The Impact of Sino-US Trade War on LED Lighting Exports

The U.S. government officially issued the 301 investigation on April 4, 2018, recommending the collection of a 25% tariff on Chinese products and listing a list of 1,300 tariff lines. LED Inside LED display research center (LED inside) pointed out that because in this list involving LED products mainly for industrial intermediate products, including chips and backlight products, accounting for the proportion of China's LED industry exports to the US market is low, so for Chinese LED companies, the real impact is limited.

Judging from the 1300 product list published by the United States, there are several projects related to the LED industry: 85414020, 85419000, and 90330020. China is a major producer of LED products. The above three types of products are industrial intermediate products. The demand market is mainly China's LED application product manufacturing enterprises, and is not directly used by consumers. Therefore, the proportion of this industrial intermediate product in exports is very low, only about 5% of the LED industry output value, and because the United States native LED application production companies are few, the proportion of direct exports to the United States market is even lower.

China's LED customs code is 85414010, and the United States listed 85414020 actually described in Chinese customs as a solar battery product. Therefore, the export value of LED products actually included in the tariff list is only US$46 million in 2017. Even if 85414010 is actually incorporated into taxation items, it is only US$129 million, not exceeding US$200 million in total. China's LED industry has a scale of more than 100 billion RMB, and the impact is quite limited.

On the other hand, China’s LED products with a large proportion of exports to the United States are mainly concentrated in downstream applications, such as lighting product category items 94540090, 94051000, display categories 85312000, etc., but the above items are not within the limits of this 301 list. Inside. However, due to the small number of US-based application product manufacturers and the majority of lighting brand companies and sales channels that have been commissioned by China, in the future, if such application products are subject to taxation, the price of this type of products sold in the United States market may increase dramatically.