Analysis of the strategic transformation path of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong under international trade protectionism

  The impact of international trade protectionism on small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province

  In the post-financial crisis era, the world economic pattern is obviously different. The international financial crisis has plunged the economy of developed countries into a downturn, and developed countries have taken this opportunity to adopt trade protection policies, and the momentum of trade protectionism has risen globally. The field of trade protection has been widened, from goods to services and trade-related investment and intellectual property rights. Trade protection means are even more diverse, from the original tariff measures to non-tariff measures and then developed to environmental protection and social responsibility measures.

According to the latest data from the Ministry of Commerce, in 2016, China encountered a total of 119 trade remedy investigations initiated by 27 countries and regions, involving an amount of $143.4 billion. The number of cases and the amount involved rose by 368% and 76% respectively year-on-year. Tariffs or non-tariff barriers to their own weak small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises based on the international market more difficult.

  (A) the global economy is still in the deep adjustment period after the international financial crisis, economic recovery is weak, the international market demand is weak. Due to the economic development of the United States, Japan, Europe and other major trading partners, demand has declined, orders have decreased, foreign trade enterprises have problems with their capital chains and face difficulties in recovering overseas payments.
  (2) Small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province are frequently subject to trade barriers. Guangdong is the province that encounters the most trade friction. Guangdong Province’s exports account for more than 1/3 of China’s total exports, but the trade frictions suffered by more than 2/3 of the country. According to statistics, Guangdong Province, at least 80% of the current export enterprises have encountered technical barriers to trade. The main industries involved are textiles, clothing, footwear, ceramics, furniture and other industries where small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are concentrated.

  (3) The international financial crisis has brought to the fore various inherent problems of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong itself. The main manifestation is the weak anti-risk ability, low management level, lack of core competitiveness, etc.. In addition, the domestic economy is in the transformation stage, the export tax rebate subsidy policy is tightened, the labor cost, raw material cost and logistics cost of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are high, and there are financing difficulties, which bring great pressure to small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong, and the operating cost of foreign trade enterprises is rising.

 The necessity of strategic transformation of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province

  (A) Low service capacity of enterprises, the development of traditional business model is limited

  The traditional business model of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises is to simply rely on foreign trade operation rights, buy low and sell high to earn the difference or be satisfied with collecting commissions from import and export agents. With the liberalization of foreign trade operation rights, domestic enterprises that originally produced but did not have foreign trade operation rights gradually turned to self-managed import and export, the competitiveness of manufacturers and retailers gradually increased, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are threatened by the profit squeeze from the upstream purchasing and downstream sales links within the value chain [4], and the development space of intermediaries is limited.

  (2) The export commodities are mainly labor-intensive goods, and the export market? The disagreement? in concentration

  Small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province export commodities are mainly plastics, textiles, rubber and its products, leather, fur and its products, chemical products and other low value-added labor-intensive commodities, and textile commodities are the largest export commodities. Their export markets are mainly concentrated in Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asian countries, followed by the European Union and the United States, and the proportion of these major export markets accounts for more than 70% of the total exports [5].

  (iii) Insufficient core competitiveness of enterprises and lack of strategic vision planning

  Small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are small in scale, lacking brand, differentiation and innovation advantages, insufficient core competitiveness and weak risk resistance. Once the foreign demand market changes, enterprises will face survival pressure and struggle. In addition, many factors at home and abroad led to a sharp rise in foreign trade transaction costs, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises still rely on labor-intensive, resource-intensive products of low-cost competition model, has been difficult to adapt to changes in the international economic situation. Therefore, it is imperative for small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province to achieve strategic transformation.

  The strategic transformation path of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province under international trade protectionism

  (1) Change the development concept and cultivate the awareness of core competitiveness

  The fundamental purpose of implementing strategic transformation of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong is to optimize the allocation of enterprise resources, cultivate and improve their core competitiveness and obtain sustainable competitive advantages through strategic transformation. Therefore, enterprises should first change the development concept, cultivate the awareness of core competitiveness and innovate the strategic management concept. Enterprises should not only focus on value realization, but also focus on value enhancement, focus on brand to enhance the added value of products, access to pricing power and the right to speak, to achieve the value of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province. Only by establishing a good strategic awareness, realizing the interaction between enterprises and the environment, and cultivating their own core competitiveness, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises can seize the development opportunities in the new environment, gain long-term development and achieve greater ambitions.

