In the world's largest wholesale market, American customers have dried up as tariffs hit
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Interesting but not surprising.
Hammers, hats and hair clips. Toys, tech, socks, baseball caps and Christmas decorations. If it’s a cheap manufactured product, it may well have come from the world’s largest wholesale market in the Chinese city of Yiwu.
With 75,000 suppliers spread across six buildings, it was once a one-stop shop for American companies, big and small, looking to buy cheap goods and export them back to the U.S.
Today it is on the front line of President Donald Trump’s trade war, and after he upped U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made goods from 10% to 145%, vendors told NBC News on Wednesday, their once reliable American clients have started to put orders on hold or cancel them altogether.
Nicole Zhang and her husband, Huang Fangchao, whose Yiwu Dowell Accessories Co. makes hair accessories for major brands using machine-cut and hand-finished materials, said around 60 or 70% of her 6 million pieces were destined for the U.S.
