Business groups: ‘Mr. Teodoro, stop your hostility toward China’

THAT, in so many words, is the strongly worded message of business organizations to Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro who has defied President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s policy that China is a friend of the country and has instead issued nonstop belligerent statements against the superpower. The statement is unprecedented in that it was signed by 23 business organizations, from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, its rival Federation of Philippine Industries to the Philippine Exporters Federation to even the Foundation for Economic Freedom, a pro-US self-styled guardian of neo-liberal thinking here. Ironically, the statement was not signed by the oligarch-dominated…