US, China: Trade dispute could slam US retailers

NEW YORK: The Trump administration’s trade dispute with Beijing could slam US retailers if tariffs are implemented and lead to higher prices or a shortage of merchandise. President Donald Trump late on Thursday said he was considering penalties on $100 billion in Chinese goods, without specifying which goods he would target.

The threatened US tariffs could be little more than a negotiating tactic aimed at forcing China to address its intellectual property policies. But some retailers and apparel companies are sounding the alarm bells. The two biggest categories of US imports from China last year were communications and computer equipment, totalling $137 billion, according to US Census data. Cellphones and computers, key portions of these categories, were spared from the initial tariffs list. Apparel and footwear, both labour-intensive industries in China, made up a combined $39 billion in US imports.

“It’s this rhetoric around another $100 billion in tariffs that concerns us because certainly within that next pool of categories it would be hard to exclude apparel and footwear,” said Robert D’Loren, chief executive of Xcel Brands Inc , a clothing supplier to Macy’s Inc, Hudson’s Bay Co and others.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2018.

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