Brands are intangible assets but that does not make them immune from trade conflicts involving physical goods.
To thrive, brands need to make themselves indispensable, suggests Elspeth Chueng, global director of the brand equity database BrandZ: “It’s not just about the product, but what consumers need in their daily lives.” As prices rise to compensate for higher tariffs — $200bn imposed by the US and $60bn by China in May — brands will need to justify that extra money.
Just take US car companies in China, which are feeling the strain already. Sales in China have dropped for the first time since 1990, partly as a result of trade war uncertainty prompting consumers to hold back on purchases. Cars dropped from being the third most valuable exported good to China from the US at over $10bn in 2017, to fourth at $6.65bn in 2018, according to US Census trade data.