Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bloomberg Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Dan Schwartzman.
Speaker 2: We're just hours away from the August first tariff deadline
Speaker 2: imposed by US President Donald Trump. We'll have more on
Speaker 2: trade in a moment, plus a look at the Chinese
Speaker 2: property sector. Later on, we'll bring you Doug Prisner's conversation
Speaker 2: with Adriel Chan, chair of Hang Lung Properties. President Trump
Speaker 2: will keep minimum global tariff rates at ten percent, according
Speaker 2: to a White House statement Thursday. Meantime, it appears that
Speaker 2: the US and Canada have not reached a trade agreement.
Speaker 2: The White House says the terifate on Canada has now
Speaker 2: been increased from twenty five to thirty five percent. Thailand
Speaker 2: and Cambodi have received a nineteen percent tariff rate, while
Speaker 2: Taiwan's was set at twenty. Switzerland was a standout the
Speaker 2: rate of thirty nine percent. For a closer look, we
Speaker 2: heard from Jenny Gordon, non resident fellow the Loewe Institute.
Speaker 2: She spoke with Bloomberg's Sherry on In Heidi Stroud Watts
Speaker 2: on the Asua trade.
Speaker 3: Jenny, really great to have you with us, particularly at
Speaker 3: a time where the news and the tariff news continues
Speaker 3: to move at such a frenetic pace. We're still sort
Speaker 3: of a few hours out from the official deadline, of course,
Speaker 3: But has anything surprised you about the numbers that we've seen,
Speaker 3: and also the fact that, you know, obviously for maximum
Speaker 3: leverage or negotiating pressure, this is pushed to the eleventh hour. Industry,
Speaker 3: logistics exporters and importers, not a whole lot of time
Speaker 3: to be able to prepare for these scenarios.
Speaker 4: No, no's that's definitely the case. And I think the
Speaker 4: other problem is that nobody's clear that August first and
Speaker 4: all these numbers will be the final round. You know,
Speaker 4: Trumps could well ask for more at some other point
Speaker 4: in time, and I suspect probably will, so I guess
Speaker 4: there's that lack of certainty is a real concern for
Speaker 4: most countries. I think the one that really surprised me
Speaker 4: was thirty nine on Switzerland. I had thought they might
Speaker 4: get kind of treated like the rest of Europe, but
Speaker 4: that one was a surprise. The fact that it's fairly
Speaker 4: common nineteen percent across Indonesia and Malaysia and many of
Speaker 4: the other countries in Southeast Asia. I suspect is you know,
Speaker 4: that's a common tariff, the high tariff on Lao and Cambodia.
Speaker 4: There's very little trade and most of it is in
Speaker 4: consumer goods. I think that's probably reflecting concerns about transshipment
Speaker 4: and the ability to control transhipment from China, so it
Speaker 4: might reflect that. But none of this is good. None
Speaker 4: of this is good for the globe, nor actually for
Speaker 4: the US consumer. And I think one of the big
Speaker 4: things is the US imports a lot of inputs and
Speaker 4: so costs are going to rise, even in non traded industries.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's going to get more expensive to
Speaker 4: set up a new business or a new factory in
Speaker 4: the United States as a result of these tariffs on
Speaker 4: the inputs as well as on the final goods.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because as you say, none of this is good.
Speaker 3: Obviously ten percent tariff is better than a forty percent tariff,
Speaker 3: and on that it's interesting. Australia isn't even on this
Speaker 3: annex that we can see at the moment, so not
Speaker 3: quite clear what the tariff is on the likes of
Speaker 3: Australia for now. But do you think that there is
Speaker 3: a level of complacency. Certainly that we've seen in financial
Speaker 3: markets that well, these are you know, levels and tariff
Speaker 3: rates that were better than expected and so therefore somehow
Speaker 3: more palatable.
Speaker 4: Well it's funny, isn't it, Because as you go from
Speaker 4: almost zero tariffs to ten, fifteen, twenty, you know, thirty
Speaker 4: five percent, you're kind of saying, oh, thank goodness, I
Speaker 4: don't have thirty five percent. I've only got fifteen percent.
Speaker 4: And so you know, it's kind of interesting because really
Speaker 4: the baseline was close to zero in most cases, and
Speaker 4: so this this is a massive cost impost and you know,
Speaker 4: you could almost think if you had one single uniform tariff,
Speaker 4: then it would be largely a revenue raising exercise and
Speaker 4: it would almost be like putting a value added tax
Speaker 4: on the American consumer. And that'd be one way to
Speaker 4: think about it. But this is creating different opportunities for
Speaker 4: different countries because of different tariff rates. The actual rates
Speaker 4: don't actually reflect very closely what those countries export to
Speaker 4: the United States. So there doesn't seem to be an
Speaker 4: overwhelming strategy of you know, countries that export mainly inputs
Speaker 4: into production face lower tariffs and countries export final goods.
