Supachai Resets Thai Industry, Pushing Chips and Bio to Fight Global Trade War
Industry
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce Supachai Suthamphan announced a reset of Thai industry by opening government procurement markets to domestically produced goods and services, especially in the defense industry, rail systems, and medical devices, through public procurement and green procurement. She also assigned the Ministry of Industry to link research, production, markets, and investment through the GMT SMEs mechanism of the Department of Industrial Promotion, in order to upgrade SMEs in efficiency, technology, standards, and domestic raw material content, alongside MiT certification by the Federation of Thai Industries. The meeting also discussed promoting bioenergy for both diesel and gasoline, which requires balancing excise taxes, market mechanisms, the readiness of the automotive industry, and benefits for farmers, linking to the green economy, BCG, and ESG. It also called for accelerating new industries including biotechnology, digital, AI, new forms of vehicles, medical devices, and the defense industry, which need new supply chains so that Thailand is not just a production base but can create more domestic added value. Minister of Industry Warawut Silpa-archa said clear examples are semiconductors and photonics, especially optical switches and transceivers, which are growing with the global data center trend. Some Thai operators have seen sales double for two consecutive years. If the MPI index base year is adjusted from 2021 to 2024, it will reflect the potential of new industries more accurately. The meeting also discussed adjusting industrial indices to reflect the real situation, assigning TDRI to review the figures, especially capacity utilization rates that may still include declining old industries but not fast-growing new ones. Because the National Industrial Committee, or Kor Chor, has not met for a long time, five to six draft laws must be reviewed, including the factory law, industrial waste law, oil palm law, and related new rules, and must be considered comprehensively before being proposed to the cabinet to cover the current and future world. On questions about US trade measures, Supachai said that under Sections 301 and 232, about 72 percent of goods are already exempt from tariffs, leaving 28 percent still to be negotiated. In late August, she will travel to negotiate tariff issues with the United States to protect Thailand's trade interests as much as possible. However, in the negotiating framework with the US, Thailand still focuses mainly on trade and has not used military issues to exchange for tariff benefits, but will use trade, investment, and supply chain linkage data to show the mutual benefits of both countries. Thai private companies have already invested nearly 20 billion dollars in the US and plan to invest more than 5 billion dollars more. At the same time, part of Thailand's trade surplus comes from US companies investing in Thailand, so trade and investment must be viewed together.
