Philexport poll: US-China trade war ‘little’ to ‘no’ impact on biz

The results of a survey on the impact of the US-China trade conflict on the members of the Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (Philexport) showed little to no impact on their businesses.

Conducted during the recent General Membership Meeting of Philexport, which was attended by nearly 300 members from various sectors, the respondents were mostly small enterprises from the holiday decors group.

Of the 51 respondents to the poll, the majority (26) are exporting to the US while only five are exporting to China (additionally, two in each of the total number of exporters to the US and China are exporting to both). Meanwhile, 22 are not or not yet exporting to either of the two countries.

Of the 26 respondents that export to the US, the holiday decor sector has the most number of finished product exports to the US. This is followed by the food and jewelry, metals, housewares, and resource-based sectors.

Three key findings emerged from the poll participated in by micro, small, medium and large enterprises. Of these groups, nearly 53 percent of all respondents were small companies.

Foremost among the results is that majority of the respondents expressed interest in taking advantage of the opportunity the US-China conflict might bring, such as becoming a part of the supply chain of firms that might transfer their business to the Philippines from the US or China.

Out of the overall 51 respondents, 42 or 82.4 percent are open to the chance to become part of the US and China supply chains should firms in the two countries shift production to the Philippines.

This reflects the openness of Philippine exporters in diversifying their respective businesses, said the Philexport report.

Another major result is that a lot of Philippine exporters do not rely heavily on US and Chinese supply chains for their businesses. This means lesser impact would be felt by Philippine exporters from the US-China trade impasse.

Specifically, 19 respondents (37.3 percent) claimed to not feel the impact of the US-China trade war in their export business because they are not part of the supply chain of the two countries.

Of the respondents who are a part of the US and/or China supply chains, the export business of the 12 respondents (23.5 percent) felt a slight impact. This was followed by nine respondents saying they felt no impact, eight respondents with moderate impact, and only three respondents experiencing a high impact.

Philexport is looking at appropriate policy actions based on the outcome of the survey.