Trade barriers have occupied more content in bilateral trade between China and the United States. With Donald Trump elected successfully as the new president of the United States and the global wave of anti-globalization, Chinese exports to the United States is full of more uncertainty for Chinese companies.

Compared with big enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises don't have enough resource to build a good response to deal with the trade barriers, so the purpose of this thesis is to get a better understanding on how Chinese SMEs build strategic response to deal with trade barriers from the United States. We discuss with different aspects and provide suggestion for SMEs to build an appropriate strategic response upon their existing resources and conditions.

The study is based on a qualitative approach. The data collection for this thesis research is based on semi-structured interviews from 5 small-and-medium enterprises in China. In this thesis, the analysis of induction for our research is necessary. We focus on our interviewees and their companies to sort out their own strategy and development idea, ability.

Following the analysis model, we analysis the strategic response from market entry mode, market choice, corporation, market re-orienting, product innovation and upgrade, protection of intellectual property right, financial option and company size aspects to solve our research question. After our qualitative research, we found that Chinese SMEs are mainly focused on products, intellectual property right and financing and strategic cooperation perspective in the construction of strategic response. And for Chinese SMEs, corporate with others is a overall trend in international trade. In contrast, medium-sized companies have more experience and ability to deal with trade barriers than small-sized companies.

Furthermore, we hope to provide a reference and helpful suggestion for more people and companies in China, and let more Chinese SMEs effectively avoid the trade barriers and keep a long-term and reasonable international operation in the same time.