[KUALA LUMPUR] Singapore’s biggest bank DBS Group Holdings expects more trade flows between Asia, the Middle East and Africa, with the lender planning to support such business amid the latest rounds of tariff hikes by US President Donald Trump.
“There will be more connectivity” for clients between these regions as well as within Asia, said chief executive officer Tan Su Shan at the Asean Investment Conference in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday (Apr 8). “These things will take some time to pan out, but as an Asian bank, we just have to work with them and work out new supply chains.”
It is still too early to determine the full consequences of the trade policy shock and “everyone is still digesting the tariff impact,” said Tan, who assumed the top job at DBS in March after her predecessor Piyush Gupta retired.
The impact of Trump’s tariff shock was the talk of the conference in Malaysia, where Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim discussed the need for more cooperation among members of the Association of South-east Asian Nations.
At the same event, Ben Hung, Standard Chartered’s president of international, said companies cannot stomach in the long-term too-high tariffs eating into their profitability, and noted the damage done by trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
“There is no path to global prosperity without US and China doing well,” he said. BLOOMBERG
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