The Hormuz strikes complicate the reserve calculus for every Asian central bank running significant dollar balances against energy import exposure. At the HKMA and at Bank Indonesia, the question this week is not whether the strikes widen into a sustained campaign. The question is how long Iranian chokepoint pressure can be priced as temporary before it migrates from the trading desk to the balance sheet. Brent exposure in PBOC reserve management is indirect but real: a sustained Hormuz disruption elevates China's import bill, pressures the current account surplus that underpins the offshore renminbi's stability architecture, and gives the People's Bank less room to ease at the margin it has been signaling.

Beijing's insistence that Taiwan be addressed before any Trump summit conversation on trade normalization is the ledger item to watch in parallel. It tells you that the mainland's negotiating posture is designed to prevent Washington from disaggregating commercial concessions from security commitments. That means the tariff-relief corridor institutions have been pricing is narrower than the headline trade talks imply. Regional bond desks should read that sequencing demand not as political theater, but as a constraint on the duration of any trade truce.