Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025 and the massive deployment of a very aggressive tariff package put many Chinese companies on the ropes. The US Administration attacked most of the countries with whom it maintains commercial relations, but, as Trump had anticipated, he attacked China. Xi Jinping’s government responded activating export controls very strict on their critical minerals and rare earths, and it worked.
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping They met in October and agreed to relax the aggressive exchange of tariffs that they had during the first months of the year, but many Chinese companies had already been forced to react. Some of them chose to develop new plants in countries close to China that were not initially subject to such aggressive tariffs by the US, such as India or Malaysia. However, this solution was partial. It allowed them to avoid tariffs to a certain extent, but it did not solve their structural problems.
China’s infrastructure is irreplaceable
Agilian Technology is a Chinese company based in Dongguan that specializes in manufacturing products for third parties. Most of its clients are Western companies that need to produce their products in China, but do not have the necessary business volume to support the manufacturing of a huge number of products. Like many other Chinese companies, Agilian suffered a lot due to the tariffs that the US deployed at the beginning of 2025.
Agilian Technology has emerged victorious. In fact, it hopes to increase its income by 30% over the next three years.
In fact, their problems actually began before Donald Trump returned to the White House. The threats from the current US president put a good part of Agilian’s clients on notice, so the latter chose to anticipate and asked it to send large quantities of products to North America. before the tariffs went into effect. Other Agilian clients suggested that he set up manufacturing and assembly plants in other countries that presumably were not going to be as affected as China by US tariffs.
Agilian, like many other Chinese companies, accepted its customers’ conditions, although some of them canceled their orders. After carefully weighing which would be the ideal places to which they could divert part of their production, Agilian managers opted to launch a factory in Dharwad (India) and another in Penang (Malaysia). However, they soon realized that their Dongguan plant would remain indispensable.
The slow pace of bureaucracy in India greatly slowed the start-up of the Dharwad plant, and pre-production testing in Penang took months to begin because everything in Malaysia is much slower than in China. Dongguan continues to be the engine of Agilian, but thanks to the expansion of its infrastructure in response to pressure from the US this company is now much better prepared to withstand future clashes that the Chinese and American Administrations may have.
Agilian Technology has emerged victorious. In fact, trust increase your income by 30% for the next three years. And its model is identical to the one that many other Chinese companies that are dedicated to manufacturing products have embraced.
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More information | Reuters
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