Chinese sellers bracing as Amazon Prime Day sale could put weight of US tariffs on display
Retailers say some of the price hikes from Washington’s tariffs are passed on to consumers, but they also have to eat up extra costs to remain competitive
Ahead of Amazon’s annual Prime Day sales event, Chinese sellers are already walking a tightrope as they try to strike a balance between staying competitive and adjusting to Washington’s tariffs.
Gloria Gu, an Amazon seller based in Zhejiang province, said her outlook for this year’s summer event – extended this year to a record four days, July 8-11 – was “not optimistic”.
Her company mainly sells household consumables – low-margin products that are highly price-sensitive. “Depending on the item, prices have gone up by 10 to 20 per cent,” she said, while the minimum discount requirement for Prime Day deals on Amazon’s platform is 20 per cent, the same as in previous years.
“We pass part of that on to consumers, but we also eat up some ourselves and ask our suppliers to share the burden,” she explained. But raising prices too much is not an option in Amazon’s hyper-competitive environment, she added.
“The market is still extremely cutthroat; we really can’t hike prices too much,” she said, noting that the platform’s own fees were also climbing.
With a US tariff deadline approaching on July 9 – marking the end to President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariffs” for most countries, excluding China – and with Amazon kicking off one of its biggest sales events of the year just a day earlier, many price-sensitive American consumers are waiting to see if they will be the ones hit hardest, as inflation and overall cost-of-living concerns are front of mind.