View the full article by Andrew Moody here.

 

“The escalating trade dispute between China and the US is beginning to inflict economic damage on third-party countries, according to a new report.

 

An analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, an economic consultancy in London, concludes that US President Donald Trump’s trade measures have already hit £1.9 billion ($2.48 billion) of UK exports this year.

 

The report is one of the first to highlight the global ramifications of the trade standoff between the US and China.

 

British goods — directly and through global value chains — consumer confidence and financial markets are particularly exposed to the escalation of protectionism across the globe,” Josie Dent, a member of CEBR’s economics team, wrote in the report, which she authored.

 

Edward Tse, chief executive officer and founder of the management consultancy Gao Feng Advisory, said on Tuesday that the CEBR report makes clear that the trade dispute’s impact will be felt across the globe.

 

“This has to be expected. Supply chains have become so globalized and China is so much the center of world manufacturing, particularly in areas like consumer electronics, that every country that is in this chain will be affected,” he said.

 

“This is not just the UK, but South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and so on. The whole world is brought in by this.”

 

The report by the CEBR, which is headed by its founder Douglas McWilliams, a former chief economist of the Confederation of British Industry, the UK industry body, said UK exports have been particularly damaged by the tariffs imposed on China because the United Kingdom is an integral part of the world’s second-largest economy’s supply chain.”