen. The global fuel and commodity price shock will reduce growth and damage food security in sub-Saharan Africa, the IMF warns. More

Trade is on my mind these days, in part because I’ll be discussing the topic this coming Saturday May 7 at the first-ever FT Weekend Festival in Washington DC. For those who don’t already know, this will be a must-attend event (Swamp Notes readers can buy tickets here to get 50 per cent off). The Weekend Festival, which has been going for years in London, is a place to hear big thinkers discussing the most important ideas of the day — in politics, economics, society and culture.This year, for the first time, we are bringing it to the Beltway, with guests such as Henry Kissinger, Tina Brown, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Simon Schama, Elizabeth Strout and of course many of the top FT folks (including you, Ed!). I’ll be doing a couple of sessions, including one entitled “The Great Decoupling,” on the US-China relationship and deglobalisation, with my colleague Martin Wolf and the former US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who rarely does these sorts of things.Lighthizer is, to my mind, one of the only bright spots in the Trump presidency. While I don’t agree with everything he did, I think his reset of US trade policy from wilfully blind neoliberalism to a more realistic view of the political economy, and in particular the “One World, Two Systems” conflict between liberal market economies and state-run systems like China, was long overdue.As we’ve covered in these Notes before, the architects of neoliberalism believed that if capital markets and global trade were connected via a series of institutions that floated over the laws of any given nation-state, the world would be less likely to descend into anarchy. For a long time, this idea worked, in part because the balance between national interests and the global economy didn’t get too far out of whack. Even during the Reagan years, despite the anti-government rhetoric, there was a sense that global trade needed to serve the national interest rather than merely itself (or, more particularly, the interests of the large multinational companies).Consider the way that the United States fought back when Japan tried to dominate the entire physical infrastructure of the computer. It was the Reagan administration response — which included putting tariffs and quotas on Japanese exports and subsidising the development of next-generation computer technology — that kept America in the game. The United States also pushed a lot of manufacturing away from Japan and toward South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, which was ultimately a good thing, because it reduced the concentration of power and created both lower prices and more resiliency. That sounds a lot less like “government is the problem” and more like smart industrial policy.“While the Reagan administration embraced free trade, it opposed mercantilism,” notes Clyde Prestowitz, a labour economist who worked in the Commerce Department during the Reagan years. The administration strove to maintain American technological leadership by creating an industry-government partnership around research and development. It’s worth noting that the deputy trade representative during the second Reagan term was none other than the architect of Trump’s trade strategy with China: Robert Lighthizer.The sense that trade should be a handmaid to domestic job creation and industrial interests began to change quite rapidly during the Clinton administration, when a series of trade deals, culminating with the entry of China into the WTO, took the guardrails off the global economy. While Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, held that in order for free markets to function properly, participants needed to have a shared moral framework, the United States and many other liberal democracies were suddenly enmeshed in major trade relationships with countries that had entirely different moral frameworks, not to mention economic ones — from Russia and any number of other petrostates in the Middle East, to numerous Latin American dictatorships, to the biggest and most problematic trading partner of all, China.It’s worth noting — as journalist and activist Barry Lynn did in a prescient Harper’s Magazine piece in 2002 that eventually became a book on the fragility of global supply chains entitled End of the Line — that “many of our new partners are not democracies, and their internal workers, long-term goals, and ability to live peacefully in the world we imagine ourselves to be making remain obscure at best.” This statement, so crisply true then, is only more so today. While the European nations that came together after the second world war to craft trade agreements (like the European Coal and Steel Community, which became the basis for the European Union) had similar cultures and values, the same cannot be said for the WTO nations as a whole today. Liberal democracies, autocracies, surveillance states and any other number of political and economic systems, transparent and not, have become tied together in deals that were more often than not crafted and approved by global technocrats rather