Never mind Trump’s trade war. Hong Kong is pulling ahead

In a recent interview, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah hit the nail on the head in pinpointing uncertainty as Hong Kong’s greatest economic challenge. “The biggest challenge is there are many uncertainties, because the US and China trade negotiations are ongoing. Not until the time when everything is settled, [will] the case become clearer,” Yau said.

United States President Donald Trump’s new tariff rates on dozens of trading partners that came into effect on August 7 – ranging from 10 per cent for the United Kingdom, 15 per cent for the European Union, Japan and South Korea, 19 per cent for Malaysia and Indonesia and 20 per cent for Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh to 40 per cent for Myanmar and 50 per cent for India (with 25 per cent effective from August 27) – injected a modicum of stability into the global trading system.

As the rare country that responded to Trump’s tariffs with an eye-for-an-eye reprisal and achieved a prolonged pause in the trade war, China has given the world a textbook demonstration of the 19th century concept of realpolitik, the framing of policy and international relations based on bare-knuckle pragmatic considerations. The reality is the US desisted from imposing a de facto trade embargo on China because of China’s chokehold on critical minerals.