Trumps Tariffs Will Pummel Asia. But One Country Sees Opportunity.

For just about everyone in Asia, President Trump’s latest round of severe tariffs is a disaster.Everyone but Liu Gang, who sees this moment as a chance to double down on his electronics factory in the Philippines.“I tell companies: ‘Come to the Philippines,’” Mr.

Liu said as he competed to be heard above the din of several machines, weighing 400 tons each, stamping out metal parts for Fujitsu A.T.M.s on the factory floor downstairs.Mr.Trump’s harshest tariffs went into effect on Wednesday on products that are made in China and some of its rising manufacturing rivals in Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia.

The levies will transform these factory economies, once the world’s most sought after locations for making cars, bags, shoes and gadgets that Americans buy, into the last places on earth that any company wants to be.Then there’s the Philippines.The Southeast Asian country was also hit with tariffs, but its economic reliance on services and agriculture left it less exposed to the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs meant to punish manufacturing economies and bring factory jobs back to the United States.Goods coming from the Philippines will be taxed 17 percent, still high, but less than half of what products from Thailand will be tariffed and almost a third less than the levy on Vietnam....