US-China trade war to boost Taiwanese gym equipment maker’s quest for global dominance
- Gym equipment among Chinese goods the US hit with tariffs on Sunday
- Johnson Health Tech’s goal for the end of 2020 is US$1 billion in revenue
Taiwan’s Johnson Health Tech says it is poised to be an unexpected winner from the US-China trade war.
The world’s third-largest gym equipment maker expects a new factory in Vietnam, which it planned before the ongoing trade war, to allow it to escape tariffs on made-in-China gym equipment sold to American fitness outlets.
“We will have a greater advantage over our Chinese rivals because they will be hurt by the latest tariffs,” Chief executive Jason Lo said in a recent interview at the company’s headquarters in the central Taiwanese city of Taichung. “We expect to benefit from orders shifting to us from Chinese competitors, as they will be forced to raise prices.”
Companies all around the world are having to find ways to adjust to the escalating trade war. Many American retailers are shifting their sourcing out of China’s vast manufacturing belt, a process that is adding millions in costs and leaving China’s factories in a desperate state. Gym equipment was among the US$110 billion in Chinese goods that the US hit with tariffs on Sunday.
Johnson, which supplies Planet Fitness and Marriott International, is one of the few companies to say it’s benefiting from the disruption that threatens to permanently transform the global supply chain.
