Joseph Cassis, director of operations of Ten Square International Inc., speaks during an interview with Xinhua in Des Moines of Iowa state, the United States, July 26, 2018. "I hope it (the pain) never reaches 10 because if it does, the world's not going to be very good and it's going to be very bad," Joseph Cassis, director of operations of Ten Square International Inc. told Xinhua about his view of the ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States. TO GO WITH Interview: Hope pain of China-U.S. trade dispute never reaches 10, says company executive (Xinhua/Wang Ping)
CHICAGO, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- "I hope it (the pain) never reaches 10 because if it does, the world's not going to be very good and it's going to be very bad," Joseph Cassis, director of operations of Ten Square International Inc. told Xinhua about his view of the ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States.
Comparing the pain caused to his company by the imposition of trade tariffs to the 10 levels of pain doctors ask patients to rate at the hospital, Cassis said that the current pain his import-export company feels is not really severe, "it's sort of a subtle pain ... we aren't at the 10th level. We're probably at one or two."
But if the situation lasts for six months to a year, the pain may "jump from two or three to maybe seven or eight," Cassis said, adding that there could be a "ripple effect."
Cassis' company has been engaged in the import and export of industrial and agricultural equipment with China ever since its establishment in 1990 in the U.S. state of Iowa. At present, it has approximately 110 employees in five locations throughout China.
Now, with U.S. tariffs and China's retaliatory tariffs looming, Cassis is a bit worried.
"We had an order for a steel tubing that was made in China, and before I could leave the factory you got hit with tariff of 25 percent and it was a 50,000-dollar order so it added another approximately 12,000 dollars," Cassis said.
Cassis hopes his customers in China will still want to buy U.S.-made equipment, as the company has a major customer base in China. Tariffs "really undermine a good healthy business," Cassis said.
What worries Cassis is that with China's improvement in technology, Chinese customers may not wait for U.S. equipment any longer if there are delays in getting U.S. equipment.
They "have to buy something," he said, noting that they may buy equipment from somewhere else and keep producing. "Those are the implications that President Trump and his administration might not have seen," Cassis said.
Cassis hopes the United States and China can work together. "We all have to live together. We've just got to work together and work it out," he said. "The sooner they can identify how they can make it equitable, the better for everybody."
