The tariff pain is getting real for Chinese companies
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. SINGAPORE—Cui Shu, a lawyer in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen, was working in his office Friday morning when a flurry of calls and text messages arrived from clients, frantically seeking guidance about President Trump’s latest proposal, delivered by social-media post hours earlier: an additional 10% tariff on all Chinese imports. One of Cui’s clients, a manufacturer of electrical transformers, was already shifting production to Malaysia.
Another, an auto-parts producer, was looking to move manufacturing to Thailand. Both had urgent requests: Could Cui help them speed up the process? “Companies are in a panic and looking for solutions," Cui said in an interview. Many Chinese manufacturers thought they could weather the 10% in additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in early February.
But the latest 10% proposed tariff increase—slated to take effect Tuesday—represented a doubling of the pain, and offered an omen of more ahead. Chinese manufacturers that planned to cut prices to help customers absorb the initial tariff bump are now contending with potentially higher duties for their clients. Those already operating on razor-thin profit margins could be squeezed even further.
Trump’s new tariff proposal adds more urgency to plans among Chinese manufacturers to shift production outside the country, especially to Southeast Asia. Making and shipping goods from other countries means U.S. importers can avoid paying the higher duties on Chinese products—that is, unless Trump targets those countries, too.
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