Speaker 4: So there seems to be I can't quite work out
Speaker 4: the rhymal logic to all of this, right, and I
Speaker 4: don't know stock markets have woken up to it either.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get through this annex and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I'm reading this correctly. But is Brazil's tariffy
Speaker 1: a ten now? Because then President Trump just threatened fifty
Speaker 1: percent tariffs and in fact he was ready to impose them,
Speaker 1: and he had linked some of that animosity with Brazil
Speaker 1: and President Lula to political reasons around the former president
Speaker 1: Bilsonaro as well. Right now, I'm seeing the annex, and
Speaker 1: as we're trying to digest his new tariff rates, Brazil
Speaker 1: is now back a ten percent. Jenny. When he comes
Speaker 1: to linking geopolitical issues with economic sanctions like tariffs, has
Speaker 1: President Trump changed the pleabook?
Speaker 4: Now? Well, I think the US has always used financial
Speaker 4: sanctions for geopolitical purposes, and so they've tended to use
Speaker 4: that rather than tariffs. And part of that was because,
Speaker 4: you know, really they'd been part of this global commitment
Speaker 4: to bring tariffs down across the world, and the only
Speaker 4: sort of potential upside of Trump's threatening tariffs was to
Speaker 4: help other countries who were struggling politically to bring down
Speaker 4: their tariffs to do so in exchange for lower tariffs.
Speaker 4: But I think this has moved the US into entirely
Speaker 4: new territory. And this is why I don't think we
Speaker 4: feel like we've seen the end of tariffs and that
Speaker 4: this final set of numbers is the one that will
Speaker 4: go ahead, because Trump has changed the way he uses tariffs,
Speaker 4: and that just increases the uncertainty in the global economy,
Speaker 4: and if you're trying to get investment going, that's the
Speaker 4: last thing you want his uncertainty. Investors need certainty. And
Speaker 4: so even though he's extracted promises of large amounts of
Speaker 4: extra investment into the United States, that faces some real
Speaker 4: barriers to go ahead, because one, you've got a shortage
Speaker 4: of construction workers anyway in the United States, so constructing
Speaker 4: new manufacturing plants is going to take time. And two,
Speaker 4: it's just that you're not sure what that tariff ruling
Speaker 4: is going to be. And if you know, the Trump
Speaker 4: administration gets annoyed at a particular leader in a country
Speaker 4: or a particular country for doing something, then they might
Speaker 4: just sort of say, oh, we're going to raise your
Speaker 4: tariff again. So it just completely undermines the certainty that's
Speaker 4: needed for investment around world.
Speaker 1: And Jenny, we're also seeing that the White House is
Speaker 1: really emphasizing the transship goods. So if there are any
Speaker 1: ways to try to evade the thirty five percent tariff,
Speaker 1: I think it's talking about Canada that there will be
Speaker 1: subject to transhipment tariffs of forty percent. And that has
Speaker 1: been a key issue right because we have seen other
Speaker 1: countries like China, for example, trying to send goods through
Speaker 1: Southeast Asian countries. How meaningful is it that this administration
Speaker 1: is cracking down on transhipments.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that actually makes you know, more difficult
Speaker 4: for China's strategy is to how does it bring down
Speaker 4: you know, just the stretcham shipment is you just you know,
Speaker 4: stick it in a container and take it to somewhere
Speaker 4: and relabel it and ship it off. But the bigger
Speaker 4: issue is all the componentory. That is where you've got
Speaker 4: the integrated supply chain problem, where countries, particularly in Asia,
Speaker 4: import a lot of components, add value to them and
Speaker 4: may ship it back to China and then gets shipped
Speaker 4: back again. The complexity of supply chains is enormous, and
Speaker 4: so what Asian countries are looking to do is almost
Speaker 4: have dual supply chains, so that they'll have one set
Speaker 4: of supply chains that try to keep Chinese content out
Speaker 4: in order to ship to the US, and then they'll
Speaker 4: have another set of supply chains that use Chinese content
Speaker 4: because of the price advantages of it. And so that's
Speaker 4: I think from what I'm here from Asian colleagues, is
Speaker 4: what they're trying to kind of work towards. And it
Speaker 4: adds costs, so it just is less efficient than the
Speaker 4: character and which means the prices of everything go up.
