2025-08-15
47 分钟The economist.
Starting tomorrow, the United States will implement reciprocal tariffs on other nations.
A lot has happened since Liberation Day.
It's been a long time since we even thought of that.
We used to think about it a lot.
The announcement on April 2nd kicked off a trade war between the US and China
that saw the Trump administration threaten to slap tariffs of 145% on Chinese-made goods.
But, earlier this week, the United States and China have extended a truce in their trade war until November,
postponing massive tariff hikes just hours before they were due to come into force.
China's state news agency Xinhua says this means the 10% tariffs on US imports will remain in place.
Many Chinese exports to the US currently face 30% tariffs.
Meanwhile, for much of the rest of the world,
new tariffs came into effect last week, ranging from 10% for goods from the UK, to 50% on shipments from Brazil.
But the impact of the tariffs is particularly complex in one region specifically, Southeast Asia,
which was responsible for around 10% of US imports in 2024.
That figure has been on the rise in recent years
as manufacturers have shifted production away from China
in an attempt to shield their supply chains amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington.
But Trump's tariffs changed the calculus once again.
So, what does that mean for Asia's manufacturers?