Hannah Miao
Appearances
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
All of our pottery has saucers as well as drainage holes to make the perfect home for your plant.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
People are definitely confused, fearful, panicked even. I've spoken with manufacturers across several different industries. And I think the first reaction is just that they don't know what Trump is going to do next. It's really hard to predict his next steps. So...
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
Yeah. Companies are in the process of doing that or were doing it, you know, in the months leading up to the election. They're accelerating their efforts. Or if they hadn't bought land yet, for example, they're going to buy land. Whatever stage they're in, they're trying to accelerate it if they have the means to move out to Southeast Asia.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
It depends from company to company. And not every company is planning to move all of their production over there. But certainly people I've spoken with are planning to move more of it or trying to get it started. You know, it's something they've been wanting to do or had been talking about doing.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
But Trump's return to the White House and the very rapid way he's escalating tariffs is certainly putting more pressure on them to do so.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
And they're asking him, what do we do about this? You know, Trump just put another 10% tariff on Chinese imports. And a couple of his clients, so one is a manufacturer of electrical transformers. And this client was already shifting some production to Malaysia. And another was an auto parts maker looking to start moving some production to Thailand. And both of them asked him, can we speed it up?
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
Is there anything we can do to quicken the process? And he described it as companies being in a panic and they're just grasping for any solution.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
It'll certainly be painful and a challenge to work through. China's economy is quite reliant on exports right now. But China's also a manufacturing powerhouse. It's really hard to replace China. They talk to American manufacturers, Chinese manufacturers. they all say that it'll be really hard to be completely out of China.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
China has also been working to become the dominant country for industries like electric vehicles and solar panels and some of the more higher-end technology items. So that will continue to be an advantage for China.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
Right now, China's economy is quite dependent on exports. It's one of the rare bright spots in the economy and drove a significant chunk of China's economic growth. In China's domestic economy, consumer demand is pretty weak. Households are not spending a ton of money. After a property market collapse, it has really weighed on sentiment. And in the manufacturing sector,
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
There is overcapacity in many industries, and that's why exports have become increasingly important for China's economy. And with the U.S. being a major trading partner, tariffs are definitely hitting China where it hurts at the moment.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
Absolutely. This is part of the uncertainty that is going on right now that is making people... really scared and panicked. And it's just hard to know what to do in this situation. So Trump has talked about tariffs that are reciprocal or targeting countries with big trade imbalances with the U.S. Vietnam is high on that list of targets.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
I think that's a question a lot of business owners are asking and economists are asking for sure. A lot of the manufacturers I talk to in the U.S. say, we can't really start building this in the U.S. There isn't the capacity here to build everything that American consumers want to buy.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
What I'm looking for next is... if there will be some more negotiation between the US and China and what kind of deal that might look like. It's hard to see what China could offer that would satisfy the US. If we buy more US products, is that enough? If we try to cut down on our trade imbalance, is that enough? And so it's hard to know where this goes from here.
The Journal.
The Trade War With China Is On
I think it will be when things really start to get painful for the American consumer that there will be a reevaluation.