Exporters unaffected by US-China trade war

MANILA, Philippines — The ongoing trade war between the US and China  barely made a dent on operations of members of the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport).

Based on the results of a survey conducted by Philexport covering 51 companies, 19 respondents or 37.3 percent did not feel the impact of the US-China trade war in their export business because they are not part of the supply chain of the two countries.

Of the respondents which are part of the US and/or China supply chains, 12 or 23.5 percent said they felt a slight impact, while nine respondents said they felt no impact, eight said there was moderate impact, and three experienced high impact.

More than half or 26 of the total respondents are exporting to the US, while five are shipping products to China, and two have export operations in the two countries.

On the other hand, 22 of the respondents do not ship goods to any of the two countries.

While the US-China trade war’s impact has had little to no impact on their operations, 42 respondents or 82.4 percent want to take advantage of the opportunity the conflict may open such as becoming part of the supply chain of firms that may relocate to the Philippines from the US or China.

“This reflects the openness of Philippine exporters in diversifying their respective businesses,” Philexport said.

Philexport president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said the survey would be used as basis in deciding what actions would need to be taken.

“With the US and China are still in the top three of our biggest trading partners, there may be some impacts especially on Philippine exports of intermediary goods that pass through China to the US or vice versa,” he said.

The US and China are involved in a trade war, with both countries slapping tariffs on each other’s products.

So far, the US has imposed tariffs on more than $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and threatened to add more, while China has fired back through tariffs on more than $110 billion worth of items from the US.

There is hope the parties may enter into truce after US President Donald Trump said via his Twitter account on Nov.1, he had a conversation with China’s President Xi Jinping on many topics, with heavy emphasis on trade.

 “Those discussions are moving along nicely with meetings being scheduled at the G-20 in Argentina. Also had good discussion on North Korea!” he said.

Bloomberg reported that Trump asked US cabinet officials to come up with a draft trade deal with China before the G20 Leaders Summit which will be held from Nov.30 to Dec.1 in Buenos Aires.