Retail chiefs have raised the alarm about China’s ‘dumping’ products in Britain in response to Donald Trump’s trade war.
High street bosses, including Curry’s Alex Baldock and Maplin Electronics’s Ollie Marshall, raised concerns that Chinese suppliers were already directing shipments that were previously intended for the US to the UK.
A flood of goods poses a threat to British businesses amid concerns that Chinese companies will offer items at rock-bottom prices to secure a sale.
Helen Dickinson, chief of the British Retail Consortium (BRC), said: “People are already starting to see signs of that happening.”
Marshall said the escalating trade war between the US and China meant British retailers were now facing an “acute problem”, urging the Government to take action or “risk losing a whole tier of responsible retailers”.
Baldock told the Financial Times that products were being diverted in a “straightforward dumping way”.
On Monday, MPs urged the Government’s Trade Remedies Authority to explain whether it was “monitoring the risk of trade diversion and dumping across the UK economy as a whole”.
Liam Byrne MP, chair of the Business and Trade Select Committee, said early monitoring was needed so the UK could respond quickly to “potential risks”, adding: “Recent press reporting suggests those risks may already be materialising.”
The UK is believed to be particularly vulnerable to dumping, given that the EU has already started to clamp down on low-value parcels being shipped from China. The EU has also signalled plans to plug a tax loophole, used by Chinese online retailers including Shein, that helps keep their prices low.
Andrew Gossage, boss of Ultimate Products, which sells items including fans and kitchen scales, said the UK was already a “big market” for the Chinese companies but more were now starting to prioritise the UK over the US.
It comes after Trump imposed 145pc tariffs on most Chinese imports last week. Beijing responded by placing 125pc tariffs on imports from the US.
While the US President has since announced an exemption for smartphones and some technology, popular products ranging from toys to shoes are still covered by the tariffs.
One senior retail leader said Chinese vendors would be “frantically looking for a new place to ship their product”, adding: “What we’re expecting more of is the risk of a flood of low quality, unsafe and tax dodging products being dumped into the UK.”
The issue is understood to have been raised with both Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Ms Dickinson said: “Obviously the Government has got a lot of things to balance when considering its response to what’s happening globally at the moment, but what we are saying is that this absolutely needs to be part of that trade policy review.”
She said this was particularly necessary given the EU was already curbing the sale of cheap Chinese products, adding: “That’s further raising the concerns from a UK market point of view.”
Andrew Goodacre, the chief executive of Bira, a trade group representing 6,000 independent retailers across the UK, said: “We were concerned about the volume of items from Chinese companies coming into the country before the tariffs chaos.
“The thought of Chinese companies dumping even more goods through these channels, a real possibility, is a worry for large and small retailers alike.”
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