Latest news with #InternationalChamberofCommerce
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Here's What Global Business Leaders Should Do As Trump's Tariffs Face Legal Fight: ICC's John Denton
John Denton, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce, joined Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the recent legal actions surrounding President Donald Trump's tariffs and what it means for the international business community. Watch the full conversation above.
Irish Times
28-04-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Demand slump fuelled by Trump tariffs hits US ports and air freight
Donald Trump's trade war with Beijing is starting to affect the wider US economy as container port operators and air freight managers report sharp declines in goods transported from China. Logistics groups said container bookings to the US have fallen sharply since the introduction of 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. The Port of Los Angeles, the main route of entry for goods from China, expects scheduled arrivals in the week starting May 4 to be a third lower than a year before, while airfreight handlers have also reported sharp falls in bookings. Bookings for standard 20-foot shipping containers from China to the US were 45 per cent lower than a year earlier by mid-April, according to the latest available data from container tracking service Vizion. READ MORE John Denton, secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce, said the upheaval in China-US trade flows reflected traders 'kicking decisions down the road' as they waited to see how quickly Washington and Beijing could reach a deal to lower tariffs. A survey of ICC members conducted in more than 60 countries after Trump's April 2 'liberation day' tariff announcement showed expectations that trade would be permanently impacted, whatever the result of coming negotiations. The cost of access to the US market would be the highest since the 1930s, Denton said. Referring to the baseline tariff for all countries, he said there was 'almost an acceptance that 10 per cent will be the minimum charge to access US market, whatever other uncertainties there may be'. Washington and Beijing showed signs of starting to feel the effects — with both sides announcing some tariff exemptions this week on important products for their respective economies and Trump predicting the 145 per cent tariff would 'come down substantially'. However, China said on Friday it was not in talks with the US. As the first container shipments from China to face tariffs are due to land in the US in the coming week, freight operators said supply chains were shifting. Nathan Strang, ocean freight director at US logistics group Flexport, said companies were waiting to ship goods in anticipation of Washington and Beijing agreeing a deal to mitigate the levies. US importers are looking to use up stockpiled inventories before importing fresh stock from China, said logistics executives. They are also holding stock in bonded warehouses where inventory can be stored duty-free with taxes paid on withdrawal, or diverting it to other nearby countries such as Canada. 'They're sitting on goods at origin, sitting on goods at destination,' Strang said, warning that if a deal was done to cut tariffs, shipping rates would then jump sharply. Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world's largest container shipping lines, said Chinese customers had cancelled roughly 30 per cent of its bookings out of China. Hong Kong-listed Taiwanese container shipping company TS Lines has suspended one of its Asia to US west coast services in recent weeks. 'Demand is not there,' one person at the group said. The declines in order volumes have fed through to landings in Los Angeles, according to shipping data analysts Sea-Intelligence, which reported a surge in 'blank sailings', where scheduled vessels from China were being cancelled. Almost 400,000 fewer containers are booked on Asia to North America routes during the four weeks from May 5 than planned — a 25 per cent drop from the amount scheduled for the same period at the start of March, before tariffs were imposed. The Port of Los Angeles alone expects 20 blank sailings in May, representing more than 250,000 containers — up from six in April. That is a sharp fall from this week, when arrivals were up by 56 per cent year-on-year — a sign that importers have been frontloading deliveries from other south-east Asian manufacturing hubs such as Cambodia and Vietnam that are enjoying a 90-day 'pause' in tariffs. Container prices reflected the supply chain shift, according to data from logistics hub Freightos, with a 15 per cent increase in the price of a 40-foot container from Vietnam compared with a 27 per cent fall on major China-US routes. 'Rates from other Asian countries to the US may continue to climb ahead of the July tariff deadline,' Judah Levine, head of research at Freightos, said. Airfreight volumes have also fallen sharply, according to US industry association the Airforwarders Association, with its members' bookings from China falling roughly 30 per cent. 'A lot of members have just stopped receiving orders from China,' said executive director Brandon Fried. 'It's also creating a whipsaw effect on prices and booking rates as traders reacted to each piece of news from the White House.' The industry is expected to be further hit by a US decision to close its 'de minimis' scheme that allowed goods valued at under $800 to be imported tariff-free, an important route for e-commerce retailers such as Shein and Temu. Chinese goods are set to lose the exemption from May 2. Lavinia Lau, chief commercial officer at Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific, whose air cargo business contributes about a quarter of its revenue, said it expected a 'softening' of demand between China and the US because of the tariffs and de minimis rule changes. Hong Kong freight forwarder Easyway Air Freight said business from China to the US dropped roughly 50 per cent following the tariff increases. E-commerce executives noted waning freight demand. Wang Xin, head of the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, said: 'We are seeing noticeably fewer price quotation requests in relation to air cargo shipments.' Even though stockpiling and supply-chain reorientation have helped buffer consumers from the sharp falls in freight volumes, hauliers and retailers are starting to feel the effects of the slowdown in imports. Arizona-based Knight-Swift Transportation, one of the largest US trucking companies, warned of lower anticipated volumes, citing uncertainty caused by the tariffs threat. Chief executive Adam Miller said some of the group's largest customers were 'expressing concern' that the cost of tariffs would feed into lower volumes in May. 