  (2) Change the development mode and implement specialized management strategy

  Due to limited resources and competitiveness, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises cannot carry out large-scale operation like large enterprises, nor do they have the technical advantages of fully independent innovation. With the liberalization of foreign trade operation rights, the status of foreign trade intermediaries is affected, but small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises themselves have unique resource advantages: first, they have rich experience in international trade operations and trade information and business reputation accumulated over the years; second, they have cooperative and trusting relationships with customers and suppliers. Circulation foreign trade enterprises for production, processing enterprises sales products, the two have a natural bond, but also has a broad market network, and customers to maintain a good business and personal relations, a better understanding of customer needs, to grasp the new trends in the international market; third is familiar with the international business of highly qualified professionals and other technical personnel. Therefore, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong should give full play to their own advantages and carry out specialized operations.

  Specialized management requires, on the one hand, to provide personalized services for target customers and establish a competitive advantage in this way. Successful specialized operation is to focus on the limited resources of traditional small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises, to provide connotation services to customers as the main form, cultivate and improve the core competitiveness of enterprises. It should be led by industry associations, with the participation of relevant government authorities to promote the integration of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises import and export service resources, actively develop export promotion systems and trade intermediaries, unify service processes and agency fees and other standards, improve export efficiency and implement market diversification strategies. On the other hand, it requires close cooperation with upstream and downstream partners, the implementation of specialized division of labor, abandoning less efficient business content or links, so as to reduce operating costs, optimize resource allocation, and achieve a higher level of differentiated services and economies of scale

  (3) Strengthening supply chain management and building core competitiveness

  Supply chain management refers to the design, planning and control of information flow, logistics and capital flow in the supply chain from suppliers, manufacturers to wholesalers, retailers to customers, and the coordination and integration of product flow, information flow and capital flow within the company and among partner companies, so as to obtain the competitive advantage of the enterprise. For a long time, the business model of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong has been based on the simple trade agency type, acting only as a transaction intermediary between customers and suppliers. This simple, low-level intermediary service lacks creativity and low value-added business. In order to implement professional management strategy, Guangdong small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises should not only act as intermediaries, but also carry out strategic planning of supply chain, become a participant and integrator of supply chain, and re-establish their strategic position in the value chain.

Supply chain management emphasizes on focusing mainly on the key business of the enterprise, giving full play to its own advantages, while establishing strategic partnerships with suitable enterprises around the world, and having non-core business done by partner enterprises. Enterprises must carefully analyze and clarify where their core strengths lie, and actively take measures to strive to improve their core competitiveness. Small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises with strong market research ability should take R&D as their core business; small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises with strong international business negotiation ability should take sales as their core business; small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises with the ability to develop domestic market and implement sources of goods should take procurement as their core business; small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises with the ability to handle foreign trade business operations such as customs, transportation, finance, commodity inspection and taxation should take logistics as the core business. The core business of enterprises can not only help them seek a place in the supply chain competition, but also help them expand horizontally in other business fields and build core competitiveness.

  (4) Actively extend to both ends of the value chain and cultivate new advantages in international competition

  Due to limited internal resources, it is appropriate for small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises to extend to the value chain, one is to extend to the upstream factories, acting as the leader and information getter for the exports of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. The high industrial and regional concentration of Guangdong SMEs has produced a strong industrial cluster effect [and small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises can base on the industrial clusters in the region, form strategic alliances with small and medium-sized manufacturers, control a part of processing enterprises and raw material sources, and widely contact sources of goods. Joint export management is a desirable business model, which is a derivative of the traditional foreign trade business model of commission purchasing agency model, which refers to the purchase and integration of goods in one or more companies to meet existing orders or placed in foreign markets.

Second, the extension of the downstream sales terminal, the establishment of their own marketing network in foreign markets, to accelerate the pace of “going global” is an effective way to avoid international trade barriers and promote the transformation of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong.

  Foreign trade enterprises mainly have two forms to extend the value chain: one is to set up overseas subsidiaries; the other is to entrust local enterprises as general agents to deal directly with retailers, reducing intermediate links, which can increase profits. At present, most small and medium-sized export-oriented enterprises in Guangdong only care about the growth of export value and the improvement of export efficiency, but not about the needs of end-users, lack of efficient international marketing network, global resource integration and market development capabilities are seriously inadequate. In the competitive international market, it is necessary to move from trade exports to?F generation international marketing, take customer demand, customer cost, customer convenience, and customer communication as the guide, establish international marketing strategic thinking, increase marketing efforts, and establish independent marketing networks in foreign markets.

  (E) Build supply chain information platform and effectively integrate external resources

  Supply chain management must be based on a more complete information infrastructure, and the coordinated operation of the supply chain is based on high-quality information transfer and sharing of each node enterprise, which provides support for the virtual alliance between partners and further reduces the coordination cost between alliances, and is also a necessary condition for reducing and controlling transaction costs. Through the information platform of the supply chain, the organizational structure operation and business process of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are made more open. Through virtual operation, small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises constantly maintain communication and exchange with customers and realize effective integration of external resources.