than elected officials.We can see this all too clearly right now, as the WTO struggles unsuccessfully to mediate issues like the Trips vaccine waiver (which I’ll be writing about soon). Poor countries, rich countries, liberal democracies and state autocracies all have different horses in this race, which is going straight to the bottom. My questions to you, Ed, are complicated but important ones. Where do we go from here? Can the WTO be fixed? Do we need an entirely new set of institutions for global trade? And what are you most eager to discuss at the FT Weekend Festival?Recommended ReadingI’m sad to see the WSJ’s wonderful film critic Joe Morgenstern go, but I enjoyed his last column and list of most loved films. I’ve been watching the wonderful Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts, which is timely viewing for the moment. Teddy was even more of a warmonger than I had realised, and the Biden administration should find some way to reinvent FDR’s fireside chats, perhaps in streaming form, for today. It could be very cool to hear the president provide this sort of reassurance to the public.In the FT, don’t miss everything Weekend Festival, of course, and check out Jemima Kelly’s lovely lunch with one of my favourite academics, Jonathan Haidt, who has taken some brave stances on tribalism and identity politics.Edward Luce responds Rana, let me start by answering your easier question about the FT Weekend festival on Saturday. I also strongly commend this event to Swampians. As an honourary Washingtonian, I can say without fear of contradiction that DC will not have seen an event quite like this. Washington is an austere place that likes to eat its vegetables for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In keeping with that, this festival offers plenty of vitamins. I’m particularly looking forward to my sessions in conversation with Henry Kissinger about the new geopolitical era and then with Bill Burns, director of the CIA, on the Russian war in Ukraine and the China challenge. But you can get your sugar rush with the novelists Jennifer Egan and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jancis Robinson on wine, the National Symphony Orchestra, and Tina Brown with Simon Schama on the future of the Windsors. Also do watch my colleagues Martin Wolf, Gideon Rachman, Gillian Tett and Courtney Weaver in a live editorial conference chaired by the FT’s editor Roula Khalaf. As regards the future of the WTO, Rana, you will know well that we have a profound philosophical difference on globalisation. I don’t wish to rehash those yet again — we need to find something else to argue about! But I think the unravelling is overstated. Our colleague Alan Beattie, whose Trade Secrets is also an excellent newsletter, wrote last week about the fact that most of the developing world, including China, India (yes, India!), Brazil and Turkey, are ploughing ahead with trade deals. As, to some extent, is the European Union. We risk generalising America’s political aversion to trade deals to others, when in fact it’s mostly peculiar to America. US politics has quite wrongly scapegoated trade for its own deficiencies in looking after its left-behinds. But that isn’t true of most of the rest of the world. The WTO is largely broken because successive US administrations have blocked a quorum on the appellate court. I think this is hugely unwise. You must ask Lighthizer about this. The US is a massive beneficiary as well as architect of an open global trading system. It only has itself to blame for its horribly skewed domestic income distribution.  More

Investing.com — EU energy ministers meet to draft plans for an embargo on Russian oil, but crude prices slide, along with the yuan in response to weak Chinese economic data. Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting flies the flag for value investing in a troubled market, while the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s auction of NFTs brings the Ethereum blockchain to a temporary halt. Here’s what you need to know in financial markets on Monday, 2nd May.1. West ratchets up pressure on Russia; Lavrov claims Hitler was part-JewishThe U.S. and EU continued to ratchet up pressure on Russia to abandon its invasion of Ukraine, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating during an unannounced visit to Kyiv that the U.S. would support Ukraine “until victory is won.”EU Energy Ministers meet in Brussels later Monday to discuss what is expected to be a phased embargo on Russian oil imports aimed at hobbling the Russian economy still further. Newswire reports suggest that exemptions may be offered to Hungary and Slovakia to ensure the necessary unanimous support. Germany, the pivotal player, has already dropped its previous opposition to such a step.