{"id":134216,"date":"2025-04-18T22:51:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T22:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/in-the-worlds-largest-wholesale-market-american-customers-have-dried-up-as-tariffs-hit-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T22:51:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T22:51:18","slug":"in-the-worlds-largest-wholesale-market-american-customers-have-dried-up-as-tariffs-hit-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/in-the-worlds-largest-wholesale-market-american-customers-have-dried-up-as-tariffs-hit-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"In the world's largest wholesale market, American customers have dried up as tariffs hit – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Profile
Sections
Local
tv
Featured
More From NBC
Follow NBC News
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
YIWU, China \u2014 Hammers, hats and hair clips. Toys, tech, socks, baseball caps and Christmas decorations. If it\u2019s a cheap manufactured product, it may well have come from the world\u2019s largest wholesale market in the Chinese city of Yiwu.\u00a0
With 75,000 suppliers spread across six buildings, it was once a one-stop shop for American companies, big and small, looking to buy cheap goods and export them back to the U.S.\u00a0\u00a0
Today it is on the front line of President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war<\/a>, and after he upped U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made goods from 10% to 145%, vendors told NBC News on Wednesday, their once reliable American clients have started to put orders on hold or cancel them altogether.\u00a0\u00a0
Nicole Zhang <\/strong>and her husband, Huang Fangchao, whose Yiwu Dowell Accessories Co. makes hair accessories for major brands using machine-cut and hand-finished materials, said around 60 or 70% of her 6 million pieces were destined for the U.S.\u00a0
But as tariffs have soared, she said American clients like Target have halted orders and put two shipping containers full of her products on hold.\u00a0
\u201cThey want to see what is happening in the future,\u201d she said.\u00a0
After stunning trading partners and global markets in early April, when he announced a raft of \u201creciprocal\u201d tariffs on imports<\/a> from more than 180 countries, Trump subsequently paused higher targeted tariffs for 90 days for most countries.\u00a0
But he did not include China, which was hit hardest of all and has since imposed retaliatory tariffs of up to 125% on U.S. imports.\u00a0
In Yiwu, the effects have started to take their toll.\u00a0
Chen Jinsai, a vendor <\/strong>selling press-on nails, said she didn\u2019t think she\u2019d shipped anything to the U.S. \u201cin the first half of this year\u201d mainly \u201cbecause the export taxes have gotten way too high.\u201d
Goods that were ready to be shipped have \u201cjust been sitting there,\u201d she said, adding that customers had not asked them to suck up the extra costs from the tariffs. \u201cIf I had to pay the tax, I\u2019d be losing money. Our prices are already quite low, so the tax is definitely something the customer has to handle themselves,\u201d she said.\u00a0
It\u2019s a reversal from last year when the provincial, development and reform commission in the district of Zhejiang, where Yiwu is based, reported that the city\u2019s total import and export value reached 668.93 billion yuan ($91 billion), an increase of 18.2% from the previous year.\u00a0
With U.S. trade uncertain, <\/strong>some of the traders in Yiwu said they were already focusing on markets in other parts of the world, such as the Middle East and Asia.\u00a0
Sock vendor Lou Jinling, meanwhile, said only around 10% of her business was in the U.S., \u201cso we\u2019re not heavily affected.\u201d\u00a0
\u201cSince tariffs, some clients asked me to help share the cost, but I won\u2019t do that because the margin is already very thin,\u201d she said, adding that one of her American customers \u201ctold me he managed to clear out his warehouse stock as people were panic-buying from him.\u201d
\u201cFor us, we have ways of offsetting the losses by selling to other markets,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I feel sorry for everyday Americans, as they are the ones paying for the rising cost.\u201d\u00a0
One of the people who might have to pay more to import into the U.S. is Vicky Eng, who said she\u2019d noticed her clients back home in the U.S. had become \u201ca lot more hesitant\u201d since the tariffs were introduced.\u00a0
Eng, who flew in from Chicago with her sister Vivian Eng, 29, to source hair clips and other accessories for their company, Adorro, said they sold them on to American retailers, mostly in the Midwest and Florida.\u00a0
\u201cWe haven\u2019t raised prices since the tariffs have been announced because we don\u2019t want to pre-emptively jump the gun with any price increases if it\u2019s not necessary,\u201d Eng, 30, said.
Nonetheless, their clients, she <\/strong>said, were \u201cplacing much smaller volume orders.\u201d
Most of their customers <\/strong>were \u201crelatively small businesses,\u201d Eng said, adding that since the tariffs were introduced, it had become \u201ca little harder\u201d for people to operate.\u00a0
The Chinese vendors were \u201cjust like us.\u201d she added. \u201cThey can\u2019t have an empty store.\u201d
Janis Mackey Frayer is a Beijing-based correspondent for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ProfileSectionsLocaltvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC News news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeYIWU, China \u2014 Hammers, hats and hair clips. Toys, tech, socks, baseball caps and Christmas decorations. If it\u2019s a cheap manufactured product, it may well have come from the world\u2019s largest wholesale market in the Chinese city of Yiwu.\u00a0With 75,000 suppliers spread […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}