China will flood the UK with cheap vapour air vents as manufacturers try to exploit Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The trade deadlock between Washington and Beijing has put the business world in chaos, and investors dare to blink first in every country.

The total import tax on U.S.-made VAPES is about 60% after last week's uneasy armistice. This has hurt China's $11.1 billion (£8.4 billion) e-cigarette export industry in 2022 due to strict domestic restrictions, returning to the graphics board.

This is because the UK’s upcoming one-time vapes ban aims to reduce the number of thrown away devices (about 8 million per week) and prevent young people from developing this habit, bringing new e-cigarette models to the market.

Deborah Arnott, an emeritus associate professor at University College London and CEO of Smoking and Health Action, said China’s natural response was targeting the UK. “As the chances of entering the United States are decreasing, competition will be increasingly sold to the UK market because it is the main option,” she said.

According to University of Waterloo, Dr. Steve Shaowei Xu, a research scientist at the University of Ontario and an expert in China's e-cigarette industry, said factory owners have already felt in trouble amid global uncertainty over the past few weeks.

"There have been reported (already) that the goods have been blocked and the U.S. orders have been cut in half," Xu said, adding that the "very complex" industries will find ways to bypass the current "disaster."

In the UK, more than 90% of e-cigarettes are imported from China, and it has its own internal problems in the cigarettes. Ministers are preparing to impose a ban on disposable vapes starting June 1 to curb youth vapes and reduce smoke from plastic waste.

Experts worry that the industry has proposed a solution that will hinder the efforts of the British government, while cheap Chinese imports may be under pressure toward price drops.

Manufacturers have been rapidly developing new models that comply with the ban, and now popular brands are widely available.

These VAPs are rechargeable and have replaceable pods and variable coils, meaning they qualify as "vape kits" rather than one-off. But experts say these often look "very similar" to the one-off version, which has caused fear.

Also worried about the availability of refillable pods. The Guardian went to 30 stores in London and Manchester and was looking for a supplement to the Elf Bar 600 pre-filled wood bag kit. Only two stores are in stock.

“All the major manufacturers now produce these products, they look the same and are very similar to the disposable items they replace,” Arnault said.

“My concern is that since they don’t look much different and are still cheap, people may treat them like they do disposable items instead of buying supplements.”

Xu said China's tobacco industry is a "very complex, rapidly growing consumer goods industry" and will continue to find solutions to comply with, especially in the face of "disaster" tariffs.

"In the long run, they can try to move manufacturing overseas to avoid tariffs, but in the short term, they have to find alternative markets to survive."

Scott Butler, executive director of Material Focus, a nonprofit that runs the “recycling of electricity” campaign, said the ban did not break the habit of “smoking throwing”.

"The ban puts the most environmentally friendly and destructive types on the market," he said.

“But millions of vaps will continue to be sold and unless real action is taken to make it easier for the public to recycle them, they will keep going into the bins, streets and landfills.”

A spokesman for the Elf Bar and Lost Mary said: “We can confirm that our supplementary pods and containers are widely used throughout the UK, including all major wholesalers and large supermarkets – and this scale continues to grow.

“However, we understand your concerns about complementary accessibility because we cannot know to what extent all other brands can be available.

“Although we did not have the opportunity to review relevant research, we were disappointed with the availability of compensation.