SHENZHEN, China, April 11 (Reuters) - China's Anker, one
of Amazon's ( AMZN ) largest sellers offering products from power banks
to phone cases, has raised prices on a fifth of its products on
the U.S. platform since Thursday, in a sign that tariffs on
Chinese goods are being passed on to U.S. shoppers.
Some 127 Anker products have seen an average
increase of 18% since Thursday last week, with the majority of
those occurring after Monday, April 7, when U.S. President
Donald Trump added an extra 50% import duty on Chinese goods,
according to data from e-commerce services provider SmartScout.
U.S. import tariffs on Chinese products now stand at 145%.
Beijing on Friday raised its tariff on U.S. goods to 125%, as a
trade war between the world's top two economies intensifies.
Anker and Amazon ( AMZN ) did not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
The move follows warnings from China's largest cross-border
e-commerce association that many Chinese companies that sell
products on Amazon ( AMZN ) are preparing to hike prices for the U.S. or
quit the market due to the tariffs.
"It's the most concerted effort (to raise prices) I've seen
across any brand," said Scott Needham, SmartScout's founder.
Anker, which has 5,000 employees and annual revenues of
22.17 billion yuan ($3 billion), has become a major seller on
Amazon ( AMZN ) since being founded by a former Google software engineer
in 2011.
On a call with investors on Monday, Anker said that it was
able to raise prices as it had bargaining power and because its
rivals were mainly Chinese and under similar tariff pressure,
but did not provide specifics.
It also said it would explore non-U.S. markets like Europe
and Southeast Asia.
($1 = 7.3218 Chinese yuan renminbi)