China’s exporters fear heyday is over amid sour mood at Canton Fair as US-China trade war lingers

The optimism expressed by officials from China and the United States suggesting the trade war is almost over has not trickled down to small exporters exhibiting their products at China’s largest export fair, who fear that, with or without a deal, the heyday for Chinese exports is over.
Exporters at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, the country’s biggest export exhibition held every spring and autumn, remain cautious over the outlook for US-China trade relations and the prospects for selling products to the US.
Fiona Chan, a sales manager for a marble and polished stone exporter, said the trade row had delivered a heavy blow to her company, with its main business focused on selling products to the US market. The company’s products have been subject to both anti-dumping tariffs as an additional 10 per cent tariff imposed by US President Donald Trump on US$200 billion of Chinese products imported into the US.
“We used to have 10 production lines running [before the trade war], now we have only two running; and the number of workers has been cut to 40 from around 200,” she said. “The trade dispute will continue to affect us for years to come, and as a small business, our only choice is to passively accept it.”
We are not as important as Huawei, and our voices are not heard in trade negotiations, but the industry as a whole has suffered and a lot of businesses have gone bankrupt.
Fiona Chan
China’s small exporters are bearing the brunt of the trade frictions and their voices are not often listened to, she added.
“We are not as important as Huawei, and our voices are not heard in trade negotiations, but the industry as a whole has suffered and a lot of businesses have gone bankrupt,” she said.
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Chan added that her company lost all its US orders last year when the US Department of Commerce decided to impose anti-dumping tariffs as high as 314 per cent to Chinese “quartz surface products”, which are widely used for kitchen and bathroom counters. The anti-dumping ruling means the US government determined that the Chinese products were being sold in the US at a price below what is being charged in China.
Andy Wong, an export manager of Guanya Lighting, said that his company, which mainly sells desk lamps, is struggling to make adjustments to the new global trade reality, in which bulk orders for thousands, or even tens of thousands, of lamps from US and European retailers have disappeared, replaced by small orders from smaller buyers in “Belt and Road Initiative” countries in Asia and Africa as part of China’s plan to grow global trade.