Exclusive | ‘Collateral damage to Hong Kong unavoidable’ from US-China trade war, city’s commerce chief says
Edward Yau tells the Post that while the government is concerned about tariffs, at this stage there is ‘no need to panic’
Hong Kong’s commerce minister on Friday said the city would inevitably be hit by a spillover effect from an escalating US-China trade war.
But Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah said in an exclusive interview with the Post that it would be difficult to assess the impact until the US rolled out a detailed list of products to be included.
He said the government would closely monitor trade tariffs imposed by the United States and China on each other’s goods.
“We need to be concerned because both the US and mainland China are our major trading partners ... and there will be a spillover effect on their trading partners,” Yau said.
“If a 25 per cent tariff is imposed on a large amount of goods ... and the trade war perpetuates, collateral damage to Hong Kong would be unavoidable since we are an entrepôt and there are a lot of direct investments between us.”
