Faced with customers who were not amenable to price hikes, TrickleStar decided to bite the bullet and absorb the entire impact of the 25% tariffs rather than passing the cost on to them.
Malaysia-based but Singapore-listed, TrickleStar designs and supplies energy-saving products. However, when the trade war between the US and China erupted in late 2018 and escalated throughout 2019, it too was caught in the crossfire like the many companies with a Trans-Pacific footprint.
At the time, TrickleStar had outsourced the manufacturing of its products to its contractor, Taiwan-listed Powertech Industrial, whose factories were located in China. This means that TrickleStar’s products, largely exported from China to the US, were affected by the tariffs.
