On Sunday the US slapped a new 15 per cent tariff on US$110 billion worth of Chinese imports, which was met with reciprocal taxes on American goods by Beijing. Another round of increases is planned for December 15.

Chan said he did not believe the trade war would be resolved soon.

Efforts to resolve the tariff war have stalled and the two sides have yet to agree on plans to resume negotiations in Washington this month.

“I think the markets are looking beyond the deal to say, ‘What are some of the measures we need to take in order to prepare ourselves,’ because I think the lack of strategic trust will be the more important factor,” Chan said.

“Without … strategic trust, it will be very difficult for both sides and the rest of the world to say we still have one integrated global economy.”

The minister would not comment on whether Singapore, a close trading and security partner of the US, had been pressured by Washington to avoid using Huawei for the city state’s 5G roll-out.

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“I think the US and our partner countries know we take our security and network resilience very seriously, and we have shared with them how we intend to do it,” he said.

Singapore was also diversifying its trading partners to “de-risk the entire economy”, he said, and was pressing ahead with economic restructuring.

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The country would ensure a high quality of investment to bring about long-term gains, he added.

In Singapore’s parliament on Monday, he said the city would remain open to foreign talent and not erect barriers to protect local workers, even as officials sought to “reap long-term rewards for Singaporeans”.

The 27th round of negotiations ended in July with no agreement.

The deal would cover about one-third of the world’s gross domestic product, about 40 per cent of world trade and almost half the world’s population.

On whether protectionist sentiment was holding back the talks, Chan said there was an acceptance that trade-offs were needed to “get everyone across the finishing line”, but he did not elaborate.

After a weekend of violent clashes and travel disruption, the Chinese city saw the start of a two-day class boycott on Monday by students who should have been returning to school for the new academic year.

Chan said Singapore was watching developments in the city closely and counted the protests among the other “uncertainties” it had to grapple with, such as Brexit and the disputes between Seoul and Tokyo.

“We want investments coming here because they value our safe harbour status, they value our intellectual property protection regime, and so forth.”

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Growth in the city state is forecast to be between zero and 1 per cent this year.

Sian Fenner, senior Asia economist at Oxford Economics, said the Southeast Asian nation’s trade diversification efforts had been positive but would not help it escape the short-term pain resulting from its dependence on exports.

Song Seng Wun, an economist with CIMB Private Banking, added: “Diversifying is really all we can do … The two largest economies matter because if they are going to be whacking each other, we just have to make sure we look for as many smaller countries to do business with that hopefully, collectively, still give us business opportunities.”