Chinese exporters scrambled to respond to crushing US tariffs by hiking prices, cancelling shipments and rerouting goods to other countries, as the world’s two biggest economies brace for economic divorce.
The US president on Wednesday announced a 90-day pause in additional tariffs on most countries, but kept his 104 per cent tariffs on China and levied an additional 21 per cent to punish Beijing for retaliating.
In response, Chinese sellers on ecommerce platforms are raising prices by up to 70 per cent to US consumers, while others are preparing to exit the US market as punitive tariffs make trade unsustainable, according to one of China’s biggest ecommerce associations.
“Chinese sellers will not be able to take on the extra [financial] burden from the US tariff hikes,” said Wang Xin, president of the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, an industry group which represents more than 2,000 sellers in China.
“We are going through fire and water,” said Wang, whose members sell products to the US on Amazon as well as via Shein and Temu.
One Guangzhou-based Temu seller said some counterparts had been building factories in third countries, such as Jordan, to finish goods and then re-export to the US. Other sellers had experimented with rerouting goods via countries with trade treaties with the US, they said.
But they added that there is a huge amount of uncertainty for Chinese manufacturers relocating production outside the country, after Trump signalled his willingness to extend tariffs beyond China.
For now, most Chinese merchants are still in wait-and-see mode. “It’s extremely difficult to make long-term plans right now,” said Hu Jianlong, chief executive of Brands Factory, an ecommerce insights platform.
Shipping companies said transpacific orders were being cancelled and they expected growing disruption in coming weeks.
“We are seeing now a tremendous amount of cancellations,” said one person in the freight industry in Shanghai. “There’s just so much uncertainty that people are pulling containers.”
“At the moment we have a new order of about 100 containers that’s supposed to go into Houston, and all that’s on hold,” the person added. “The situation changes almost hourly.”
There are also signs of cancellations in the other direction, where trade is now vulnerable to Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs on imports from the US.
One shipment of gas from the US was cancelled because of higher Chinese tariffs, according to a person familiar with the situation. The US also exports agricultural products, machinery and other goods to China.
China on Thursday brought into force its additional 84 per cent tit-for-tat tariffs against the US as planned, bringing its total on American imports to more than 100 per cent. But while it signalled that President Xi Jinping will not back down from the escalating trade war, it made no immediate move to match Trump’s even higher rate.
“If you want to talk, the door is open, but the dialogue must be conducted on an equal footing on the basis of mutual respect,” said China’s commerce ministry. “If you want to fight, China will fight to the end. Pressure, threats and blackmail are not the right way to deal with China.”
The renminbi weakened to its lowest level since 2007 in the latest sign Beijing is willing to tolerate gradual depreciation in response to US tariffs.
The onshore renminbi slipped to Rmb7.351 a dollar on Thursday, its weakest level in almost 18 years, after the People’s Bank of China weakened the currency’s fix for a sixth-consecutive day. It subsequently rebounded to trade at about Rmb7.314 per dollar.
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday warned China against a currency devaluation.
Beijing also engaged in a flurry of diplomacy, holding talks with European Commission trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Malaysia’s trade minister Zafrul Aziz, whose country is chair of south-east Asia’s Asean trading bloc.
“China is willing to work with its trading partners, including Asean, to . . . jointly maintain the multilateral trading system,” a Chinese commerce ministry statement said.
US equities slipped on Thursday, giving up part of the previous day’s surge in the wake Trump’s announcement. The S&P 500 was down 2.1 per cent, after gaining 9.5 per cent on Wednesday. Earlier on Thursday, Japan’s Topix closed up 8.1 per cent and Taiwan’s Taiex advanced 9.3 per cent as the Wall Street rally spread. The Stoxx Europe 600 index was up 4.6 per cent in afternoon trading, while Germany’s Dax rose 5.1 per cent and the FTSE 100 advanced 4 per cent.
By contrast, China’s stock indices were relatively muted but closed up despite the tariff blitz weighing on confidence. Analysts speculated that the “national team” — government-backed institutions — was partially behind the 1.3 per cent rise in the CSI 300. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed up 2.1 per cent.
Reporting by: Robin Harding, Chan Ho-him and Arjun Neil Alim in Hong Kong, Joe Leahy and Eleanor Olcott in Beijing, Thomas Hale in Shanghai, Laura Onita and Oliver Telling in London and Harry Dempsey in Tokyo
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