Worries Over US-China Trade Casts at Big China Sales Event

Businesses at a big trade show in southern China felt worried. This happened on Tuesday in Guangzhou, China. Their worry was because of a trade fight started by the US government “Donald trump” earlier that month.

This part of China has always made a lot of things that get sold in the United States. The US and China are having a big fight about trade right now. The US government put large new taxes, called tariffs, on many things coming from China.

China then fought back. They put their own high taxes on goods coming from the US. This made things very unsure for businesses in both countries.

You could see this worry at the Canton Fair. This is a giant trade show held two times a year in Guangzhou. Around 31,000 companies set up tables there to sell their products, mostly to other countries.

One businessman, Mr. Hou, said he was worried. He said the new US taxes happened very fast. “We didn’t have time” to change plans, he said, and thought the problems would be “very big.”

Mr. Hou hoped that leaders could “sit down and talk properly.” He wished they could lower the taxes back to what they were before. Even with these worries, the fair was still crowded with visitors from all over the world.

This trade fight has also made stock markets nervous around the world. People are afraid that the world’s economy could slow down because of it.

Jean Zhu works for a lighting company. She said even though her company doesn’t sell much directly to the US, the trade war will probably still hurt them. “It must affect us in other ways,” she said, “because the world economy is all connected.”

She worried that other problems, like changes in money values because of the taxes, could make her main customers in Europe buy less. Ms. Zhu called the situation a big “reshuffle” for businesses like hers. She said it was “survival of the fittest” and hoped her company was strong enough.

Other people are feeling the effects in less direct ways too. Yang Hongjie sells electronics. His company sells mostly to Europe and Central Asia, not the US.

But he said the trade war could still make the materials they need, like copper, cost more. He also thought that maybe China would start working more closely with countries in its “Belt and Road” project. This is a big plan to connect trade with countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa, especially since trading with the US is difficult now.

In Short: The trade fight between the US and China is making businesses at China’s biggest trade fair worried. It affects not just sales to the US, but maybe the whole world’s economy. Companies are trying to figure out how to deal with this difficult time.