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to invite the leaders of India, Indonesia, Senegal and South Africa to the upcoming G-7 summit in an attempt to rally emerging markets behind the West’s pressure tactics, amid widespread reluctance to dance to the tune of the U.S. and former colonial powers.Russia appears to have alienated one key player, however. Israel summoned the Russian ambassador and publicly lambasted Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after he repeated unsubstantiated urban myths to Italian media, saying that Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood and that Jews themselves were the worst antisemites.2. Yuan falls as Zero COVID policy wreaks havoc with Chinese economyThe scale of the economic damage to China’s economy from its Zero COVID policy become ever more apparent. China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index fell to 47.4 in April, clearly in contraction territory, as a result of the lockdowns in Shanghai, Jilin and elsewhere. The official services PMI fell even more sharply.While reported case numbers continue to edge down in Shanghai, they are unabated in Beijing, which ordered two more rounds of mass testing on Monday. The capital, with its 21 million inhabitants, has already closed gyms and cinemas and banned indoor dining during the three-day holiday, which ends on Wednesday.The news pushed the offshore yuan down by another 0.5%, while industrial metals prices recoiled at the prospect of further disruptive lockdowns. Copper prices fell 2.6% to touch their lowest level since December.3. Stocks set for modest bounce after Friday routU.S. stock markets are set to open with a modest bounce after the horror show on Friday that closed out the worst month for stocks since the depths of the pandemic in 2020.By 6:20 AM ET (1020 GMT). Dow Jones futures were up 150 points, or 0.5%, while S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were up by a similar amount, the Nasdaq contract having shaken off a sharp, unexplained dip earlier in the overnight session.Outperforming a little in premarket trading was Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) stock, after Warren Buffett chaired his company’s annual shareholder meeting at the weekend. Buffett splashed out around $1 billion on U.S. stocks in the first quarter, with Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and Allegheny (NYSE:ATI) standing out as the group’s biggest conviction plays, and Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), the target of some heavy merger arbitrage buying. 4. Bored Apes embarrass EthereumThe Ethereum blockchain ground to a temporary halt as Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Apes Yacht Club meme series, raised the equivalent of $320 million in the digital currency through an auction of ‘virtual land’ in Otherside, a planned metaverse game and the latest extension of the Bored Ape franchise. The NFTs were payable in ApeCoin, a digital currency that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.The incident does little to support the argument that Ethereum is better adapted to upscaling than Bitcoin, but the robust underlying demand for Yuga’s intellectual property does at least validate some of the sharp rise in ApeCoin in anticipation of the sale, even though that rally has now largely unwound.By 6:30 AM ET (1030 GMT), ApeCoin ($APE) was trading down 11% on the day at $15.8008, down over 41% from its peak last week, but still up by a similar amount from its launch just over a year ago.5. Oil falls as Chinese data set gloomy tone for OPEC+ meetingCrude oil prices fell sharply in response to the economic data out of China, with the pessimism amplified by perceptions that the country’s leadership is too politically invested in the Zero COVID policy to change course.By 6:25 AM ET, U.S. crude futures were down 3.4% at $101.23 a barrel, while Brent futures were down 2.8% at $104.31 a barrel.The prospect of an EU oil embargo has now been largely priced in, with focus turning to Thursday’s meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC energy ministers to discuss production levels. Russia’s inability to produce its full quota under the bloc’s agreement is raising the incentive for other producers to increase their output – insofar as they can. Libya, an OPEC member not bound by production quotas, has seen its output drop back to 0.5 million barrels a day due to fresh instability between warring factions in recent days. More

COLOMBO (Reuters) -Sri Lanka has extended a credit line with India by $200 million in order to procure emergency fuel stocks, the country’s power and energy minister said on Monday, with four shipments due to arrive in May.Colombo was also in talks with New Delhi over extending the credit line by an additional $500 million, minister Kanchana Wijesekera told a news conference.Hit hard by the pandemic and short of revenue after Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government imposed steep tax cuts, the island nation is now also critically short of foreign exchange and has approached the International Monetary Fund for an emergency bailout.Rampant inflation and shortages of imported food, fuel and medicines has led to weeks of sporadically violent protests.Sri Lanka has used $400 million, on multiple shipments in April, of the $500 million credit line extended by India earlier this year, Wijesekera said. Two fuel shipments will be paid for from the remaining funds in May.”The Indian credit line was extended by $200 million recently and this will be utilised for four shipments in May. Talks are continuing for a further $500 million with India so in total the credit line will be $1.2 billion,” Wijesekera said.However, Sri Lanka is still facing payment challenges for fuel imports with the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) owing $235 million for shipments already received, while about $500 million more will be needed to pay for letters of credit maturing over the next six weeks, he added.Sri Lanka will also need dollars to pay for crude oil shipments to supplement imports from India.”We have made procurement plans till June but we still need to resolve how to find sufficient amounts of foreign exchange to make payments,” Wijesekera said. More

