As the trade war continues, we conducted a survey to get companies feedback. The results have shown a couple different things. While most companies stay concerned about the trade war, not many companies have seen a decrease in sales. While a majority of companies have not seen a decrease, 33% have experienced a decrease in sales of 5% and some reaching 80% of their foreign sales. Regarding domestic sales, 20% of companies have experienced a decrease in sales to their domestic customers, with some decreasing by 30%. Companies have noticed higher importing costs by at least 25% and some companies experiencing higher importing costs up to 70%. You would assume that higher importing costs would cause order cancellations to foreign buyers, but 80% of companies say that their foreign buyers have no plans of canceling future orders.
To discuss further into the importing costs, there is a decision to be made on whether to pass the importing cost on to the end customer. With that being said, only 15% of companies are pushing all the import costs to their customers, about 50% are pushing some of the cost, and about 36% of companies are not pushing any of the cost to their customers. With all these higher costs, companies are still trying to work together. Most companies say that there has been no shortage from their Chinese supplier. A majority of companies have been continuing their plans of investment in capital equipment and/or expansion, however, 15% of companies have either canceled or delayed their plans.
The trade war has been a hot topic recently and as much as we want the trade war to end, many people and companies believe that the trade war will continue. 60% of companies believe that no trade agreement will be signed soon and that the trade relation between the United States and China will never be the same.
All the data we received remained anonymous and shows us the economic impact of the tariff war in our area. If you are interested in seeing the complete resulted that we collected, click on the link below.