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China is set to flood Britain with cheap vapes, researchers have said, as manufacturers seek to capitalise on the world’s second biggest market after Donald Trump’s tariffs.
A trade standoff between Washington and Beijing has thrown the business world into chaos, with investors watching as each country dares the other to blink first.
After last week’s uneasy truce, the total US import tax on Chinese-made vapes stood at about 60%. That has sent China’s $11.1bn (£8.4bn) e-cigarette export industry, already scarred by stringent domestic restrictions in 2022, back to the drawing board.
It comes as the UK’s forthcoming ban on disposable vapes, which aims to reduce the number of devices that are thrown away – about 8m a week – and stop young people from taking up the habit, has brought new models of e-cigarette into the market.
Deborah Arnott, an honorary associate professor at University College London and the former chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said China’s natural response would be to target the UK. “With reduced access to the US, there will be growing competition to sell to the UK market, as it’s the main alternative,” she said.
Factory owners have already felt the pinch over the past few weeks of global uncertainty, according to Dr Steve Shaowei Xu, a research scientist at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and an expert on the Chinese e-cigarette industry.
“Already there are reports [that] shipments have been blocked and US orders cut in half,” Xu said, adding that the “very sophisticated” industry would find ways to circumnavigate the current “disaster”.
Britain, where more than 90% of e-cigarettes are imports from China, has its own internal problems with vaping. Ministers are preparing for a domestic ban on disposable vapes from 1 June, with the aim of curbing youth vaping and reducing plastic waste.
Experts are concerned that the industry has already come up with a workaround that will stymie the efforts of the UK government, while cheaper Chinese imports diverted from the US could put downward pressure on prices.
Manufacturers have been rapidly developing new models that comply with the ban, with variations of popular brands now widely available.
These vapes are rechargeable, and have a replaceable pod and a changeable coil, which means they qualify as a “vape kit” and not a disposable. But experts say these often look “very similar” to disposable versions, raising fears they will be treated as such.
There are also concerns over the availability of refillable pods. The Guardian went to 30 stores in London and Manchester, looking for refills of the Elf Bar 600 prefilled-pod kit. Only two shops stocked them.
Arnott said: “All the main manufacturers produce these products now and they look the same and are very similar prices to the disposables they are replacing.
“My concern is that because they don’t look any different and are still very cheap, people may carry on treating them like disposables and throwing them away rather than buying refills.”
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Xu said the Chinese vaping industry was a “very sophisticated, fast-moving consumer goods industry” and would continue to find workarounds to comply, particularly in the face of “disaster” tariffs.
He added: “In the longer term they can try to move manufacturing overseas to circumvent the tariffs, but in the short term they have to find replacement markets to survive.”
Scott Butler, the executive director of Material Focus, a not-for-profit organisation that runs the Recycle Your Electricals campaign, said the ban did not break the “throwaway vaping” habit.
He said: “This ban takes the most environmentally wasteful and damaging types of vapes off the market, so that is a good thing.
“But millions and millions of vapes are going to continue to be sold, and unless there’s real action to make it easier for the public to recycle them, they’ll keep ending up in bins, on streets and in landfill.”
An Elf Bar and Lost Mary spokesperson said: “We can confirm our refill pods and containers are widely available across the UK, including all key wholesalers and major supermarkets – and that this scale continues to grow.
“However, we understand your concerns around refill accessibility, as we are not in a position to know the extent to which all other brands are making refill parts available.
“Although we have not had the opportunity to review the research in question, we are disappointed the availability of our refills does not appear to be fully reflected. To give an accurate and balanced picture of the current market landscape, it is important that all major brands are included.”