PHOENIX/COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (Reuters) – Ricardo Aguirre sits near his two taco trucks and laments the soaring cost of tomatoes, onions, meat and cilantro, which have doubled in price in recent months, hammering his Phoenix-based catering business.    Aguirre, 43, usually votes for the Democratic Party. But with inflation hitting a 40-year high in February he has a stark warning for Democrats as they seek to keep control of the U.S. Congress in November’s elections.     “If the Republican Party has something better to offer us, I will vote Republican,” said Aguirre. Republicans, he believes, are generally better economic stewards who could have more success in reducing prices.    Aguirre runs Tamales y Tacos Puebla from the heavily Hispanic Alhambra neighborhood in Phoenix, where talk of record-high gas and food prices was dominating conversations in front gardens, stores and restaurants when Reuters visited.    Of 35 Hispanic voters Reuters spoke to in two toss-up races in Arizona and Colorado, 20 – including Aguirre – said soaring inflation is causing them to seriously consider voting for Republicans. The majority of those said they usually vote Democrat.    Many said they don’t necessarily blame Democrats but have lost faith in their ability to solve inflation and are increasingly willing to let Republicans try.     Even a small loss of support among Hispanics – a key component of the Democratic coalition of voters that brought President Joe Biden to power – could mean the loss of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate for Democrats.    Four of the top 15 congressional targets for Republicans are races with heavy Mexican-American populations, according to Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist based in California.    Inflation is now the top worry among Hispanic voters, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll released in March. A Quinnipiac University poll published on April 13 found that just 26% of Hispanic voters approved of Biden’s job performance, the lowest mark of any demographic.That could be a further sign of what pollsters say is a long-term erosion of support for Democrats among Latinos.While Biden won 61% of Latino voters in the 2020 presidential election, there was an 8% percent swing toward his Republican opponent, Donald Trump, Democratic polling firm Catalist found in 2021.Hispanic voters are a large and diverse segment of the electorate and are not uniform in how they vote. In Florida for example, many are Cuban-Americans who tilt more conservative. In the American Midwest and West, a majority are of Mexican origin, have traditionally tended to vote Democrat, and live in swing states, including Arizona.    ‘I’M WILLING TO CHANGE MY VOTE’    Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Kelly is facing a tough re-election in Arizona, where Biden won by just over 10,000 votes and Kelly by just 2.4 percentage points in 2020. Republicans see the state, which is 32% Latino, as a top pick-up opportunity in their bid to regain control of the Senate.    In the Maryvale district of Phoenix, retiree Jose L. Mendez, 66, stands with his wife Maria, 63, next to a shopping cart filled with rice, pinto beans, tacos and kitchen roll.    Mendez, who has voted Democratic every year since 1988, had driven 45 minutes to hunt for bargains. He thinks Democratic spending has partly caused rising prices and thinks Republicans might do a better job.     “Inflation has affected us a lot. I’m willing to change my vote,” he said.    Of the 18 Hispanic voters in Phoenix who spoke to Reuters, all said inflation was by far the most pressing issue for them. Record-high gas prices, and a doubling and tripling in the cost of food, was putting enormous strain on family budgets.”Groceries skyrocketing and gas prices rising!” blared a Republican ad against Kelly on Spanish-language television in Arizona in March.Not all are changing their vote. Daniella Villa, 36, arriving at El Super grocery story in Maryvale, said inflation was hard and gas prices were “crazy,” but she will still back Kelly and the Democrats this November.    Kelly has urged the Biden administration to take more steps to lower gas prices and introduced a Senate bill to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax.     A White House spokesperson blamed high prices largely on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said Latino families had benefited from Biden’s 2021 $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which expanded the child tax credit, sent direct cash payments to most Americans, and bailed out businesses.    “President Biden knows how higher prices can impact a family budget,” the spokesperson said. “This is why he is fighting every day to bring down gas prices and lowering kitchen table costs that are squeezing Latino families across the country.”    Most economists say inflation is caused by a number of factors, largely beyond Biden’s control. Global supply chain blockages have been a major cause of price hikes, while oil prices were spiking even before the war in Ukraine. Many economists also say the Biden administration’s spending on COVID relief has fueled rising prices, but note that failure to bail out the economy would have led to a recession.A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee said the party will be highlighting what they call “reckless spending” by Democrats as a factor in rising inflation.    They will tell voters that Republican-controlled states such as Florida and Texas that kept schools and businesses open during the pandemic will be used as a role model for Hispanic voters who they say want to work and earn higher wages.    DANGEROUS TIMES FOR DEMOCRATS    Jaime Regalado, professor of political science at California State University, Los Angeles, and an expert on Hispanic voting patterns, said inflation was a nightmare issue for Democrats.    “We are coming into a midterm cycle that rarely favors the party in power, even in better times. Throw inflation into the picture, without knowing if it’s going to end any time soon, it shows the peril Democrats have in 2022 with Latino voters,” he said.    Hispanics comprise nearly 39% of the electorate in Colorado’s 8th congressional district, north of Denver, a newly created House seat that is evenly split between registered Democrats and Republicans.     In the district’s town of Platteville, Daniela Castro Tobar, 19, was working the front of Rosalee’s, her family’s restaurant. She considers herself a liberal and voted for Biden in 2020. But the economic pain inflation is causing her family is making her reconsider her support for Democrats.    “I’m very open to either party right now. We’re all suffering right now, we’re all dealing with inflation,” Castro said.Americans of all backgrounds say inflation is a concern. But a 2021 Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) survey found that people of color, especially Black and Latino households, spend proportionally more of their income on staples prone to price hikes such as food and gas and that inflation hits them hardest.    Julian Verdugo was still dressed in his dusty oilfield work clothes when he took over behind the counter in the small Mexican sweets shop his family owns in Commerce City, a heavily Latino area near Platteville.    As the 24-year-old helped a customer decide what treats she should stock up on for a party, he explained why he was considering casting his ballot for Republicans, breaking with family tradition.     “I was raised as a Democrat. But then I started working in the oil and gas industry, and I realized the Democrats are really against it,” he said. “Now, with the inflation of fuel, we’ve had to raise prices in this candy shop three times in the last three months because our products are shipped from Mexico.”    Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist involved in Latino outreach efforts in the 8th district, said he sees the district as a 2020 bellwether because of its large Hispanic population.    “If Democrats lose Colorado 8 it’s almost guaranteed that they lose their majority in the Congress,” Rocha said. “Because if we can’t win a 50-50 seat in Colorado that’s 40% Latino, then they’re going to lose seats all over the country.” More

The agreement, details of which have yet to be disclosed, would facilitate transfers of defence hardware and technology from Japan to Thailand, which has one of the region’s biggest and most equipped militaries.Noriyuki Shikata, Japan’s Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs, told reporters the two leaders were also expected to sign an agreement to improve customs procedures in Thailand, where Japan is the biggest investor, while Tokyo would extend a 50 billion yen ($384.79 million) loan to support Thailand’s COVID mitigation efforts.Southeast Asia has for decades been a strategic region for Japan, hosting some of the biggest names in industry, from infrastructure, engineering and industrial zones to the manufacturing of vehicles and electronics. The region remains a key battleground between the United States, Japan’s close ally, and its closest rival China, Southeast Asia’s biggest trade partner. Kishida was due to meet Thai counterpart Prayuth Chan-ocha late afternoon on Monday, before drawing the curtain on a short tour that saw stops in Vietnam and Indonesia, where Japan is a also a major investor.Shikata said Kishida would discuss with Prayuth the position of Southeast Asian countries on the conflict in Ukraine and express Japan’s support for the region’s efforts to address the crisis in Myanmar following a coup last year.($1 = 129.9400 yen)(This story refiles to correct name order of Japanese official in paragraph 3, 7). More