In the past few days, there have been many macro-favorable factors in foreign trade, such as the signing of RCEP, new progress in foreign vaccines, etc. However, the textile industry in foreign trade has experienced an overall decline. With a sad look on his face, a textile foreign trade person said: “The recent depreciation of the U.S. dollar and the increase in shipping prices have meant that our profits have not improved much.”
RMB appreciation, Boss Bu’s profit cut in half
Recently, the appreciation of the RMB has been a hot topic in the textile foreign trade circle. According to a trader, “Our customers are foreign trade companies and we do business directly with American customers. The business, exporting clothing, has a relatively large order volume. It was originally estimated that the profit would be about 4 million, but due to the exchange rate, it was only about 2 million, and half of the profit was eaten up by the exchange rate.”
Foreign trade is generally settled in U.S. dollars. The rise and fall of exchange rates has always been a pain in the hearts of foreign traders. Many foreign traders Boss Bu has experienced exchange rate losses. According to a foreign trader exporting to Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea: “In the past few years, when we quoted prices, we quoted an exchange rate of 7.8. When settling foreign exchange, the exchange rate was only 7.3. That year we lost about 3000000. ”
For this situation, an old foreign trade master put forward his own views : “Exchange rate fluctuations are something we all encounter more or less when doing foreign trade. I had a similar lesson before and lost a lot, so now I adopt the strategy of locking in foreign exchange and locked up 70 million US dollars when the exchange rate was 7.01. Now the RMB The exchange rate has risen to 6.5, which has no impact on me. My current foreign exchange settlement exchange rate is still 7.01. This year I locked up the foreign exchange and earned about 70,000 to 800,000 yuan more. ”
The advantage of locking the exchange rate is that there will be no interruption due to the fall in the exchange rate when executing the contract. Causing losses, and for some foreign traders who have not adopted a foreign exchange lock-up strategy, they are now struggling with when to settle foreign exchange? Judging from the current trend, the signing of RCEP and the obvious anti-epidemic effects achieved by China may lead to a decline in RMB Continue to appreciate.
But if the foreign exchange is settled now, foreign trade people will also be very heartbroken. After all, now The exchange rate is only 6.5. The exchange rate at the beginning of the year was 7.2. How can we be so determined to settle foreign exchange? “It is true that we will lose a lot in settling foreign exchange now, but there are only 2 months left before the end of the year. No matter what the exchange rate is then, we will have to settle Yes, there are too many ways to spend money at the end of the year. “A foreign trade person said helplessly. But this incident also tells us that in the future, exchange rate risks must be included in cost control and leave a certain amount of leeway when quoting.
Marine shipping prices are soaring, and the return of containers is not smooth
In addition to the strengthening of the RMB exchange rate, the recent rise in shipping prices and the difficulty in determining containers are all tiring things for foreign trade people. It is understood that due to the rebound of the epidemic abroad, container shipments in various places overseas have The poor return flow has resulted in the dilemma that it is difficult to find a container in China and there is nowhere to place European and American containers.
At present, there is a shortage of empty containers in major ports such as Qingdao, Ningbo and Shanghai. Freight forwarders and cargo owners are experiencing high freight rates of 4,000 yuan in South America, 5,000 yuan in the eastern United States, and 1,000 yuan in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the current competition for space is like a shopping flash sale, and it is slow. It’s impossible to grab one, and even if you pay more, you may not be able to reserve a cabinet. Many foreign trade people said that this year’s shipping is so crazy and they have never seen it before.
A foreign trade salesperson of the editor said: “Recently, sea freight has increased a lot. At the end of the month, we will immediately It was time to load the cabinets, and there was always a shortage of cabinets. Our customer was very anxious. He told us that if we couldn’t deliver the goods on time at the end of the month, we would have to switch to air freight. The price of air freight was really unaffordable. ”
Generally speaking, sea shipping is chosen because the cost of air shipping is too high. A textile worker said: “Last year, because we couldn’t catch up with the shipping date, we used air freight, which cost us an extra 200,000 yuan. If we did it a few more times, our profits for that year would have been wiped out. ”
Textile companies have always been operating on low profits, with 10%-15% The profit is already very good. Once the goods cannot be shipped smoothly due to the shortage of cabinets, the price of air freight will be several times that of sea freight. It may take several orders to make up for the loss of this order.�. Doing foreign trade this year is indeed miserable. In the first half of the year, foreign trade almost stagnated. In the second half of the year, foreign trade orders began to pick up. However, a series of cabinet shortages, rising freight costs, etc. occurred, causing profits to be repeatedly diluted.
Postscript
For textile foreign traders, the recent exchange rate, rising freight rates, and whether they can book a ship and ship on time, etc. are all important issues. It’s very worrying, but at least most traders now have orders on hand to execute, which is much better than the situation in the first half of the year when they had no orders to fill and took turns. In the long run, the rebound in foreign trade orders and the appreciation of the RMB also represent the continuous improvement of China’s strength. At least in the textile industry, it has become increasingly difficult for other countries to replace China. In this regard, the editor would also like to remind all textile foreign traders that the shortage of containers may continue for a period of time. In order to catch up with the delivery date, arrangements must be made in advance.
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