Awar raging is never ending between Washington and Beijing. China hardlyresponds to Trump's infinite tariffs until the latter responds with a surpriseblow that fuels the conflict, with investors confused.
Thiscycle of conflict extends beyond the US and Chinese economies to the economiesof the Gulf countries and the Arab region as a whole, as well as the financialmarkets, especially with the recent openness and the joining of several Gulfmarkets to the Morgan Stanley and FTSE indices, particularly Saudi Arabia, theUAE, and Kuwait.
Thetrade war seems to be slowly turning into a cold war that will take too longand solutions are not near as it may take years, and continuity may be the coreof the crisis and its effects will be bad for the global economy, according toAbdul-Azim Al-Amawi, head of research section at AswagalMal.
Direct effect
The Chinese economy will be directly affected, and Germany is the first victim of the trade war, as its economy is export-based, and therefore the trade war consequences affect other countries. Moreover, the size of the US and Chinese economies is of $30tr, and the economies connected to them will be affected. For the first time since the start of the trade war between Washington and Beijing, President Trump imposes direct tariffs of $300bn on Chinese goods related to consumer spending to be applied in mid-December.
JPMorgan predicted that these tariffs would reduce the purchasing power of theAmerican consumer by about $1,000 per year, which means that the US economywill be adversely affected, with 73% of which, based on consumer spending,according to Abdul-Azim Al-Amawi.
Large reserves
According to Al-Amawi, the economies of the region, especially the Gulf countries, will be affected to a limited degree by the trade war because of their financial surpluses and large reserves due to continued financial flows.
To illustrate, Gulf economies have not been affected by the 2008 crisis, like other economies because of the large reserves of central banks.
Now withthe Gulf states are diversifying their economies away from oil revenues, theywill be much less affected by the trade war.
Regarding the financial markets, Al-Amawi said that the correlation factor of the Gulf financial markets with the international markets is less, with global markets witnessing strong gains last year while the region's markets did not witness similar gains.
How to hedge the crisis?
As forinvestors, Al-Amawi advises to resort to safe havens as a kind of hedge, whichjustifies the continued rise in gold prices above $1500 per ounce, which is thebest performance of Gold in five years.
Investmentin sovereign and corporate bonds is also less risky.
The trade war has prompted investors to avoid investing in short-term bonds because of the uncertainty of a possible crisis associated with the trade war, and therefore they prefer to invest their money for 10 years in bonds with negative yields.
Negative yields
Thetotal value of bonds globally is $60tr, of which $17tr has negative returns. Investorsprefer to invest in bonds with negative yields and lower risk, rather thanholding them in banks that may be exposed to risk or at the very least thefunds are diminished by inflation levels.
Onthe Forex front, Al-Amawi believes that the risk of using margin far outweighsthe risk of trade war, but commodity-related currencies such as the New Zealandand Australian dollars may be adversely affected while these events areexpected to strengthen the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc or even the US dollar,which may benefit from the ongoing contradictions.
