In December 2025, the person in charge of a Shanghai-based foreign trade company ultimately chose to abandon cooperation after participating in a tender invited by an international major client, sparking discussions in the industry regarding the tripartite relationship between traders, factories, and clients. This case reflects the cooperation predicaments and model challenges in the current foreign trade sector amid special market conditions. It is reported that Client A, whom the foreign trade company was collaborating with, is a leading enterprise in its industry in Country A. Due to international sanctions, it urgently needed to replace its supply chain. After years of follow-up, the trade company finally obtained an invitation to bid for 8 products from the client. However, the client imposed strict terms of payment against delivery (DDP mode) without advance payment, requiring the supplier to bear all import responsibilities and costs. Although there are no more than 6 qualified domestic suppliers for this product, giving the trade company a relatively high chance of winning the bid, calculations revealed that the entire process would require a huge amount of capital investment. Meanwhile, there was a lack of effective reference for the client's actual payment capacity. The only available customs data showed that similar suppliers had single transaction amounts of only 100,000 RMB, which was not representative. Coupled with high logistics costs, inflated quotes from some cooperative factories, and a profit margin of only 10%-20%, the company decided to abandon the bid after consulting with its shareholders. A post-mortem analysis indicated that industry conflicts are becoming increasingly prominent: amid saturated domestic trade, factories have successively ventured into foreign trade but still adhere to domestic trade thinking, leading to interest conflicts between domestic and foreign trade departments; traders face a trust crisis of factories seeking to "remove intermediaries" while coping with the dual pressures of capital occupation and the trend of decentralization; clients, affected by the international situation, pursue low prices and stable supply. Insiders pointed out that the current foreign trade industry is in urgent need of building a win-win mechanism for the three parties: factories ensuring the safety of payment collection, traders leveraging their advantages in supply chain integration, and clients providing reasonable cooperation conditions. Only by balancing the interests of all parties can the cooperation dilemma be resolved and sustainable development be achieved. For more information, you can click: https://www.tiktok.com/@mia_iot