Media365
For a country known as the “land of smiles”, Thailand has had little reason to be cheerful this year. While export-dependent economies in Asia have had a rough time since US President Donald Trump launched his assault on the global trading order, the headwinds buffeting Thailand have been multifaceted and more severe.
HSBC said Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy has suffered “a rare misalignment of events” and has been “swimming against the tide for quite some time now”. This is putting it mildly. Thailand can be excused for feeling that it is cursed.
First there was the much-publicised kidnapping in January of a Chinese actor by a criminal gang based in neighbouring Myanmar. The incident scared off many Chinese tourists just when arrivals from China – Thailand’s largest source market along with Malaysia – were starting to recover to pre-pandemic levels. In the first half of this year, only 2.3 million Chinese visited Thailand, down by nearly 33 per cent in annualised terms.
Then there was the deadly earthquake in Myanmar in March that damaged some skyscrapers in Bangkok and caused the collapse of a building under construction, killing 89 people on the site, mostly workers.
Thai politics, a perennial source of instability, added to the country’s woes when prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was removed from office in August because of a leaked recording of her phone call with Cambodia’s former leader in which she blamed Thailand’s military for aggravating a border dispute that led to deadly clashes between the two nations.
As if that were not enough, Trump’s decision to impose a 19 per cent levy on imported goods from Thailand was preceded by a front-loading of Thai exports that exacerbated the impact of the higher tariff by contributing to a surge in the baht. While Thailand’s currency has weakened against the US dollar over the past month, it hit a four-year high on September 16, putting the tourism industry under further strain.
