US President Donald Trump over the weekend launched the opening salvo in an escalating trade war with China, imposing a 10 percent tariff hike on goods coming from mainland Chinese and Hong Kong.
A spokesperson for the financial hub said Friday the Hong Kong government "will formally launch procedures in accordance with the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism against the US' unreasonable measures to defend our legitimate rights".
The US tariffs are "grossly inconsistent with the relevant WTO rules and ignore our status as a separate customs territory", the spokesperson said, adding that the government "strongly opposes" the measures.
Mainland China also filed a complaint with the WTO to defend its "legitimate rights and interests", its commerce ministry said.
After reverting to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong has been run as a special administrative region and is classed as a separate customs territory.
It has been a WTO member for three decades.
Hong Kong's secretary for commerce and economic development Algernon Yau said Thursday that the tariffs "are not expected to have a large impact".
Goods exported from Hong Kong to the United States in 2023 were valued at around HK$6.1 billion ($780 million) and made up only 0.1 percent of the city's total exports, Yau added.
City officials have for years tread a fine line by insisting Hong Kong is a separate entity in international trade, but politically an "inalienable part" of China.
The United States removed Hong Kong's special trading privileges in 2020 after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the former British colony to curb dissent.
Trump at the time said in an executive order that Hong Kong was "no longer sufficiently autonomous to justify differential treatment in relation to (China)".
Colombia moves to boost trade with China amid tensions with US
Bogot� (AFP) Feb 6, 2025 -
Colombia, whose president crossed swords with US President Donald Trump on accepting deportation flights, announced plans on Thursday to strengthen ties with China by adding a new shipping route to Shanghai.
Colombia's commerce ministry said the new route would take ships across the Pacific from the Colombian port of Buenaventura, via the new Chinese-funded mega-port of Chancay in Peru.
Beijing's ambassador to Bogota, Zhu Jingyang, hailed the announcement on the social network X as "good news" for trade between the Asian giant and Latin America's fourth-biggest economy.
Colombia's Minister of Commerce, Luis Carlos Reyes, described it as "a great step in strengthening relations" between the two nations.
The agreement comes hot on the heels of a blazing row between Trump and Colombia's left-wing President Gustavo Petro over deported migrants.
On January 26, Petro denied entry to two US military planes carrying hundreds of deported Colombians.
A furious Trump responded by imposing tariffs of 25 percent on Colombian products, to which Bogota replied in kind before backing down and sending its own planes to bring home the migrants.
Despite the easing of tensions between Washington and what has traditionally been one of its strongest allies in Latin America, Petro, a leftist ex-guerrilla, has continued to lash out at Trump.
In an interview with Univision television last week, he accused the US leader of defending a "fascist thesis" which seeks to "criminalize" undocumented migrants in the United States and compared it to Adolf Hitler's treatment of Jews during World War II.
At the height of his row with Trump, Petro called for the commerce ministry to explore new export markets, beyond the United States.
His bid to boost ties with China comes during a visit by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Central America, aimed in part at countering growing Chinese influence in the region.
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