China: Stand up, you damned customs duty sufferers!
By alienating the entire world with his customs duties, Donald Trump is hastening the advent of an “Asian century” that is being built around China, analyses this Hong Kong newspaper.
It has become the glue that binds Asian countries together: Donald Trump has forced them to adopt a more flexible and pragmatic approach, to put in place all sorts of mechanisms for economic and commercial cooperation with countries whose interests align with their own.
The introduction of these "reciprocal" tariffs is primarily aimed at addressing the US trade deficit; logically, China, ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) , Japan and South Korea [all surpluses] were the first targets. With the exception of Singapore, which benefits from a base rate of 10%, ASEAN countries have been threatened by the US with particularly high tariffs: more than 40% for four of them.
Donald Trump doesn't appreciate ASEAN's ever-increasing trade surplus with his country. Worse, he accuses it of providing China with a loophole to evade US sanctions by "geographic laundering" Chinese products—exported, to his great displeasure, to the United States via member countries of the organization.
It is true that in the last six or seven years, many manufacturers – Chinese or foreign – have moved their bases from
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