The merchants at a small-commodity trade hub in east China's Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, said they have been diversifying their products to meet the various preferences of international customers as they seek to change their customer source constitution in an effort to minimize the impacts of the United States tariffs.
Nicknamed "world's supermarket", Yiwu is an international hub for small-commodity production and trade, and its Yiwu International Trade Market is the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities.
The so-called "reciprocal tariffs" taken by the U.S. President Donald Trump's administration impose sweeping duties on goods imported from the country's trading partners worldwide.
The tariffs, which pushed the prices of the Chinese goods entering the U.S. market to a staggeringly high level, will significantly reduce the trade volume between the two nations. But merchants at Yiwu's trade market said as they focus more and more on the demand outside the U.S. market, they believe impacts from the tariffs will have only limited impacts on their business.
"I don't think it (the U.S. tariff) will significantly impact the Chinese market. The world is big [and] we have options beyond the U.S., like South America, Europe, Asia. The domestic market is also huge. Our factory's sales keep rising, up 30 percent this year. Chinese people adapt quickly. If one door closes, we find another," said Lu Furong, general manager of the Home Time Industrial Company Limited, a company specializing in producing and selling Christmas goods.
Other merchants at the trade hub shared Lu's view and they said their intense focus on diversifying their designs to meet the specific aesthetics preferences of customers from a wide range of regions across the world help them to weather through short-term turbulence.
"Trends change every year. [This year], we introduced beige and pale blue tones after studying different markets. These colors match the aesthetic preferences of many overseas customers. Previously, most of our clients were from Europe and America, [but] with their economic conditions becoming less favorable, we've gradually shifted to markets like South America. Currently, our order books are completely full," said Yang Lei, general manager of Lei Ren Christmas.
Besides, as an increasing proportion of the trade hub's merchants make efforts to enlarge and diversify their customer base through e-commerce platform, they said they see growing opportunities for their businesses as they secure more and more international orders.
"Cross-border e-commerce is an absolute game-changer. It opens up limitless opportunities to reach customers worldwide. My daughter has jumped into it too, building her global brand from her laptop and is doing great too," said Sun Sumin, a merchant.
China’s small commodity trade hub diversifies products to minimize US tariff impacts
