Trump’s proposed 10% to 20% tariff on all foreign-made goods — 60% or higher on products from China — will be more than a bucketful of sand in the wheels of commerce. Anxiety is running high. Out of the top 15 trade partners with whom the US has a trade deficit, eight are from Asia. “The entire region is in the firing line,” according to Priyanka Kishore, an economist at Singapore-based consulting firm Asia Decoded.
Bankers in Hong Kong and Singapore are in for a few busy months financing a rush of shipments from Asian exporters into the US ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs. But once those import taxes kick in, there is only one group that might fill the hole in banking revenue: the wealthy.
Historically, lenders that make their profits in Asia have relied heavily on cross-border commerce: HSBC Holdings facilitated US$850 billion of it last year. Open, rules-based exchange of goods is a “lynchpin of global economic growth,” José Viñals, chairman of Standard Chartered, told shareholders in the bank’s latest annual report. StanChart garnered an income of US$6.9 billion in 2023 from its corporate, commercial and institutional banking network, compared with US$4.6 billion from affluent clients. The bulk of DBS Group Holdings’ 2% loan growth in the first nine months of this year came from trade.
