But for some specialty products going between the two countries, it's not possible to shift production and the company risks losing business, Martin Pavlik, director of business development, said.
"What you lose is competitiveness in price because there are local producers in Asia or producers in Europe that are not affected," he said. "Although we have a lot of products that are benchmarks in the industry, it's all about the cost.
"We don't see right now an erosion of sales because we are putting a lot of different efforts in place but how long we will be able to hold, is a question of time," he added in an interview at the company's booth.
A regional executive in Dow Inc.'s packaging and specialty plastics business said the company has been able in general to manage the tariff impacts in his unit by shifting sourcing around among its global production base.
Bambang Candra, Dow's Singapore-based commercial vice president of packaging and specialty plastics for Asia Pacific, said it is still seeing healthy 10-20 percent annual demand growth for their plastics in packaging products in China.
"When you're talking about packaging, we believe the fundamental demand is still there," Candra said.
The U.S. plastics materials industry has argued strongly against tariffs by either country, with its lobbying organizations like the American Chemistry Council saying they harm U.S. exports to China, now the world's largest plastics market.
ACC said in early May that the tariffs are starting to damage the industry's supply chain and hurt the competitiveness of the U.S. petrochemical industry.
But companies in other parts of the U.S. plastics industry have welcomed tariffs on items such as plastic packaging and vinyl flooring, saying that they face unfair competition from China. Tariff advocates say China's industrial policies advantage its industry, and they say tariffs will mean more jobs in their U.S. factories.
While the mood at the trade show was generally against tariffs and trade conflicts, the mood within the larger U.S. industry is more split.
That may be in part because the United States runs an annual deficit of about $11.5 billion with China's plastics industry, with deficits in plastic products, machinery and molds. Only the resin sector has a surplus with China, reaching $2.7 billion in 2017.
source : www.plasticsnews.com