
Chinese exporters hunt for alternatives to ‘irreplaceable’ US buyers
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. SHENZHEN, China—One of the most popular events at a Chinese exporters’ exhibition last week was a session teaching merchants how to sell more in Russia. Hundreds of attendees listened intently as employees of Russian e-commerce companies explained what Russian consumers like to buy online.
Night lights, scented candle sets and educational toys are among the popular goods on one platform—and the cheaper, the better, a presenter said. Audience members snapped photos of the presentation and scanned QR codes to join chat groups to exchange more information. It was a striking scene for a Chinese export industry that for decades focused mainly on the U.S., the world’s largest consumer market.
But pressure from Washington, with escalating tariffs, has forced many Chinese factory owners to confront an existential question: If they can’t sell profitably to the U.S., then where? Presenters at the Global Cross-Border E-commerce Selection Exhibition, a biannual event in China’s manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, offered many answers. But none of them were entirely reassuring for exporters who built their businesses on American consumers. The anxiety was palpable.
“The U.S. market basically is irreplaceable," said Mike Wang, 37, a sales manager at the booth of Union Tree, a Christmas tree maker based in China’s eastern export hub of Yiwu. Mike Wang says moving production of his company’s Christmas trees out of China would be too costly.
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