Quick Take — US: US buyers flock to Chinese apps for fear of duties

After the panic in supermarkets with consumers looking for items produced in Europe it is now the turn of Chinese non-food products to be found on e-commerce giants like Temu, Shein or Alibaba.

“Together with DHgate, known as ‘Dunhuang’ in Chinese and nicknamed ‘Little Yellow App’ by some shoppers, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Taobao and Shein were among the most downloaded shopping apps in the US App Store….

Last week, DHgate released an open letter to merchants on its ‘Tariff Escort Plan’, pledging to provide traffic, subsidies, logistics and other support to merchants to help them reduce cost pressure and stabilise sales. The platform claims to now host more than 2.6 million registered suppliers producing an average of more than 30 million products online per year. It covers around 200 countries and regions, has more than 10 warehouses abroad and provides over 100 logistics routes.

DHgate was founded in 2004 by Diane Wang Shutong, co-founder of joyo.com, one of China’s first e-commerce platforms that was later acquired by Amazon.com Inc. Nicknamed the ‘female Jack Ma’, Wang previously worked for Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. before founding her own company.

Of course everyone fears inflation and recession.

Quick Take — Amazon, Alibaba and Walmart

This morning Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu presented profits up 239% over 2023

  • Alibaba in HK rises 13%

this very good result is attributed to strong performance in the cloud business and expansion on AI

  • the ecommerce sector showed signs of recovery in China

yesterday Walmart reported its quarterly results

for the first time Amazon had higher revenues than Walmart in a quarter

  • expectations show that by 2025 full-year revenues will also be higher

Amazon becomes the number one company by revenue in the US, surpassing Walmart

Walmart had held the top spot since 2012 when it overtook Exxon