The tit-for-tat trade battle between the United States and China, if it materialises into a full-blown war, will cause disruption to Asean’s growth before anything else.

“Disruption is first order, diversion is second order,” Maybank Kim Eng (Maybank KE) senior economist Chua Hak Bin says, referring to Washington diverting its attention to Asean for trade and investments, as a result of its standoff with Beijing, and vice versa.

Both economic giants recently upped the ante on the trade war which started around the middle of last year, with the United States imposing taxes on billions worth of Chinese goods imported into the US, and China retaliating by levying tariffs on hundred of billions of US imports.

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