Chinese battery producer Leoch International Technology has been pressing ahead with the first instalment of its US$200 million factory in Mexico before a June launch, with the Hong Kong-listed firm just one of many getting to grips with unpredictable US tariff policies.

Executive director and chief investment officer Helen Hong Yu said the company originally chose the country because of its tariff-free status under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and its proximity to the US.

Setting up directly in the US would have also incurred higher costs and talent recruitment would have been more difficult.

She said the Hong Kong-listed company was also planning to take its non-China business public in the US.

But US President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariff policies caught her, and many others, off guard.

“When [Trump] suddenly raised tariffs, everyone found it quite surreal and asked if he was really going to impose such increases?” she said.