What’s next for CK and Tommy Hilfiger after parent’s inclusion on Chinese blacklist?

In a sprawling shopping centre in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger stores sit eerily empty on a workday lunchtime, their quiet storefronts a ghostly reflection of China’s broader consumption slowdown.

But an even darker shadow has been cast over the American clothing brands in China, with their parent company, PVH, landing on a blacklist after being caught up in tit-for-tat trade sanctions.

China’s Ministry of Commerce placed PVH on its Unreliable Entity List (UEL) on Tuesday, along with American genetic testing company Illumina. The UEL is a blacklist similar to the United States’ entity lists, which restrict foreign companies’ access to US technology and their ability to do business with US companies.

“China is completely reactive, and will revoke these measures if Mr Trump walks back from his fentanyl-related tariffs,” said Xu Tianchen, a senior China economist with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The Ministry of Commerce said PVH and Illumina had “violated normal market transaction principles by unilaterally cutting off normal business dealings with Chinese companies and imposing discriminatory measures, severely harming the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises”.