When the first two rounds of 10%rates arrived, Zou Guoqing, a Chinese exporter, groaned but did not find the unsurpassed barriers. He resigned from some of his profits and offered his client, a snow bicycle factory in Nebraska, price cuts ranging from 5% to 10%. It seemed to work: the factory agreed a new order of molds and pieces.
But when President Donald Trump announced Additional 34% of Universal Rate In Chinese products on April 2, Zou, which has been exporting to the United States for more than a decade, was incredulous.
“There is no viability thread,” said Zou, who does business in the city of Ningbo in the city of Ningbo in East China. “It seems that I would have no choice but to stop operating with the United States”
Then came 50% more Trump, followed by another walk, pushing the universal rate on Chinese products to The sky to the maximum 145%And Zou said that now he could only expect the two leaders to communicate. “We are stopping the shipments,” he said, “until the leaders speak.”
The 145% rate of the United States and The retaliation rate of 125% of China They are putting companies between the United States and China to the limit. They are worried not only for their next orders, but also for the viability of their business if there is no rapid relief. Experts are concerned that the commercial ties of decades that have supported the relationship between the two largest economies in the world could be unraveling.
If the high rate is maintained during the next six months or more, “that would actually lead to really effective decoupling between US and Chinese economies,” said Chen Zhiwu, a professor of finance at the business school at Hong Kong University.
Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Geoeconomics Center of the Atlantic Council, said that the very high rate of heaven, if it is maintained in place, is equivalent to “almost a commercial embargo”, which makes it impossible for China to export low -value elements such as clothing to the United States, it would also force US companies to get elsewhere, far from China, if there should be alternatives, he said.
In China, the Office of Central Rates stated that “there was no possibility of market acceptance” of US goods exported to China “at the current tariff level.
“Everyone is quite worried,” said Hu Jianlong, founder of Brands Factory, a consulting that works with Chinese companies trying to enter foreign markets. “At this time, there is no good way to follow. This situation has not been resolved … there is no final number. And then everyone is still waiting to see how this will develop.”
The high -risk tariff war has arrived more than 20 years after China, with the help of the United States, joined the World Trade Organization and began to see that its economy shot to attract foreign investments and export to the United States and other western markets. For last year, China-United States trade was $ 582 billion, but tensions have advanced on the broad commercial imbalance of China with the US. UU. Which led to the first skirmish rate during the first term of Trump.
Since then, the commercial deficit has been reduced, but it has remained stubbornly high, at a time when the United States and other western markets have also worried about another attack of Chinese products such as electric vehicles.
During his four -year term, former President Joe Biden emphasized that the United States was not trying to decoup into China, but to “disregard.” He took the “small and high and high -halls approach, under which her administration put barriers in sectors directed as advanced chips, artificial intelligence and quantum computing that have national security implications.
Now, Trump is declaring universal tariffs about all Chinese products, but has said that he is also willing to talk to Beijing. It is not clear what their goals could be.
“What are they looking for in these negotiations? How much is it possible to reduce these rates? What are the other demands in addition to China eliminating their retaliation rates that the United States wants to present. We do not know what that would be,” said Greta Peisch, who served as a general advisor for the United States trade representative’s office in 2021-2024 “.
China’s leadership message is strong and clear. He will only speak when the United States stops “maximum pressure and capricious and destructive behavior,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Li Cheng, a professor of political science at Hong Kong University, said Chinese leadership is upset about Trump when the president of the United States arrested “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days for all other countries. Beijing wants to make sure that “Donald Trump does not declare one thing in the morning and say other things at night,” said Li, and that Trump’s policies in China are not kidnapped by his anti-china and aggressive advisors.
Without negotiations at the leadership level in the immediate future, companies are exploring their options.
Lisa Li, who works in sales for a sportswear manufacturer in the province of Northern China in Hebei, said her business was negotiating with customers about whether they could divide the greatest costs. It is too early to say that if your company will renounce the US market, he said, but “will definitely expand other roads for sales”, such as in Australia or Europe.
In the city of Wenzhou in China in the East, a manufacturing center, a Christmas light manufacturer was less optimistic. Bo, who only shared his last name for concern for reprisals, said “could only give up” if tariff walks were here to stay because other markets may not work.
“In recent years, the European market has been in a fall,” said Bo. “So we wanted to try to develop our business in the United States.”
In Hong Kong, Danny Lau, who runs an aluminum factory in the nearby city of Dongguan in southern Dongguan, said that one of his US clients would continue to buy from him for an ongoing project, but was not sure about the next project. Another client told Lau that the possibilities are scarce to reach an agreement when tariffs are so high. Lau has been exploring other markets, but says it is not easy because some can find that their high quality products are too expensive.
In a port of the Chinese city of Shanghai, the ships that were directed to the United States had almost faded on Thursday, the day after Trump’s rate on China entered into force, according to a report from the Caixin Financial News Site. The main shipping lines were drastically reducing on trans-pacific routes, according to the report.
In the long term, it is likely that the tariff war leads Chinese companies to diversify their supply chains and move part of their manufacturing capacity outside China, and even the United States, Hu said, the consultant.
Some could follow the steps of the Tianjin steel manufacturing business, which resigned from trade with the United States after Trump and Biden raised tariffs on Chinese steel. “The best plan is not to contact,” said David Yu, who works in the company’s foreign sales department.
However, not everyone is ready to give up the US market. Zou, the exporter in NOBO, describes the United States market as “reliable demands and without pliers.”
“It’s the best market on Earth,” he said. “I am waiting for the rainbow after the storm.”
___
Wu reported from Bangkok and Tang from Washington. AP Shihuan Chen researcher in Beijing and writer Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
