The latest US tariff hike targeting China will have a “limited” impact on Hong Kong as local businesses have adapted to years of the trade war by shifting their supply chains elsewhere, the city’s commerce chief has said.
Hong Kong Kwai Tsing Container Terminals in February 2025. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order to increase a previously imposed 10 per cent tariff on all goods from China to 20 per cent, adding to existing duties already endured by various Chinese products.
The US Customs and Border Protection said in an updated notice that the latest levy hike also applied to products from Hong Kong – the same arrangement when the previous 10 per cent tariff came into effect in early February.
Speaking on an RTHK programme on Tuesday, Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau downplayed the impact of the latest US tariff hike on local businesses.
He said that Hong Kong’s domestic exports to the US accounted for only a fraction of the city’s overall global domestic exports.
Hong Kong’s commerce chief Algernon Yau meets the press on October 26, 2023. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.
According to 2024 figures published by the Trade and Industry Department, Hong Kong exported around HK$5.9 billion worth of local products to the US – accounting for about 10 per cent of overall domestic exports.
Moreover, the US tariffs “will not have a huge impact on us because our firms have moved their supply chains elsewhere following years of the trade war,” Yau said in Cantonese.
Since the US-China trade war began in 2018, the world’s two largest economies imposed several rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs.
Although Yau acknowledged the additional levy could affect Hong Kong’s re-exports of Chinese goods to the US “in the short term,” he shrugged off any lasting impacts.
“The re-exports of Chinese goods had decreased during the trade war, but Hong Kong soon regained that trade volume in other economies,” he said, adding that the city had maintained an advantage as a trade hub with its aviation and port facilities.
Yau also said that the Hong Kong government would file a complaint to the World Trade Organization over the US tariffs.
The China and Hong Kong flags outside the Central Government Offices. Photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP.
Separately, the Hong Kong government issued a statement on Tuesday, slamming the US for imposing the additional levy and urged Washington to “rectify its wrongdoing.”
“The US’s measure is grossly inconsistent with the relevant World Trade Organization rules, undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system and harms the interest of both parties,” a government spokesperson said in a statement.
Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997, has long been considered an international trade hub. The city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, states that Hong Kong is a “separate customs territory” and that it may enter international trade organisations and agreements as a separate entity from mainland China.
However, Trump suspended the city’s special status in 2020, shortly after Beijing imposed a national security law in June that year, following the anti-extradition protests and unrest in 2019.
Since then, Hong Kong’s exports to the US must be labelled as “made in China” and are subject to the same tariffs imposed on Chinese goods. The city also faces US embargoes of high-tech products into China.
