Richard Mojica was quoted on the recent spike in the Office of the United States Trade Representative's (USTR's) denials of tariff exemptions for companies looking to import merchandise from China. "This is the United States government unapologetically telling companies, 'move out of China'. Either they have to move out of China or pay the tariff. That has become a reality. The bigger companies that are more flexible have initiated plans to scale back from China in many different ways." 

"One of the main grounds for denial by USTR is that a company did not demonstrate that its product can only be sourced from China," Mojica added. " So, even if you said, 'we source entirely from China and all of our competitors to the best of our knowledge source entirely from China', unless you are able to somehow demonstrate without any doubt that the product is only available from China, in the current environment, you are going to get denied. When you are talking about apparel and to a certain extent electronics, it sets a very high bar."