【英文】汇丰银行报告：亚洲宏观经济报告Asian Economics Bending, not breaking(107P)

英文研究报告 2019年10月22日 07:31 管理员

A major reason for the slowdown in regional trade, of course, is the continued ‘tariff tiff’ between the US and China, although disentangling the precise effects on individual economies is tricky. Bilateral trade between the two protagonists has collapsed: exports from the US to China, and vice versa, have dropped at a solid double-digit rate (Chart 6). Unless a deal can be reached in the next several weeks, even if only partial, tariffs are set to increase substantially again before year-end. According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the average tariff on all goods shipped between the two economies will top 25%, up from single digits in 2017 (Chart 7). And, increasingly, non-tariff barriers are being applied, such as restrictions on FDI and technology transfers, whose impact is harder to quantify, but which curtail bilateral trade further. For Asia more broadly, there is evidence of shifting trade patterns: while exports from China to the US are down substantially, those from other economies have accelerated markedly. Chart 8 shows the growth of exports to the US for individual markets over the first 7 months of 2019 (black columns) and that for the same period last year (red columns). Shipments have picked up steam in Vietnam, Cambodia, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Australia, Korea, and Sri Lanka; however, they have slowed in the Philippines, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, and are down outright in Malaysia, New Zealand, and Indonesia. From this perspective, then, one might think of the former as being relative ‘winners’ from trade tensions between the US and China.

However, as we have already indicated in Chart 5, almost all markets have seen an overall fall in shipments of late. In part, this is because exports to China have fallen in many cases over the same period, either because of the overall slowdown in local demand (in part because of the trade tensions), or because of the decline in re-exports from China to the US. Take a look at Chart 9. With the exception of Bangladesh, shipments to China have decelerated sharply everywhere, with outright contractions in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Singapore. Where it hurts This highlights a broader reality: even if supply-chain rejigging may lead to marginal gains for some economies as they displace Chinese exports to the US, the region is highly exposed to slowing demand in China as well. Therefore, to the extent that trade tensions reduce growth in China (and the US), overall exports can still suffer. To put this into perspective, consider Chart 10. This shows the estimated growth response in individual economies to a 1ppt slowdown in GDP growth in China, the US, and the EU. With the exception of the Philippines, all markets in the region have a far higher growth sensitivity nowadays to swings in Chinese demand than to the US, let alone Europe. Therefore, while some economies may gain market share vis-à-vis China in the US, these gains can be easily offset by a slowdown in China itself.