There is a problem with China’s economy. Stocks in the US are likely to suffer from this, and your portfolio could be affected.

US stocks could suffer from a slowdown in the Chinese economy, which is a major driver of the global economy. To protect their portfolios and mitigate potential losses, investors need to take precautions. Chinese consumer spending, factory production, and investment in long-term assets (such as property, machinery or other goods) all slowed in July from a year ago.

The youth unemployment rate in the world’s second largest economy has consistently reached record levels. The release of that monthly data was suspended by Beijing earlier this week.

US-China tensions have been on the rise as the world’s two biggest economies clash over issues ranging from trade policy to technology to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

The US president announced an executive order last week limiting US investments in advanced technology industries in China. As a result of the order, fund managers were concerned about how they should invest in the country.

Separately, a Congressional committee announced earlier this month that it was investigating BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and MSCI, one of the biggest providers of index funds, to determine whether they are investing in Chinese companies blacklisted by the United States for security and human rights violations.

“China’s economic growth has driven the global economy for most of the last two decades,” said Alex Etra, a strategist at data analytics firm Exante. Therefore, if China’s economy slows down, global economic growth will slow down as well.

A slowdown in global economic growth tends to negatively affect US equities. Some of that is due to the direct exposure of US companies’ sales in China and the fact that China is a major consumer of commodities.”

He said that even companies that don’t sell directly to China are affected by what happens. Oil prices will go down if Chinese growth slows, said Etra, even if ExxonMobil (XOM) does not do a lot of business with China. They have done exactly that in the past week or so, sliding about 5%.

China’s economy will continue on a downward trajectory if US companies do business there.