"We felt the pressure from both sides -- suppliers and customers. Our customers were concerned about a shortage of suppliers from China and over the higher prices because of tariffs. So it's been very disruptive for our business," said Forrest Zhang from PR.

"It's the small businesses that suffer because the big companies can absorb a cut in 25 percent of their profits. Small companies can't. That puts a lot of good, innovative companies out of business," said Robert, who declined to reveal his last name.

Robert lost his job last year when his former employer, a U.S. food supplement manufacturing company, went belly up. Now he owns a start-up company and took part in the trade show to look for suppliers.

Among the participants there was a consensus that thanks to high demand, good ingredients with real science behind them will continue to do well no matter where they come from, regardless of the trade scuffle.

Take U.S. functional ingredient companies AIDP in Southern California. The company supplies more than 200 commodity ingredients for diverse health and anti-aging formulations, many of which are sourced from China as the company relies heavily on the Asian country's safety standards in the food supplement sector.

"We source from many countries, but mostly from China," said Xiao Wong, a product scientist at AIDP.

He added that it would be bad for business if they move raw material sourcing to some other countries which do not have the rigorous testing capabilities and quality control documentation they get from the Chinese sources.

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