‘We will have to raise prices’: gloom and resolve in Yiwu, on China’s trade war frontline

A woman in the huge market in Yiwu, China, whose wholesalers are on the frontline of Trump’s new trade war. Photograph: Alex Plavevski/EPA

If you have ever bought a Christmas decoration, a button, an electric shaver or any other cheap manufactured product, there is a good chance it came from Yiwu, a city in east China’s Zhejiang province that is home to the world’s largest wholesale market.

Covering more than 4m square metres, tens of thousands of suppliers have booths in Yiwu International Trade City. As the US and China exchange increasingly hysterical rhetoric and threaten ever-higher tariffs, it is vendors at places like Yiwu who are at the frontline of the new trade war.