‘US tariffs to add to headwinds facing PH’
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2019 16:35:52 +0000
ANOTHER round of tariffs, which the United States threatened to slap on China, would pose more economic challenges to the Philippines, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd warned on Friday.
“Definitely this action (imposition of new tariffs) will tend to increase the economic headwinds we are already facing,” Dominguez told reporters in a message.
His statement came after he was pressed to comment on US President Donald Trump’s latest announcement on new US tariffs to be imposed Chinese goods.
The businessman-turned-politician wrote on Twitter that Washington would put an additional 10-percent tariffs on the remaining $300 billion worth of Chinese goods starting on September 1.
The new tariff does not include the 25-percent tariffs already slapped on $250 billion of those goods, he added. (See related story on B3)
Dominguez said this new development would be the subject of the country’s economic managers for their upcoming meeting, the date of which he did not disclose.
The Finance chief also said this would also be discussed by the members of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Monetary Board at their rate-setting meeting next Thursday.
He had noted that risks to growth would come from external factors, such as the trade war between Washington and Beijing and global oil prices.
The trade war — which began last year after Trump accused China of engaging in unfair trade practices — saw the world’s two leading economies impose retaliatory tariffs worth billions of dollars, rattling global markets and prompting global economic-growth
projections to be cut.
It also led to the US blacklisting of Chinese technology giant Huawei, which Washington has accused of spying for Beijing, which the company denies.
“[The] trade war is an important headwind for us that doesn’t augur well for the growth of our trade partners. I think the growth in our major trade partners has been negative because of this unresolved issues,” Dominguez has said.
The Cabinet official cautioned that these issues increased the risks of higher interest rates from other countries.
He also pointed to global oil prices as one of the key risks to growth, which he stressed persists because of ongoing tensions in the Middle East.
These tensions were caused by recent attacks on oil tankers on the region’s Strait of Hormuz. That strait is regarded as the world’s most important energy chokepoint, as it is the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf that leads to the open ocean.
“Those are the factors that make us a a bit worried about the future,” Dominguez said.
Despite these, he stressed that the Philippine economy is “on track to sustain a GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate of above 6 percent this year and the coming year.”