What you’ll see less of at CES this year: Chinese vendors

About 20% fewer Chinese vendors are at the 2019 CES expo than last year, a spokesperson for CES said. ZTE (ZTCOF) isn’t attending for the first time since 2011. Huawei’s CEO delivered the show’s keynote address in 2018, but no Huawei executives are speaking this year (Huawei still has a large booth at CES).

At the same time, fallout from tensions between the United States and China is a major theme of this year’s show. The US-China trade war is slowing down business for companies from both countries, particularly startups and smaller businesses that don’t have the supply chain flexibility of larger tech rivals.