An international relations professor on Tuesday said Donald Trump’s inauguration speech had "sort of imperialistic overtures".

Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University in Shanghai made the remarks on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme as the newly-sworn in US president vowed to “take back” the Panama Canal and potentially rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and invoked a “manifest destiny” in his speech.

“One wonders if there's sort of this parallel that Trump is creating with this old 18th century idea of the US controlling the Western Hemisphere, at least the northern part of the Western Hemisphere, in as much as he's made overtures towards Greenland, Canada in terms of imperialistic overtures, but also things related to Mexico and now the Panama Canal and then renaming potentially the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America,” he said.

“One wonders if he’s creating sort of parallel with China where you have China in the South China Sea, China in the American mind trying to impose its sort of manifest destiny in East Asia.”

Mahoney also pointed out that Trump made a wise move by holding back on tariffs against China, as the implementation would have roiled the markets.

“I think we all realised that tariffs are lose-lose at this point, that's what almost every study has confirmed,” he said.

“And that the biggest losers of all are American consumers who end up paying essentially inflationary prices for products as much as they have to bear the costs of the tariffs. And the United States depends much more on products from China than vice versa.”

Before taking office, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticised Beijing for violating Hong Kong’s autonomy, saying it was now a “semi-autonomous entity”.

Mahoney believes the statement will spark concerns towards how Washington will treat the SAR.

“This, you know, raises the spectre about whether or not the United States will start to treat Hong Kong as being part of the mainland and how that could have implications for the special status that Hong Kong has vis-a-vis the United States in terms of financial regulations,” he said.

“That remains something of serious concern that we'll have to continue to watch. On the one hand, Rubio has said that he's committed to Hong Kong autonomy, but if he's decided that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous, then that raises a whole different perspective.”