Commerce Chief Brushes Off US Tariff Impact

Commerce and Economic Development Secretary Edward Yau said on Friday that he doesn't think that American tariffs on Chinese goods will have as big of an impact on Hong Kong as some imagine.

US President Donald Trump said overnight that a US$100 billion tax on Chinese goods was being mulled, in an ongoing trade spat between the two powers. His administration earlier said that it plans to implement similar tariffs on some 1,300 types of Chinese goods.

Yau told an RTHK radio programme that Hong Kong officials are studying the impact of the measures on Hong Kong. He said through initial observations of the targetted goods involve around HK$60 billion worth of products that are re-exported to America from China via Hong Kong.

The secretary said they're looking into how much of them involve direct investments from Hong Kong businesses. He said even though the action list targets a wide variety of goods, another way of looking at it is that the impact will be spread out.

Yau went on to say because Hong Kong is not sanctioned by the US, it cannot get involved directly. Still, Hong Kong officials at the Washington Economic and Trade Office will contact American businessmen to see how the measures would affect the SAR.

For his part, economist Andy Kwan has called the Trump administration's latest comments a bluff, saying he thinks that Washington is simply trying to get Beijing to sit down and talk.

The director of the ACE Centre for Business and Economic Research said because there's an American senate election in November, he thinks what Trump is simply trying to rally his supporters.