(Left) Little comfort: Kavesh of 3P Marketplace Solutions spent months locating a factory in India that could make his products, but raw materials still have to be imported from China. — Bloomberg
OVER the past several years, Shanghai entrepreneur Yung Lin has built a decent business selling wrenches, screwdrivers and other tools on Amazon.com. Then President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on thousands of goods made in China, and Lin faced a difficult choice: eat the additional cost or try and pass it onto his mostly American customers. He chose to raise prices and watched sales of some products dive by as much as one third in just two weeks.
Amazon.com Inc merchants around the world are scrambling to navigate an unpredictable trade war that’s upending their proven business model of buying inexpensive goods in China and selling them at a markup in the US. The problem is particularly acute now as Trump weighs another US$300bil worth of tariffs, many on consumer goods.
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