Will The End of Trade Tariffs Increase Sales Wood Products to China?

Will The End of Trade Tariffs Increase Sales Wood Products to China?

October 7, 2019

The association has received many calls from both sawmills and lumber suppliers stating that as soon as the government ends tariffs on Chinese products that their sales will skyrocket and they will again become extremely profitable.

What a lot of companies are forgetting is that China's economic growth is slowing as the country switches to a domestic consumption-based economy from a production and investment-based system.

China has the world's largest labor market, but it is aging, which restricts growth in certain sectors.  According to china-briefing.com, China's workforce peaked in 2015 and has since been shrinking.  Eighteen percent of China's population - 249 million people, crossed the retirement age in 2018.  China still has a working-age population of close to a billion people, but they have fewer workers paying taxes to support the massive retiree population.

These factors coupled with China's rising inflation rate will cause an economic slowdown in the world economy regardless if the tariffs had never been placed at all.

This massive change in customer base is forcing US companies to seek other world wide customers for their products.

This information is courtesy of our friends the Barrett Family at the Weekly Hardwood Review.  For more information they may be contacted at (704) 543-4408.

Since 1929, the WPMA has focused on providing our members with programs and services to help them compete in a global economy.

For more information on this topic or other WPMA programs and services please contact Philip Bibeau, Executive Director at (978)874-5445 or Philip@wpma.org.