US outdoor industry fears ‘winter is coming’ amid trade tensions

Washington’s tariffs cost industry $1.8b more than expected

BEIJING: With winter approaching, US outdoor industry brands should have been filled with joy at this time of the year, preparing for a big jump in holiday sales. However, it is not true for this upcoming winter.

Data from the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA), the leading trade association for the outdoor industry, showed that Washington’s additional tariffs imposed on Chinese imports cost the industry $1.8 billion more than expected from September 2018 to July 2019, which hit the industry with some 7.6 million employees like a sledgehammer.

As American outdoor manufacturers and retailers are exposed to chilly economic conditions, industry forecasts amid the ongoing US-China trade friction suggest that “winter” is coming.

Krimson Klover, a women’s outdoors clothing retailer located by the Rocky Mountains foothills in Colorado State, is already losing revenue due to the trade tensions.

“People will be going out of business because of this (trade row),” said Krimson Klover’s CEO and Founder Rhonda Swenson in a recent interview with Xinhua.

“We’re in a really competitive industry ... it’s a huge financial burden (and) taking the tariffs is a big hit,” Swenson said at the company’s headquarters in Boulder County. As the label on its products shows, the company follows an operation pattern of “Designed in Boulder, Colorado; Made in China.” About 95% of the clothes are manufactured by Krimson Klover’s four partner factories in China, with one in Shanghai’s Pudong, one near Shanghai and two in China’s southern province of Guangdong. The company also employs more than 10 people in Boulder, plus five contract designers and some sales representatives.

“We have been working with our current factories close to 20 years,” said Swenson, noting that she visited China several times a year in the last two decades.

Outdoor industry officials have said some businesses have already been hit “astronomically,” and that small businesses are getting hammered the hardest by extra fees on Chinese goods.

In June, some 660 US companies, including 21 outdoor industry players, wrote a letter to US President Donald Trump to voice their concern about the escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs.

This article originally appeared on the China Economic Net 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2019.

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