"Southeast Asian countries must stick together in the face of a trade war started by US President Donald Trump, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Saturday at the start of a regional summit held in the shadow of US-China tensions. But as Asean leaders met in Bangkok on Saturday, there was no sign they had yet finalised a planned trade deal backed by China that could create the world’s biggest free trade area. “Asean is quite a big market for the whole world. We don’t want to go into a trade war,” Dr Mahathir told a business summit on the sidelines of the main meeting. “But sometimes when they’re unnice to us, we have to be unnice to them.” He described campaigns against exports of palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia over concerns regarding labour and the environment as “sabotage”. “If you cut back some imports of palm oil from Malaysia, we can cut back our imports from them,” he said..."