Foreign orders on the up in Guangdong

Chinese foreign trade companies are picking up steam in fulfilling orders after China and the United States announced on Monday that they had reached an agreement to reduce tariffs on each other during trade talks in Geneva, Switzerland.

The influx of orders from the U.S. has posed a challenge to the production and supply capabilities of foreign trade enterprises, business executives said.

Wang Li, general manager of a home furniture company in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, said that her company secured four new orders on Tuesday alone, worth a total value of $300,000, which is close to the total order value of the previous two weeks.

"We have planned to send at least eight containers to the U.S. within the week," Wang said, adding that she predicts that orders will continue to surge in the following three months.

Zhang Wulin, general manager of a digital technology company in Dongguan, Guangdong, said he has seen a rapid rebound in U.S. orders following the tariff reductions.

"All our sales representatives are now busy with shipping and have no time to count the order volume," he said.

Yan Longhai, secretary-general of the Guangzhou Cross-Border E-commerce Industry Association, said that based on the association's customer feedback, orders secured in May have increased by 20 to 40 percent compared with the same period last month.

"Due to the tariff reduction, the orders that were originally suspended will gradually resume," he said.

Chen Yongjun, a distinguished professor at Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, noted that the U.S. remains one of the major trade partners of China. China's exports to the U.S. represented 14.7 percent of the country's total in 2024, lower than the 19.2 percent recorded in 2018.

Official data showed that Guangdong, as China's largest foreign trade province, sold 948.81 billion yuan ($131.65 billion) worth of products to the U.S. last year, with the proportion of exports to the U.S. having fallen to 16.1 percent.

The tariff reductions would help promote trade expansion between the two nations, said Chen. He urged domestic manufacturers to further improve product competitiveness and diversify their global market presence while increasing their presence in the U.S. market.

In Shanghai, Ding Linfeng, general manager of a local sunshade equipment company, said that a U.S. customer had placed an order on Monday evening.

Ding said the U.S. customer was in a hurry to place a new order and hoped that production would be completed within a month, as maritime transportation of goods still takes another month.

Ding said that he received orders worth more than 1 million yuan from the U.S. on the night of the tariff reductions.

Lin Xiaoming, general manager of Yiwu Lincy Lock Industry Co based in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, said that the company has continued to fulfill the contracts previously signed with its U.S. clients following the tariff reductions, as now the tariff is much lower, which results in very high profits for them. "Therefore, they also continue to adhere to the previous contracts," said Lin, whose company produces locks and exports more than 50,000 locks per day.

"This year, our trade volume with other countries has been consistently increasing. The tariff interruptions have actually helped other countries gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Chinese market," he said.

The surge in orders from the rest of the world has also promoted the growth of the shipping and logistics industries.

A Shenzhen-based international logistics company's U.S. route business is experiencing growth, with prices continuing to rise, but container shipments remain tight, said a local shipping executive.