The U.S.is also one of the biggest investors in the Philippines, with some $731 million in direct investment flowing into the country previous year, much of it invested in the country’s manufacturing sectors.
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For his part, Obama called Duterte “a colorful guy”. I am the president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony.
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte is expected to be seated in between United States President Barack Obama and United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at the gala dinner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean) summit in Vientiane, Laos on Wednesday night.
Obama had said he planned to raise the issue in his first meeting with Duterte, but the Philippine leader insisted he was only listening to his own country’s people.
Asean leaders attending their summit here yesterday acknowledged that the recent challenges faced by the region could derail their unity and agreed to speak in one voice representing 600 million people.
It also soured Obama’s last swing as president through a region he has tried to make a focus of USA foreign policy, a strategy widely seen as a response to China’s economic and military muscle-flexing.
The $90 million is a relatively small sum for the USA but a significant investment for a small country in one of the poorer corners of the world.
Obama filled the hole in his schedule by meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in a display of unity a day after North Korea fired three ballistic missiles.
“It came across as a personal attack on the U.S. President”, Duterte said through a spokesman.
Duterte likely had realized his folly by the time he arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on Monday night. “You just can not shoot a statement against the president of any country”. Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi confirmed that the issues with the South China Sea would be discussed in the ASEAN Summit by Indonesian and other countries. -Philippine relations blossomed, expressed disappointment over the canceled meeting with Obama.
Duterte has been pulling away from the USA since he took office.
Washington also can not ignore Manila, since the Philippines is a key part of its security strategy in the Asia-Pacific.
Evan Medeiros, Obama’s former top Asia adviser and now a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group, saw the row as a “speed bump, not a road block” in U.S. -Philippines ties.
“He definitely wants to visit Malaysia, only that the date he asked for clashes with my visit to Germany”, he said, adding that a new date would be fixed on the official visit by the President of the Philippines.
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An worldwide tribunal ruled in July that China’s claims to the waters – through which $5 trillion in global shipping trade passes – had no legal basis.