'There are some that have told us that, yes, they've cancelled orders or they've stopped ordering, particularly from China, and we'll figure out how to adjust their supply chain to avoid the cost,' he said. Retail consultants said purchasing patterns were reflecting the three successive months of softening consumer confidence indices. John Shea, the chief executive of Momentum Commerce, which helps consumer companies sell about $7bn annually on Amazon, warned of a potential 'double whammy' of rising prices and falling consumer spending. 'We're seeing evidence that consumers are starting to trade down . . . while at the same prices are creeping up,' he said. - Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Reuters
03-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Emerging economies brace for Trump tariff 'turning point'
Summary 'Factory Asia' hardest hit by tariffs Vietnam stocks, Sri Lanka debt, Asian currencies tumble JPMorgan lowers EM FX, warns of enduring 'shock to sentiment' 'Gravitational shift' in global trade and investment SINGAPORE/LONDON, April 3 (Reuters) - Emerging economies worldwide are bracing for sliding currencies and a possible deterioration of their sovereign credit after U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs brought levies on U.S. imports to their highest levels in 100 years. The worse-than-expected tariff blitz hits Asia -- and some of the world's poorest nations -- the hardest. It could mark a negative turning point for emerging market debt just as many nations had hoped to lure investments after years of risk aversion. "We are immediately concerned by the potential impact of the severe tariffs imposed on a range of emerging economies — an approach which risks further damaging the development prospects of countries already facing worsening terms of trade," said John Denton, Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce. He added that the shifts could cause a cascade of sovereign rating downgrades. Trump unveiled the sweeping set of penalties as high as 50% on allies and antagonists alike, roiling financial markets and stoking fears of a global trade war. The tariffs, which add to existing levies, will hit everything from Madagascar's vanilla, at 47%, to Sri Lanka's textiles at 44%. "The shock to sentiment and capital flows is likely to endure and requires higher risk premia," investment bank JPMorgan said in a note, downgrading its stance on emerging market currencies to "underweight" and calling a possible turning point for emerging market debt. Emerging markets had only last year started to reverse a decade-long deterioration in credit ratings following a wave of defaults, which was accelerated by the fallout from COVID-19 and was a key driver of rising borrowing costs. U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs said tariffs would add a 1 percentage point drag to GDP growth in China, the world's second-largest economy, which could have a knock-on effect on wider emerging markets. The International Chamber of Commerce's Denton likened the impact to the devastating 1970s energy crisis, which hit the global economy and roiled a swath of emerging market assets. Some investors said tariffs could fundamentally shift how they approach emerging market bets. "If the tariffs remain as it is, we definitely need to think about the structural, export-oriented growth story for EM," said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments. "If this model is broken, then definitely we have to reconsider how, basically, you invest in EM for growth." DEEP IMPACT AT 'FACTORY ASIA' Asian economies bore the brunt of the penalties; six of the nine Southeast Asian countries on Trump's list were hit by tariffs between 32% and 49%. Citi said the tariffs hit 'Factory Asia' particularly hard, estimating the weighted average U.S. tariffs increased by 21%, but Southeast Asia and China took 34%, compared with Europe's 20% and little in Latin America beyond 10%. Market moves mirrored those concerns. Vietnam stocks tumbled nearly 7%, their steepest daily decline in at least four years, its dong currency sank to a record low and the Thai baht slipped to a more than three months low. Sri Lanka's sovereign dollar bonds slid more than 3 cents, to their lowest levels since last year's debt restructuring. Fred Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC, said he expected central bank policy makers from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia to step in with rate cuts. "This is likely to amount to a significant growth shock for the region including Southeast Asia," said Neumann. "That would mean that central banks will likely prioritize growth over inflation concerns." International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva had warned on Monday that many countries had exhausted their fiscal and monetary space during COVID, leaving them with high debt and limited ability to cushion future shocks. International investors have less exposure to some of the poorest countries, such as Cambodia and Bangladesh, but their 49% and 37% reciprocal tariffs, respectively, will sting the countries. Cambodia sent more than 40% of its exports to the United States in 2022, according to the World Bank. Latin America and many African nations emerged with comparatively lower tariffs; Kenya on Thursday said its 10% tariff would give it a "competitive advantage" in textile exports compared with the harder-hit competitors such as Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. But investors cautioned that it was far from clear how lasting the measures would be - or the secondary effects of a shift in global trade that is unprecedented in the modern era. "We haven't seen these large gravitational shifts in 80 years," said Yvette Babb, portfolio manager at William Blair. "The question is, how structural is it? It's fairly unprecedented, what we're seeing, in terms of what the U.S. president is embarking on, but how much of it is going to stick?"
