KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23 — Malaysia and the remaining 10 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) signatory countries may choose to amend a clause so the multilateral pact may proceed without the United States, said Second International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Chuan.

"There is a clause that there need to be at least six member countries and these must account for 85 per cent of collective gross domestic product (GDP) of the original 12 signatories,” he told reporters after launching a conference organised by Malaysia Steel Institute.

"The US alone represents 60 per cent of TPP members’ total GDP, which means the agreement is null and void without them.

"Nevertheless, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting in Lima, Peru, over last weekend, the 11 other member nations agreed that they wanted to proceed with the TPP even without the US.”

Ong said that for now, the TPP members would have to explore if it was possible to amend the clause to take the US out of the equation or reduce the percentage of GDP required.

Although he held out hope that President-elect Donald Trump would not put TPP on ice on his first day at the Oval Office on January 20, he said global trade would still need multilateral and bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs) to thrive.

"It’s too bad that America, which calls itself a leading nation, may be left behind as the rest of the world forms FTAs and trade pacts to grow international trade,” he said

On Trump’s preference for bilateral FTAs as the way forward as opposed to multilateral FTAs like the TPP, Ong said bilateral agreements might seem easier as there were only two countries to take into consideration but they were time-consuming and made less headway than multilateral FTAs.