Mark Pinkstone/Former Chief Information Officer of HK government
Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok was correct in his assumption that the United States is determined to wreck the one-country, two-systems concept of a capitalist system operating under a communist regime. The success of the concept as it applies to Hong Kong is the cornerstone to China’s ultimate goal of regaining control of Taiwan.
On a Commercial Radio programme last week, Lam, who has been sanctioned by the US Department of State for simply doing his job – enforcing law and order in Hong Kong – criticized US President Donald Trump of “blurring the lines” by not recognizing Hong Kong as an independent founding member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) when imposing 145 per cent trade tariffs on China.
Hong Kong had a deficit trade balance with the US of US$21.9 billion in 2024. (US goods exports to Hong Kong in 2024 were $27.9 billion, while US goods imported from Hong Kong totalled $6.0 billion for the same period).
Yet, this was totally ignored by Trump when he lumped Hong Kong’s trade to that of the mainland when applying the tariffs to China.
Lam said that blurring the lines of the one country, two systems principle of governing by linking Hong Kong with the mainland when applying the tariffs was designed to “ make people think there was no difference” between the two.
Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong, Paragraph 6 clearly states: “The Hong Kong Special Administration Region will retain the status of a free port and a separate customs territory.”
The Joint Declaration is an internationally recognized treaty between Britain and China and is registered with the United Nations. However, Trump chose not to recognize Hong Kong’s legality as a trading entity. He also tore up the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, in which the US affords Hong Kong’s special status as a part of China and that agreements between the U.S. and Hong Kong that predated the 1997 handover would remain in effect.
For Donald Trump, treaties and agreements mean nothing, a hallmark of the Trump empire which will be remembered in future trade negotiations. All of the trade agreements made with countries throughout the world have been thrown to the wind as if they never existed.
Feeling the pinch is the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, which boasts some 2,000 members and is the largest AmCham outside the US. Noting that Hong Kong’s current predicament is “unfortunate,” it said that the US’s trade surplus with Hong Kong supported about 140,000 jobs in the US. In its latest newsletter, the chamber, giving full support for Hong Kong, said that “Hong Kong continues to uphold its status as a free port for the US and all other trading partners, not imposing tariffs on imports and not maintaining tariff rate quotas.”
Indeed, many members are impacted by the current turbulence and AmCham remains hopeful for a swift resolution to the current situation that will bring more economic prosperity to both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
In his radio programme, Lam said that the US has engaged in “transnational bullying” that is in complete violation of international relations and law. And he should know. Lam is a barrister-at-law, something Donald Trump is not.
Mark Pinkstone
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Mark Pinkstone/Former Chief Information Officer of HK government
Academics proclaim that in tariff wars there are no winners, all economies fell. True, but the current “war” is not about economics, as it started out to be, but a personal vendetta by US president Trump against China’s president Xi Jinping.
Trump started the war by imposing trade tariffs against all of its trading partners. There were no exceptions, even for those, like Hong Kong and Australia, who had deficits with the US.
Even though Hong Kong is a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in its own right, Trump lumped Hong Kong under the broader China umbrella and imposed tariff hikes totalling 145 per cent against all products exported to the US. The rest of the world faced a base-line levy of 10 per cent. And this is where Trump’s plan became personal.
Trump’s plan was for the world to kowtow to him and acknowledge that he was the world’s leader. Most did, although there has not been any announcement of any deal being struck anywhere. And then came China’s Xi Jinping, who refused to kowtow, vowing to “fight to the end” and upped the ante of tariffs on US goods imported into the mainland.
Economies were floundering and markets were weak. Trump took advantage of the low market and after announcing exemptions for his billionaire club, while the rest of the population suffered, it appeared that he had made a deliberate gesture to manipulate the stock markets by declaring a 90-day pause in the tariffs. “Be cool” Trump wrote just hours before announcing the pause. “This is a great time to buy!” This was white collar terrorism in plain sight.
Global markets rose rapidly with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange up 51.17 per cent. But that bottomed out the following day amid rumors Trump was to declare martial law to police the southern border with Mexico.
The manoeuvre could have been taken from his book “How to make a deal”. Except it is not his book as he often boasts. The book was written by ghost writer Tony Schwartz who wrote in The New Yorker “Trump’s tweet that he has written bestselling books is one more deceit and delusion. He is incapable of reading a book, much less writing one.”
While Trump sits in the Oval Office contemplating how he can outsmart Xi, the Chinese president has been busy shoring up free trade deals in Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia. In all three South East Asian countries he was warmly greeted as a dear friend. Of the three, Vietnam is the hardest hit with a 43 per cent tax on its exports to the US.
Trump’s racist slurs against all things Chinese were compounded during the trade war when he threatened to delist Hong Kong and mainland stocks from all US exchanges – the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and NYSE American. It is estimated there are 286 mainland and Hong Kong stocks with a market capitalization of US$1.1 trillion listed in the US.
And again, Trump has miscalculated his “punishment.” All companies delisted in the US will simply come to Hong Kong as their secondary and dual primary listing to raise funds and boost our Initial Public Offering (IPO) market.
Hong Kong’s financial secretary, Paul Chan Mo Po, is bullish about the outcome of the war, with Hong Kong becoming stronger as a leading fundraising hub and with enhanced trade ties with the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions.
But Trump is not stopping there and he’s trying every possible means to curtail China’s position on the world stage. After taking over control of the Panama Canal to tax mainland and Hong Kong ships passing through the waterway, he now plans to tax every ship made in China, regardless of its registration, when they visit US ports.
The actions by Trump have done more harm to himself than to the countries he targeted. In the eyes of world leaders, he cannot be trusted and trading with him in the future will be for essentials only. The harm he has done to his country will take years to repair, and those who voted for him will surely be more prudent when the next elections come about. He has failed miserably with his campaign policy to “Make America Great Again.” He has done exactly the opposite.