Speaker 2: That was Jenny Gordon, non Resident fellow at the Lower Institute,
Speaker 2: speaking to Bloomberg. Sherry On and Heidi Shroud wants coming
Speaker 2: up a conversation with Adrial Chen Chaff Hang Lung Properties
Speaker 2: here on the Daybreak Asia podcast.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to the Daybreak Asia Podcast. I'm Doug Krisner.
Speaker 5: Let's turn our attention now to the property markets in
Speaker 5: both Hong Kong and on the Chinese mainland. Joining me
Speaker 5: is the chairman of Hong Long Properties, Adrial Chan. Adrill
Speaker 5: joins us from our studios in Hong Kong. Good of
Speaker 5: you to make time to chat with me. I want
Speaker 5: to bring up a source subject right out of the gate.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry because I noted that net income for your
Speaker 5: company was down fourteen percent year over year in the
Speaker 5: latest period. Can you give me a sense of what's happening,
Speaker 5: what you're struggling with right now?
Speaker 6: Thanks Doug. The decrease in net income really is as
Speaker 6: a result of a lower number of sales of apartments,
Speaker 6: and that is something that fluctuates for us. The primary
Speaker 6: sector of our business is retail leasing and office leasing.
Speaker 6: So commercial leasing is actually down low single digits, which
Speaker 6: is a lot less bad than being down fourteen percent,
Speaker 6: but that's the explanation for that. If you look into
Speaker 6: retail and offices, retail has been actually surprisingly resilient in
Speaker 6: the mainland. I think our share price has reacted relatively
Speaker 6: well since the announcement of our results, and that was
Speaker 6: a little bit of a surprise to me, honestly, But
Speaker 6: I think that the market was perhaps expecting worse. So
Speaker 6: we're down retail sales low single digits, but I think
Speaker 6: people were probably expecting worse than that.
Speaker 5: So give me a sense of what your portfolio looks like.
Speaker 5: When you talk about retail spaces, I think shopping malls
Speaker 5: are you catering to retailers that perhaps service the higher
Speaker 5: end of the market. Are these luxury type retailers primarily?
Speaker 5: Absolutely so.
Speaker 6: Our biggest exposure is to the luxury brands, and as
Speaker 6: we've been seeing over the past couple of days, the
Speaker 6: luxury brands have been posting let's say, mixed results. Asia
Speaker 6: extrapan is sort of broadly flat ish, while Japan is
Speaker 6: down significantly, and that kind of I think is what
Speaker 6: explains our reasonable performance. A lot less Chinese outbound tourism
Speaker 6: to Japan for shopping and staying on shore to do
Speaker 6: that shopping. So that's one of the macro trends that
Speaker 6: we've seen. I don't know if that's because of all
Speaker 6: this rumors about earthquakes and this and that, but for
Speaker 6: various reasons, the Chinese consumers seem to be staying put
Speaker 6: on shore.
Speaker 5: So when you cater to that segment of the real
Speaker 5: estate market, those higher end retailers, do they have expectations
Speaker 5: about certain upgrades or modifications that the landlord in your
Speaker 5: case has to provide them, And does that kind of
Speaker 5: draw down or maybe force you to do a little
Speaker 5: bit of cap X.
Speaker 6: Oh, it certainly does. So you know, in terms of
Speaker 6: luxury moles, this sector in the mainland of China has
Speaker 6: only been around for maybe twenty years or so, twenty
Speaker 6: twenty five years, and so if you think about the
Speaker 6: life time of a mall, that's kind of the time
Speaker 6: that you need to definitely start looking into capex upgrades.
Speaker 6: We've done quite a few. We've done three upgrades in
Speaker 6: three of our separate malls across the mainland. They've been
Speaker 6: well received. I think now in terms of the market cycles,
Speaker 6: it's a relative down market, it's probably a good time
Speaker 6: to be investing in oneself. That being said, because we're
Speaker 6: in a down market, the tenants have pricing power. It's
Speaker 6: a buyer's market for our tenants, and so we have
Speaker 6: to make sure that we're on the ball in terms
Speaker 6: of how those capex upgrades go and our ability to
Speaker 6: deliver on operations and service.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's change gears talk a little bit about the
Speaker 5: commercial office space and the return to work. What is
Speaker 5: that situation right now and how is it impacting your business?
Speaker 6: So the return to work phenomenon is more important here
Speaker 6: in Hong Kong, less important in the mainland of China
Speaker 6: because in main and China they never really worked from
Speaker 6: home except for during certain lockdowns here in China. What
Speaker 6: we're hearing actually just over the past couple of weeks
Speaker 6: has been that some of the big banks are asking
Speaker 6: their staff to come back to the office. And you know,
Speaker 6: there's the vacancies in central Hong Kong have been pretty high.
