In a televised interview the US President Donald Trump warned that amid China’s control over Hong Kong the territory “can never succeed.”
Relations between Washington and Beijing are plummeting over the new controversial security laws China has imposed, and President Trump said that Hong Kong markets will “go to hell” as a result.
Trump told Fox Business channel, “Once China got aggressive and took it over, I took everything back. Everything’s back now. And it will fail.”
Trump added, that Hong Kong had been the beneficiary of billions of dollars in “very expensive incentives,” which has now been taken back by the US.
Trump said, “Hong Kong is a very complex problem because we’ve given tremendous amounts of money in the form of incentives to make Hong Kong free, to make Hong Kong work, and to our detriment.
“All of those incentives that they had for the Hong Kong market, in order to keep a certain amount of freedom over there, knowing they have China looming over the top of them, but all of those incentive, billions and billions and billions of dollars I gave, that we gave, to Hong Kong, I’ve taken back now.”
President Trump also ordered an executive order which revokes the preferential treatment for the territory stipulated by the Hong Kong policy act of 1992.
A new law has been signed by Trump which sanctions banks and all individuals that have been deemed to have aided with the erosion over Hong Kong’s autonomy, also the territory’s preferential trading status has been taken away.
In a press conference on Tuesday he said in response to the China imposing the new security laws over the territory, “Hong Kong will now be treated the same as mainland China.”
There will also be “no special privileges, no special economic treatment, and no export of sensitive technologies,” Trump added.
The executive order said amongst other things, that the territory’s new laws, “fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency with respect to that threat.”
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