Trade frictions between the United States and China will damage confidence in the multilateral trading system and the non-economic part of the bilateral relationship, said Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore.

"The consequences are not so much the amount of tariffs which are imposed, in the scheme of things not huge," Lee said, "but instead the damage to confidence in the multilateral trading system, which all countries depend on, and also the damage to the non-economic part of the relationship between America and China - the trust and the mutual willingness to cooperate.”

Lee made the remarks at the DBS Asian Insights Conference China 2018 in Shanghai on Thursday.