High steaks: Chinese importer stuck with Californian meat typifies firms in tariffs crossfire
Carmakers are also among those hit, along with US firms with operations in China that are now looking to base themselves elsewhere
China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods struck just as one of its biggest meat importers was rushing a shipment from California through Shanghai customs. Now Suzhou Huadong Foods is saddled with a stack of unaffordable American steak.
Only three containers of frozen produce including prime rib and pork loin came through before the new levy slapped as much as 500,000 yuan (US$75,000) on each of the remaining half-dozen crates, according to Gong Peng, the importer’s general manager.
“We have no choice. We have to eat the costs,” Gong said in an interview. “We are guaranteed to dramatically lower our purchases of meat from American ranchers.”
Triggering what China calls “the largest trade war in economic history”, the US on July 6 imposed a 25 per cent duty on $34 billion of Chinese imports. Beijing immediately responded with tariffs on US soybeans, meat and vehicles.
Suzhou Huadong, which supplies supermarkets such as Walmart’s Sam’s Club in China, is just one of the early victims.
For automobiles and whiskey makers to companies along the complex global supply chain that defines modern manufacturing, it is a moment of reckoning as they grapple with higher costs and whiplashes from some of the earlier business decisions.