Hong Kong should reach out to small European states to seek new business opportunities as US global tariffs reshape Washington’s leadership role in the West, said former secretary for financial services and the treasury Ceajer Chan Ka-keung.
Speaking on a radio program Sunday, Chan, an adjunct professor of finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, described US President Donald Trump’s recent tariff actions as attempts to “handle today’s international relations with 19th-century thinking,” undermining the US’s established global leadership.
He considered that the US’s use of tariffs to handle international relations is neither appropriate nor likely to succeed, stating that “allies can turn against you at any moment,” likening it to “gangsters collecting protection fees.”
Observing that contrary to Trump’s expectations, most nations subjected to heightened US tariffs have refrained from initiating negotiations, Chan believed that “the era of US dollar hegemony” is ending.
The dollar’s decline will neither benefit nor affect Hong Kong as an international financial center, but it could support the Chinese yuan’s emergence as a global trading currency, he further stated.
He saw new business potential between Hong Kong and smaller European states, which may be more open to strengthening ties with China due to ongoing tariff disputes between the European Union and the US—a conflict he believed most EU nations would resist compromising on.
(Cheng Wong)
