Key points
- Vietnam faces huge tariffs of 46pc from US
- The largest loser is US: Alicia Garcia-Herrero
- Trump unleashed 32pc levy on Taiwanese imports
HONG KONG, China: Across Asia, factory workers, directors, trade associations, and analysts voiced concern Thursday that US President Donald Trump’s stinging tariffs could put jobs at risk and hammer key sectors of industry.
Trump ramped up a global trade war as he imposed sweeping levies on imports into the United States on Wednesday, sparking worries about what the implications might mean for workers and businesses, according to AFP.
“I can’t eat or sleep well because I keep worrying about losing my job,” said Cao Thi Dieu, who helps make shoes for Western brands such as Nike and Adidas at a factory in Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnam was hammered with huge tariffs of 46 per cent as part of Trump’s global trade blitz, which sent shares tumbling more than seven percent in Hanoi on Thursday.
Dieu, 38, feared the tariffs would impact the job she has been doing for two decades.
Effects on labourers
“How will I manage if I lose my job? How will I continue earning money each month to take care of my two children’s education?” she said.
“I only want to stay in the shoe manufacturing job because I don’t know how to do other work.”
Erik Hon, 45, a director at a financial technology firm in Singapore, thought the tariffs would drive up global inflation.
“It is dangerous for everyone to have the most powerful country in the world going back to isolationism,” he added.
Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at investment managers Natixis in Hong Kong, warned the tariffs could backfire.
“The largest loser is the US because everybody’s being taxed so there’s no escape for higher inflation,” she said.
Worst-case scenario
Chrissy Chan, 48, a business owner in Malaysia, told the media she was worried it would cost her more to travel to the United States to visit her family.
But she said the tariff rates “do not make sense to me… I won’t be surprised if the Trump admin does another backpedal”.
Chin Chee Seong, president of the SME (small and medium enterprises) Association of Malaysia said the higher tariffs on other countries might give Malaysian firms a competitive advantage.
READ ALSO: Markets Tumble as Trump Tariffs Fan Trade War
However, “we import a lot of IT products from the US”, he told the media.
“If we impose a reciprocal tariff, the end user here will pay more. We will suffer. It works both ways.”
Taiwan had sought to avoid Trump’s levies by pledging increased investment in the United States, more purchases of US energy, and greater defence spending.
Unfair move
But Trump unleashed a hefty 32 per cent levy on Taiwanese imports, and while the island’s all-important semiconductor shipments were excluded, Taipei described the move as “unfair”.
“The 32 per cent came as a surprise and I think our government was caught off guard,” said Jason Hsu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think-tank and a former legislator in Taiwan for the opposition Kuomintang party.
“The implications are pretty big. I think the government has to think deeply about how to deal with Trump in the next four years with a completely new mindset.”
Andrew Kam Jia Yi, an associate professor at the National University of Malaysia, expected Taiwan to lobby for more exemptions.
Worst-case scenario
Trump “gives you the worst-case scenario then batters you down to a deal that you might not want but seems more reasonable than the original threat”, he said.
South Africa aims to negotiate a new “bilateral and mutually beneficial trade agreement” after being hit with 30 per cent tariffs by the U.S. administration under Donald Trump’s wide-reaching levy campaign announced on Wednesday, according to CNBC.
As US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on nearly all of America’s trading partners on Wednesday, he had stern words for Beijing.
“I have great respect for President Xi [Jinping] of China and for China, but they were taking significant advantage of us,” Trump stated during his approximately hour-long address, according to BBC.
