The Asian Development Bank warned that US President Donald Trump’s trade war risks hitting poorer and small economies across Asia-Pacific.
Albert Park, the Manila-based development bank’s chief economist, highlighted concern over countries including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, alongside export-dependent Pacific Island nations like Nauru and Vanuatu.
“We’re worried that if these [tariffs] all get implemented at these high rates, this is going to be very harmful to a lot of economies in the region, especially some of our poorer economies,” Park told the FT.
While Park was hopeful that market signals and US business leaders could convince the Trump administration to back down, he noted “crippling uncertainty” over not just whether the tariffs policies are negotiable but also their economic impacts and the policy responses of other countries.
“We have to take these very large potential negative harms of these policies very seriously, not have rose-coloured glasses and say ‘oh, we’ll be fine, we’ll figure out a way’ . . . Because these are of such magnitude, we’ve never seen anything like it.”
Credit: Source link
