Chinese sellers on e-commerce platforms Shein, Temu, TikTok Shop and Amazon, expressed concerns about U.S. tariffs at the three-day China Cross-Border E-Commerce Trade Fair in Guangzhou, which concluded on August 17. With booths at the fair, major online retail platforms – including Shein, PDD Holdings-owned Temu, ByteDance-run TikTok Shop and American e-commerce giant Amazon.com – sought to woo more exporters to open online shops on their sites. Amazon.com trainer Sandy Zhu, for example, suggested that newcomers to the platform, which caters to 20 overseas markets, sell to the U.S. because traffic was big and doing business there had a “lower threshold” for merchants to navigate. Still, Guangdong Mingjian Electronics Technology, whose portable coffee machines are sold on Amazon.com, was still “worried about policy uncertainties” in spite of the extended tariff truce, said Chen Jianlun, who represented the Chinese firm at the fair. Chen pointed out that the company was forced to suspend its U.S. business for nearly two months from April, when bilateral trade relations soured. That uneasiness reflected the lingering uncertainties over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, which has dampened Chinese exporters’ business confidence amid three rounds of high-level talks between trade negotiators of the two countries.
According to Tank Zhou, Sales Manager at e-commerce logistics and supply chain provider EDA Group, many clients suspended U.S. shipments for about a month during the initial U.S. tariff hike. “Although shipments have restarted, merchants feel they’re passive in making decisions”, he said. Other cross-border exporters who depend on seasonal sales campaigns lost business as a result of Trump’s trade war. Festive decorations supplier Yiwu Shuangyuan Christmas Artware in Zhejiang province, typically secured clients in the first half of the year to schedule deliveries during the holiday season. “Some deals collapsed during the initial tariff hike,” Saleswoman Zhu Xiaolin said. Still, the company managed to sign up enough clients to meet this year’s Christmas shipment, she added.
Zhou from EDA, which provides warehousing services to Chinese exporters in foreign countries, said he advised clients to pursue a “multi-market strategy” that would expand their business beyond the U.S. He said the company expected its warehouses in Germany and the UK to see faster growth this third quarter, as more merchants diversified their market strategy. Meanwhile, Chen from Guangdong Mingjian Electronics said the firm was exploring opportunities under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These would include South Africa and other countries on that continent, the South China Morning Post reports.
