US-China trade war blamed as Trade Development Council cuts Hong Kong export growth forecast to 2 per cent
- US President Donald Trump still to decide on extra set of tariffs on Chinese imports
- Research director at Trade Development Council says exchange of levies, plus other sources of global uncertainly, to blame for fall in trade expansion
The escalating US-China trade war triggered the Hong Kong government’s trade-promotion body to downgrade on Monday its forecast for the city’s export growth.
The Trade Development Council said it expected 2 per cent growth this year, down from an earlier forecast of 5 per cent.
US President Donald Trump said last week he would decide in early July whether to impose 25 per cent tariffs on US$300 billion of untaxed Chinese imports after his expected meeting with President Xi Jinping at the G20 leaders’ summit in Japan at the end of June.
This is on top of US$200 billion worth of Chinese products subject to 25 per cent tariffs from last month. In retaliation to those, China already lifted tariffs of the same level on most of US$60 billion worth of American imports.
Risks of a prolonged tariff exchange, as well as wider political uncertainty, had severely lessened the momentum of Hong Kong’s export growth, according to Nicholas Kwan Ka-ming, the council’s director of research.