Speaker 6: There's been a lot of new supply, but there's been
Speaker 6: a lot of pressure on both occupancies and rents, and
Speaker 6: I think that this request for people to come back
Speaker 6: into the office is going to help with both of those.
Speaker 6: I don't know if it can take up all of
Speaker 6: the slack, but certainly it'll help.
Speaker 5: I have to ask you about high technology. There's been
Speaker 5: so much focus right now in the market around artificial intelligence.
Speaker 5: Are you tempted to do a little bit in the
Speaker 5: data center end of things?
Speaker 6: You know, we looked at the data center end of
Speaker 6: things probably ten years ago. At the time, we felt
Speaker 6: like maybe we were even late to the game. In hindsight,
Speaker 6: we probably weren't. So yes, we are tempted, if you may,
Speaker 6: to look at that. But we've made this, We've basically
Speaker 6: made the decision that that's not our business model. It's
Speaker 6: real estate, but everything else about it is very different
Speaker 6: from the location to operations, the capex required.
Speaker 5: What about your act sss to capital these days? Are
Speaker 5: you having difficulty or is it not a problem for
Speaker 5: a company such as yours.
Speaker 6: It's a little bit polarized. So we have a very
Speaker 6: good access to capital. We just raised ten billion Hong
Speaker 6: Kong dollars earlier this year, and you know that was
Speaker 6: We did that at a very favorable rate as well,
Speaker 6: you know, because we're a high quality and because people
Speaker 6: trust us because they see our financials in the very
Speaker 6: sound But definitely it's a polarized market and if you're
Speaker 6: not in my camp, then it could be a very
Speaker 6: difficult time to raise money right now.
Speaker 5: So you do business obviously, both on the mainland and
Speaker 5: in Hong Kong. Talk to me a little bit about
Speaker 5: what happens when you're dealing with two different currencies, the
Speaker 5: Hong Kong dollar on one hand and the Chinese you
Speaker 5: on on the other.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's it's like any other company that has
Speaker 6: exposure to multiple currencies. We experienced a depreciation of the
Speaker 6: R and B over the past half year, so our
Speaker 6: numbers from mainland China are about one point four percent lower.
Speaker 6: In reported currency, which is Hong Kong dollars, and you know,
Speaker 6: thankfully the fluctuations haven't been too big, but when they
Speaker 6: come around, you know, we do have to make sure
Speaker 6: that we're on top of that in terms of currency
Speaker 6: swaps and the way that we borrow, where we finance
Speaker 6: in mainland China versus offshore, so on, so forth.
Speaker 5: So when you're dealing with let's call it a soft
Speaker 5: market in relative terms, are you inspired maybe to expand
Speaker 5: at this time or do you have any expansion plans?
Speaker 6: You know, we just announced one partnership in hang Jo,
Speaker 6: which is the final city in which we have yet
Speaker 6: to open our mall. And by expansion in partnership, what
Speaker 6: I mean is we've agreed to rent the neighboring plot
Speaker 6: to our shopping mall that we're building ourselves. So we
Speaker 6: have our own asset, which is the main asset, and
Speaker 6: we've rented the neighboring plot in which we will extend
Speaker 6: our footprint, and that sort of represents our commitment to
Speaker 6: the market, our conviction in the market as well. Honzo
Speaker 6: is a super strong market in me and then China.
Speaker 6: I think it's probably the hottest right now.
Speaker 5: Because of tech.
Speaker 6: But also because of commercial.
Speaker 5: Are there areas of the market that you're curious about
Speaker 5: that you might begin to test And I'm thinking of
Speaker 5: gaming being one industry. Does that interest you at all?
Speaker 6: I am always looking at different sub sectors of the market.
Speaker 6: Gaming financially is great, it's just not our bread and butter, though.
Speaker 6: It's something that we have agreed many years to stay
Speaker 6: away from despite the financial returns, and so that's in particular,
Speaker 6: it's not something that we're looking at. However, I think
Speaker 6: it behooves us to make sure that we're looking at
Speaker 6: all the opportunities in the market.
Speaker 5: Adriel, we'll leave it there, Thank you so very much.
Speaker 5: He is Adriel Chan, the chairman of Hong Long Properties,
Speaker 5: joining us from Hong Kong here on the Daybreak Asia Podcast.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak
Speaker 5: Asia Edition podcast. Each weekday, we look at the story
Speaker 5: shaping markets, finance, and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific. You
Speaker 5: can find us on Apple, Spotify, the Bloomberg Podcast YouTube channel,
Speaker 5: or anywhere else you listen. Join us again tomorrow for
Speaker 5: insight on the market moves from Hong Kong to Singapore
Speaker 5: and Australia. I'm Doug Chrisner, and this is Bloomberg