HONG KONG: Major economies in the Asia-Pacific region have voiced opposition to the recent US tariff hike, saying the protectionist move will not only hurt their economy but could backfire and jeopardise the current global trading system at large.
Noting the US tariffs imposed on Japanese goods are a "national crisis," Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Friday (April 4) that the "reciprocal tariffs" decision is extremely regrettable and disappointing despite calls from Tokyo, one of the closest allies of Washington in the region.
Ishiba said Japan has been the world's largest investor in the United States since 2019, noting that Japanese carmakers have made direct investments worth about US$418 million and created 2.3 million jobs in the United States.
US tariff hikes will have a significant impact on bilateral economic relations, the global economy and the multilateral trade system, he said, expressing serious concern over whether the tariff plan is consistent with World Trade Organisation rules and the Japan-US trade agreements.
Tokyo stocks closed lower Friday with the benchmark Nikkei index falling for a second straight day to a new eight-month low, amid fears of a global recession in the wake of US tariff hikes.
On the same day, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said in a video message that the US tariff move marks "a seismic change in the global order" and poses serious threats to small and open economies like Singapore.
"We are entering a new phase - one that is more arbitrary, protectionist, and dangerous," Wong said, adding that the United States is "abandoning the entire system it had created" and the new approach of applying "reciprocal tariffs" on a country-by-country basis represents "a complete rejection of the WTO framework."
"If other countries adopt the same approach as the US - abandoning the WTO and trading only on their own preferred terms, country by country - it will spell trouble for all nations," he said.
Wong also warned that the higher tariffs, combined with the uncertainty over how other countries might respond, would weigh heavily on the global economy. "International trade and investments will suffer, and global growth will slow."
In the latest survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, more than two-thirds of the chamber's members view the US "reciprocal tariffs" as a greater business concern. Over 70 per cent of respondents anticipate a negative impact on their operations. Nearly half plan to pass increased costs on to consumers.
The Australian government also expressed its opposition to the US tariff decision. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Thursday that the tariffs have "no basis in logic" and were "not the act of a friend."
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that the United States represents about five per cent of Australia's export market, but that the economy would not be "immune" to the global impacts of the tariffs.
"These escalating trade tensions, these tariffs announced by the Trump administration in Washington D.C., are self-defeating, they are self-sabotaging, and in a time when there's not a lot of growth in the global economy, this will slow global growth and it will push prices higher as well around the world."
In Indonesia, experts project that the newly announced US tariffs will likely trigger an economic recession by year-end, hitting the country's exports and weakening the rupiah.
Wijayanto Samirin, an economist at Paramadina University, said the tariffs will erode Indonesia's projected five pe cent economic growth, warning that the US tariffs will cause job losses in Indonesia, as labour-intensive industries dominate the country's exports to the United States.
On Friday, Indonesia said it was working closely with Malaysia, another member state and this year's Asean chair, to respond to new US tariffs.
In a meeting on the same day between Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto and Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz, Malaysia's minister of investment, trade and industry, they acknowledged that the US tariff policy poses a major challenge to the dynamics of global trade and discussed ways to strengthen Asean's regional economy.
"It's necessary to synchronise between Asean countries because all ten Asean countries are affected by the US reciprocal tariff policy, so it is necessary to collectively build communication and engagement with the US government," said the Indonesian official. - Xinhua
