The American accent is conspicuously scarce among foreign buyers wandering the aisles of China\u2019s largest wholesale market \u2013 a sprawling global bazaar in Yiwu city offering everything from Christmas decorations to power tools.<\/p>\n
Arabic, Russian and Spanish are more commonly heard in negotiations between buyers and sellers. And mirroring a lack of US buyers on the ground in China, Washington\u2019s sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods appear to be having a relatively small impact on traders in the world\u2019s capital for small commodities.<\/p>\n
Some of the vendors in Yiwu say the trade war\u2019s sting has been softened by their growing global customer base \u2013 the US accounted for less than 15 per cent of Yiwu\u2019s exports in 2024, totalling 83.6 billion yuan (US$11.5 billion), according to Yiwu customs data.<\/p>\n
An exporter of Christmas ornaments in Yiwu, surnamed Liu, said she has just one US client, with orders worth around 100,000 yuan (US$13,700). So far, the deal has not been cancelled \u2013 just put on hold as the buyer takes a wait-and-see approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it does get cancelled, I\u2019ll just shift the goods to my South American customers,\u201d she said, shrugging off the potential loss. \u201cIt would barely make a dent in my business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her clients, she added, remained optimistic that tariffs would not stay this high for long, but even if \u201csomething that used to cost 1 yuan now sells for 2, people will still buy it\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American accent is conspicuously scarce among foreign buyers wandering the aisles of China\u2019s largest wholesale market \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32163,32165,32161,32168,32164,839,332,22713,49,978,32162,2581,659,6709,32170,32169,32166,32167],"class_list":{"0":"post-62254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-american-accent","9":"tag-chen-yao","10":"tag-christmas-decorations","11":"tag-huang-feng","12":"tag-li-zhuo","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-south-america","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-us-clients","19":"tag-us-president-donald-trump","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-washington","22":"tag-yiwu","23":"tag-yiwu-customs-data","24":"tag-zhejiang-daily","25":"tag-zhejiang-party-chief-wang-hao"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114425573285972313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}