Speaking on RTHK’s Hong Kong Today programme, Irina Fan, the HKTDC’s director of research, said the city had the experience of dealing with previous disruptions from US trade policies.
“The good thing about Hong Kong is that this is not the first time we have faced higher US tariffs, given relatively low dependence on the US market, we are actually more resilient to the higher tariffs,” she said.
Fan said local businesses were more prepared this time round, while the city had diversified its trade links substantially since the first Trump administration, with Southeast Asia, as well as the mainland, becoming more important to Hong Kong traders.
“We have diversified, we have our trade diversions to engage with new markets, for instance, exports to the Asean market expanded by 39 percent and Asean is now already our second largest trading partner after the mainland.”
“So our trade dependency [on the US] is low and we have diversified our sourcing which makes us more resilient.”