China’s exporters run for cover as US election nears
MNP – If Donald Trump wins next month’s U.S. presidential election, Mike Sagan’s toy-making company will halve its China supply chain within a year.
KidKraft, which also makes outdoor play equipment, had already shifted 20% of its production out of China to Vietnam, India and elsewhere after Trump introduced 7.5%-25% tariffs in July 2018, midway through his first term.
Now Trump threatens blanket 60% tariffs on China, which Sagan sees as a game-changing “blunt” tool.
He expects Kamala Harris to be less aggressive, but still likely to keep confronting China on trade.
“The writing is on the wall that it’s going to be difficult,” said Sagan, vice-president for supply chains and operations at KidKraft. The firm has reduced its Chinese suppliers to 41 from 53 at the start of this year.
“Question is: is it going to be extremely difficult or just difficult?”
The tariff threat alone is rattling China’s industrial complex, which sells goods worth more than $400 billion annually to the U.S. and hundreds of billions more in components for products Americans buy from elsewhere.
