00:00You know, we're just talking about how now the Trump administration is thinking of imposing a 10% tariff at
00:05least on quite a number of nations, a slew of nations, in fact, on the back of what he deems
00:11as labor practices.
00:12I mean, what do you make of this move as he tries to negotiate an Iran deal?
00:18Yeah, look, the president has used tariffs to try and achieve objectives.
00:22That's a legitimate use of America's power to tax, right?
00:25It's a very reasonable thing when you think other nations are not behaving in a way that are consistent with
00:29the things that matter to your citizens, the people that the president was elected to represent.
00:34Hopefully you'll set out clearly this is the expectation, this is the behavior we're trying to achieve.
00:38When you do that, you remove the tariff and countries go compete.
00:41But I have no problem with the president of the United States making decisions, saying, no, this is the right
00:45thing to do.
00:46And other countries will make their own choices.
00:48But is it perhaps a distraction, meant to be a distraction for the world?
00:53No, it's not a distraction. It's policy.
00:56President Trump's been at this on tariff for decades.
00:58This is not a distraction. It's not trying to hide the ball.
01:01At a time, at a time, when he's actually trying to negotiate.
01:03It's not President Trump trying to distract anyone.
01:06That's a silly media narrative.
01:08President Trump is simply trying to achieve the objectives that he set out to achieve.
01:12David, what do we know so far?
01:15Yeah, I mean, this one actually dropping about, we've had about 10, 15 minutes has this is what I'm trying
01:22to say here.
01:22And as far as the document is concerned, so it dropped about 15 minutes back.
01:26It's a very long document.
01:28It's about 100 pages out of the U.S. Trade Representative Office.
01:32And as I guess you have pointed out already, this is, of course, Section 301 under the 1974 U.S.
01:38Trade Act.
01:39Again, it's the backdrop, really, of the mandate of them being able to correct and implement the tariff strategy on
01:46the back of the Supreme Court, of course, on the other side, talking about the removal of some.
01:50Now, what we're seeing as far as market reaction is concerned, so I would say it's very early, but it's
01:58more pronounced currently in the currency markets.
02:02Although there are equity markets like Vietnam, which is part, by the way, of the 60, that is seeing some
02:07downside as we speak.
02:08We were down as much as 1% at one point.
02:10We're now just down 8 tenths of 1%.
02:12I'm just looking at my board.
02:14The Aussie dollar is also seeing a little bit of downside on the back of this.
02:17Let me just go through, so you have 60 economies, and so some of the big ones in the Asia
02:25-Pacific, and let me caveat that Asia-Pacific, and I'll get to the major ones in a moment, the other
02:29major ones in a moment.
02:31Mainland China, you have Hong Kong, you have Malaysia, New Zealand, I talked about Australia, Singapore is included, the Philippines,
02:42Vietnam, I think I mentioned South Korea, Thailand as well.
02:46Now, what's interesting, too, is when this dropped, just a bit of context, too, that the concept of forced labor
02:52and the list of economies did need some time at least to get my head around that,
02:57because one of the headlines that dropped was you had economies like the UK, China on the back of forced
03:10labor.
03:10And I think the quote coming through here out of the U.S. trade representative is that because of some
03:17of the labor practices in those economies have put American workers at a disadvantage.
03:24And using that premise, of course, we're looking at 10 to 12.5% is what I've seen so far,
03:30and as far as the additional tariffs are concerned.
03:32And as you pointed out, has just also mentioned that, of course, the next date to keep in mind is
03:36July the 7th, when we will be having the hearings on these investigations.
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