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Opinion
US’ perverse bullying of Hong Kong on trade will prove counterproductive
- Hong Kong should explore World Trade Organisation action in response to US revoking special trading status as a matter of principle
- Donald Trump has railed against US trade deficits, but its highest goods trade surplus in 2018 was with Hong Kong
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Stuart Harbinson served as a senior Hong Kong government trade policy official and negotiator in the 1980s and 1990s.
Last week, US President Donald Trump determined – in an executive order on so-called Hong Kong Normalisation – that the Special Administrative Region (SAR) is no longer sufficiently autonomous to justify differential treatment in relation to the People’s Republic of China under various American laws.
Lurking at the bottom of a list of laws is the innocuous sounding “section 1304 of title 19, United States Code”. No details are provided.
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This seemingly obscure provision in fact ends Hong Kong’s status as a separate entity for country of origin marking purposes.
It means goods made in Hong Kong and shipped to the US in future will need to be marked as “Made in China”, and while details of its implementation are awaited, it paves the way for Hong Kong exports to be subject to the additional customs duties already imposed on Chinese exports as a result of the trade war.
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Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China, US determines
These additional duties go way beyond the US tariff ceilings at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Hong Kong is a WTO member in its own right, as a separate customs territory and its trade regime is widely recognised as being distinct from the mainland’s.
In the trade sphere, there are three criticisms that might be made.
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First, this looks like disgraceful bullying by the most powerful nation in the world against a small, largely defenceless and very open economy.
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