德意志银行-亚洲宏观洞察：《静待转机》.pdf

德意志银行-亚洲宏观洞察：《静待转机》。We have refined our earlier revision, made on April 4, following the reciprocal tariff announcement on April 2. While the tariff rates were far more onerous for Asia than expected, we thought trade deals would be achieved that would see much of the tariff rates rolled back to the 10% baseline. Indeed, President Trump has done just that, at least temporarily as negotiations take place, albeit hiking China's rate to 145% as China raised its own rate against the US to 125%. The rates did not have to rise that high to render China-US trade commercially unviable—although exemptions have modestly softened the blow, modestly. Our US team estimates that the US tariff rate rose by 24.1 percentage points to 26.4%.

While we await the first batch of deals (Japan, South Korea, India, and Vietnam), which would reassure us that we are heading in the right direction, our shipping data currently paints a rather worrisome picture for global trade, as illustrated in the overview section. While the impact on the region's foreign exchange has been relatively limited thus far, it would prove fleeting without deals that normalize trade activities.

Although we also assumed that a relatively modest deal would be struck between the US and China, it would be aimed at reducing the risk of unmanaged decoupling, with their tariff rates on each other remaining higher than those applied to other economies. A significant divergence in tariff rates applied to its trading partners by the US could result in a meaningful shift in the region's supply chain, not just encourage onshoring in the US. In this note, we also provide a summary of policy responses by Asian economies since the Liberation Day announcement.