KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 26 — Malaysia is risking its sovereignty and bigger deficits if Putrajaya inks the unpopular Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad cautioned today.

The former prime minister of Southeast Asia’s third largest economy lent his voice to growing calls here to lobby the Najib administration to cut ongoing talks on the global free trade deal.

“Conversely, imports will increase, exports will decrease, this is not good for the country, we will have a deficit,” Dr Mahathir (picture)  told a news conference after roundtable talks on the TPPA here.

He accused the US of attempting to lure and tempt emerging economies such as Malaysia to sign the TPPA, claiming that the world superpower would profit handsomely from the partnership while Malaysia would lose out.

“We see that the US market is big and many of the countries want to access the US market, but there are conditions that are introduced to block the entry of goods from other countries,” he said in his keynote address earlier at the talks jointly organised by the Malay Economic Action Council (MTEM) and the Perdana Leadership Foundation.

He cited the automotive industry where he said that tight restrictions imposed by the US had caused Malaysia's failure to sell its cars there.

“Even if it's free to enter, but because we cannot fulfil the conditions, we cannot sell our cars to the US.”

“They promise that if we accept TPPA, we can increase our export to the US, and this is a bait for all of us to join TPPA. But actually they have other ways to block our exports to the US,” he later said.

Dr Mahathir insisted that Malaysia can make it without the 12-nation trade pact.

“We can expand our trade without TPPA,” he said.

Dr Mahathir insisted that Malaysia can make it without the 12-nation trade pact.

“We can expand our trade without TPPA,” he said.

At the media conference, Dr Mahathir also warned that Malaysia’s sovereignty would be threatened by the TPPA, saying that the country’s economy would be colonised.

“If we accept this, we will be bound with conditions in the treaty and it will make us no longer independent.

“When we are not independent, it means we are captured or colonised,” he said.