Against the increasingly severe export situation of Chinese enterprises, how to enhance their export resilience has become an important issue. Based on the matching data between the industrial enterprise database and the customs trade database, and taking the 2008 financial crisis as the research background, this article defines the export resilience of enterprises as two aspects: resistance and recovery, and considers the impact of imported intermediate goods from upstream industries on the export resilience of downstream enterprises. After empirical analysis, the results indicate that importing intermediate goods from upstream industries will significantly enhance the export resilience of downstream enterprises, and this conclusion is still robust after a series of method tests. From the perspective of mechanism testing, the import of intermediate goods from upstream industries can enhance the export resilience of enterprises by improving the quality of downstream enterprises’export products, enhancing the complexity of export technology, and reducing costs. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the promotion effect of imported intermediate goods from upstream industries on the export resilience of downstream enterprises is more significant in the eastern region and small and medium-sized enterprises. Both general trade and processing trade importing intermediate goods can help enterprises enhance their ability to resist risks, but processing trade importing intermediate goods has a more significant promoting effect on enterprises’recovery of export levels. In addition, further research suggests that domestic upstream industry monopolies and domestic market segmentation can weaken the promoting effect of upstream industry imports of intermediate goods on the export resilience of downstream enterprises.