Posts share fabricated article on Malaysia-US trade agreement

The supposed report features a photo of Anwar, with a headline reading, "Anwar admits to making many mistakes in deal with US". It was shared on Facebook on November 4, 2025.

The image is captioned, "When there are statements like that, we see that Malays who support this Madani government are in fact the most insane humans on this earth".

"Madani" refers to the policy framework that Anwar introduced when he took office in 2022 (archived link).

Image

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on November 12, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

Anwar inked a trade agreement and rare earths deal when Trump attended the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur on October 26, finalising a 19 percent tariff rate on Malaysian goods first agreed upon in August and boosting US access to critical minerals as China tightened control of the materials (archived link).

But critics of Anwar's administration and even some members of his ruling coalition quickly jumped on what they said was an unfair deal for Malaysia, seizing on an article in the trade agreement that states Malaysia is required to align itself with Washington on the issue of economic restrictions or sanctions against a third country (archived link).

Anwar, who is also the finance minister, has dismissed the criticism as "simply political" (archived link).

The fabricated Utusan Malaysia report circulated across social media posts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, misleading social media users.

"If you can't lead anymore, just resign," one user wrote.

Another commented: "The Malay rulers should take swift action against the Prime Minister..dangerous to the country."

Made-up report

A keyword search on Google found Utusan Malaysia rejected the purported article in a statement on its official Facebook page on November 5, where it included a link to its own reporting about the false posts (archived here and here).

The post includes a screenshot comparison showing the unaltered and altered articles.

"Utusan Malaysia has lodged a police report regarding the dissemination of a post on social media that used the newspaper's name and logo to spread defamatory news regarding Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim," reads the Malay-language post.

Image

Screenshot of Utusan Malaysia's statement on Facebook

Utusan Malaysia added that the post had been designed to mimic their reporting, even though the news had never been published by the organisation in any form.

A Google reverse image search followed by keyword searches found the original article was published on Utusan Malaysia on November 19, 2022 (archived link).

The Malay-language headline reads: "Anwar arrives at PH media centre."

The article was about Anwar's arrival at the Grand Dorsett hotel in Petaling Jaya, the country's administrative capital, as he awaited the results of the general election at the time. It does not mention trade deals with the US.

On November 6, Utusan Malaysia published a commentary piece by its group editor, Mohamad Azlan Jaafar, addressing the false report (archived link).

Azlan noted the telltale signs of inauthenticity: "At a glance, you already know that it is not the work of Utusan Malaysia because all our news uses 'AS' (for 'Amerika Syarikat' in Malay) to refer to the United States and not 'US'."

AFP has debunked other false claims circulating in Malaysia that used doctored or fabricated news reports here and here.