Donald Trump says Hong Kong markets will ‘go to hell’ because of Chinese control
- ‘Hong Kong can never succeed having China, as opposed to the thousands of geniuses that ran it, having China run it,’ US president says in televised interview
- City has been the beneficiary of billions of dollars in ‘very expensive incentives’, which the US is taking back, he says
Hong Kong “can never succeed” under Chinese control and its markets will “go to hell”, US President Donald Trump said in a televised interview on Thursday.
“Once China got aggressive and took it over, I took everything back. Everything’s back now. And it will fail,” he said, speaking by phone on the Fox Business channel.
Trump described Hong Kong as having been the beneficiary of billions of dollars in “very expensive incentives”, which the US was now taking back, he said.
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“Hong Kong is a very complex problem because we’ve given tremendous amounts of money in the form of incentives to make Hong Kong free, to make Hong Kong work – and to our detriment,” he said.
“All of those incentives that they had for the Hong Kong market, in order to keep a certain amount of freedom over there, knowing they have China looming over the top of them – but all of those incentive, billions and billions and billions of dollars I gave, that we gave, to Hong Kong, I’ve taken back now.”
Trump did not clarify what he was referring to when speaking about “incentives”.
Trump signs Hong Kong Autonomy Act, and ends city’s special trade status
The national security law was imposed on the eve of July 1, the 23rd anniversary of the city’s handover from British to Chinese control.
“Hong Kong is, if you use a business term, it’s owned by China,” Trump said. “So why should I give this to China?”
“Hong Kong can never succeed without those incentives,” he added. “And Hong Kong can never succeed having China, as opposed to the thousands of geniuses that ran it, having China run it.”
Trump added that US markets would, as a result, make “a lot more money” and that Hong Kong’s markets “will go to hell”.
“Nobody’s going to do business – very few people are going to do business in Hong Kong any more,” he said.
