The Asian Development Bank has warned that Donald Trump’s tariffs risk hurting poorer and smaller Asia-Pacific economies.
“We’re worried that if these all get implemented at these high rates, this is going to be very harmful to a lot of economies in the region, especially some of our poorer economies,” Albert Park, chief economist at the Manila-based multilateral development bank, told the Financial Times.
Park highlighted concerns from countries including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, as well as export-dependent Pacific island nations such as Nauru and Vanuatu.
While Park was hopeful that market signals and US business leaders could convince Trump to back down, he noted “crippling uncertainty” over whether the tariffs were negotiable, their economic impacts and the policy responses of other countries.
“We have to take these very large potential negative harms of these policies very seriously, not have rose-coloured glasses and say: ‘Oh, we’ll be fine, we’ll figure out a way’ . . . because these are of such magnitude [that] we’ve never seen anything like it.”
