Jake’s Take: Here’s Why Brands Should Keep Calm & Carry On

With trade tensions escalating this week, WPIC Marketing + Technologies has been fielding countless inquiries from consumer brands around the world about how to navigate this new landscape.

Here’s what we’ve been telling them.

First, for American consumer brands, your market access to China is unaffected. The regulatory landscape in China remains stable for American brands selling consumer goods, particularly in the fashion, personal care, food, vitamins, and lifestyle categories.

Chinese consumer demand for U.S. goods also remains unaffected—unlike in Canada, where politicians and ordinary Canadians are pushing for a boycott of American goods, Chinese consumers aren’t changing their purchasing behavior in response to U.S. tariffs. In trade war 1.0, we did not see any Chinese consumer boycott of American products, and we don’t expect to see that in trade war 2.0.

China’s reaction to U.S. tariffs has been relatively limited, targeting politically sensitive industries like agriculture and biotech. Any future measures are unlikely to ensnare the vast majority of consumer brands—but WPIC’s cross-border capabilities (FTZ warehouses in Weihai and Nanjing) can help those brands avoid any potential challenges.

In sum, American consumer goods companies may be dealing with supply chain disruptions from U.S. tariffs—but their exports into China are not impacted.

For Canadian and European brands who rely on the U.S. market, our message is to diversify by expanding into Asia. China, Japan, and South Korea are among the largest e-commerce and consumer markets globally, with growing demand for high-quality Canadian and European goods such as food, pet care, beauty, apparel, and outdoor products. It’s easier than ever to access those markets via cross-border e-commerce (and with WPIC’s end-to-end solution set helping you quickly activate a sales presence).