Sales at 50 major Chinese retailers fell by 3.9% in July from a year earlier, raising concerns over whether Beijing can push through its plan to ramp up domestic consumption to offset the effects of the intensifying U.S.-China trade war. Retailers of home appliances saw the biggest decline, with a 9.9% drop, followed by daily necessities, which fell 5.7% and clothing sales down 3.8%, according to the China National Commercial Information Center, a state-backed consultancy that is authorized by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to release the figures.

“In general, the performance of China’s retail sector was rather sluggish in July,” it said, noting that a 6.5% rise in cosmetics sales was the one bright spot. The weak figures come as Beijing has been trying to encourage domestic consumption, with measures such as lowering tariffs for consumer goods, as part of its strategy to deal with the mounting pressure from the trade war, which is set to crimp the country’s exports, traditionally one of the main drivers of growth. At the same time, industrial production, another pillar of the country’s economic growth, also lost steam in the month of July, pointing to the possibility of a slowdown in economic growth.

An index of retail sector stocks, consisting of 169 major retailers listed in Shenzhen and Shanghai, dropped 2.16% on August 8, with 138 shares seeing declines and 18 shares an increase, according to Stock.com, a Chinese stock exchange information provider. Clothing chain Heilan Group lost 5.1% and Midea Group, China’s leading home appliances retailer, fell 1.1%. China’s stock markets are currently the world’s worst-performing, the South China Morning Post reports.