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Analysis-Emerging economies brace for Trump tariff 'turning point'
By Rae Wee, Karin Strohecker, Libby George SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) -Emerging economies worldwide are bracing for sliding currencies and a possible deterioration of their sovereign credit after U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs brought levies on U.S. imports to their highest levels in 100 years. The worse-than-expected tariff blitz hits Asia -- and some of the world's poorest nations -- the hardest. It could mark a negative turning point for emerging market debt just as many nations had hoped to lure investments after years of risk aversion. "We are immediately concerned by the potential impact of the severe tariffs imposed on a range of emerging economies — an approach which risks further damaging the development prospects of countries already facing worsening terms of trade," said John Denton, Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce. He added that the shifts could cause a cascade of sovereign rating downgrades. Trump unveiled the sweeping set of penalties as high as 50% on allies and antagonists alike, roiling financial markets and stoking fears of a global trade war. The tariffs, which add to existing levies, will hit everything from Madagascar's vanilla, at 47%, to Sri Lanka's textiles at 44%. "The shock to sentiment and capital flows is likely to endure and requires higher risk premia," investment bank JPMorgan said in a note, downgrading its stance on emerging market currencies to "underweight" and calling a possible turning point for emerging market debt. Emerging markets had only last year started to reverse a decade-long deterioration in credit ratings following a wave of defaults, which was accelerated by the fallout from COVID-19 and was a key driver of rising borrowing costs. U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs said tariffs would add a 1 percentage point drag to GDP growth in China, the world's second-largest economy, which could have a knock-on effect on wider emerging markets. The International Chamber of Commerce's Denton likened the impact to the devastating 1970s energy crisis, which hit the global economy and roiled a swath of emerging market assets. Some investors said tariffs could fundamentally shift how they approach emerging market bets. "If the tariffs remain as it is, we definitely need to think about the structural, export-oriented growth story for EM," said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments. "If this model is broken, then definitely we have to reconsider how, basically, you invest in EM for growth." DEEP IMPACT AT 'FACTORY ASIA' Asian economies bore the brunt of the penalties; six of the nine Southeast Asian countries on Trump's list were hit by tariffs between 32% and 49%. Citi said the tariffs hit 'Factory Asia' particularly hard, estimating the weighted average U.S. tariffs increased by 21%, but Southeast Asia and China took 34%, compared with Europe's 20% and little in Latin America beyond 10%. Market moves mirrored those concerns. Vietnam stocks tumbled nearly 7%, their steepest daily decline in at least four years, its dong currency sank to a record low and the Thai baht slipped to a more than three months low. Sri Lanka's sovereign dollar bonds slid more than 3 cents, to their lowest levels since last year's debt restructuring. Fred Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC, said he expected central bank policy makers from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia to step in with rate cuts. "This is likely to amount to a significant growth shock for the region including Southeast Asia," said Neumann. "That would mean that central banks will likely prioritize growth over inflation concerns." International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva had warned on Monday that many countries had exhausted their fiscal and monetary space during COVID, leaving them with high debt and limited ability to cushion future shocks. International investors have less exposure to some of the poorest countries, such as Cambodia and Bangladesh, but their 49% and 37% reciprocal tariffs, respectively, will sting the countries. Cambodia sent more than 40% of its exports to the United States in 2022, according to the World Bank. Latin America and many African nations emerged with comparatively lower tariffs; Kenya on Thursday said its 10% tariff would give it a "competitive advantage" in textile exports compared with the harder-hit competitors such as Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. But investors cautioned that it was far from clear how lasting the measures would be - or the secondary effects of a shift in global trade that is unprecedented in the modern era. "We haven't seen these large gravitational shifts in 80 years," said Yvette Babb, portfolio manager at William Blair. "The question is, how structural is it? It's fairly unprecedented, what we're seeing, in terms of what the U.S. president is embarking on, but how much of it is going to stick?" Sign in to access your portfolio
Telegraph
02-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
What Trump's tariff bombshell means for the world
Donald Trump has just turned the world economy upside down with a wave of aggressive tariffs on America's trading partners. From Thursday, countries across the world will be hit with 'reciprocal' US tariffs, which the US president says will be charged at half the effective rate that other nations charge the US. Speaking in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, Mr Trump said: 'Today, we're standing up for the American worker, and we are finally putting America first. 'Reciprocal, that means they do it to us and we do it to them. Very simple.' While the president has sought to present the new tariffs as a simple matter of fairness, it is difficult to underplay the significance of his announcement. John Denton, general secretary of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the world's biggest business organisation, said the announcement was a 'watershed' for US trade policy that 'poses severe downside risks to the global economy'. 'It is the most significant disruption to the international trading system this century,' says Barret Kupelian, chief economist at PwC. Effective US tariff rates are now at levels not seen since the 1930s. While there was some talk of blanket tariffs ahead of the announcement, Trump announced a minimum of 10pc tariffs with higher rates ranging up to 49pc.
