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Arabian Business
26-05-2025
- Business
- Arabian Business
UAE malls in ‘non-prime' areas could face pressure from Chinese goods diversion amid U.S. tariffs
Chinese goods facing higher US tariffs may increasingly be diverted to markets like the United Arab Emirates, a shift that could pressure pricing and challenge secondary retail locations first, experts said. The new U.S. tariffs imposed by Donald Trump could create 'ripple effects' throughout global supply chains that could eventually reach the UAE market, according to PP Varghese, Head of Professional Services at Cushman & Wakefield Core. 'While the UAE doesn't heavily import directly from the US, many products pass through complex international supply chains where tariff-related price increases get passed down,' he told Arabian Business. Secondary malls to feel the pinch first He added that Chinese goods facing higher U.S. tariffs might divert to other markets, including the UAE, which could increase supply and pressure pricing. 'We could see price increases of 5 to 10 per cent across various consumer goods categories within 6-12 months of full tariff implementation,' he said, adding that these rising costs could further influence consumer behaviour. 'The UAE consumer market is quite segmented, and we'll likely see different responses across demographic groups,' Varghese said, adding that expat consumers with fixed incomes, could become more price-conscious and selective in their purchasing decisions. The Cushman & Wakefield Core executive anticipates more deliberate shopping, greater use of discount platforms, and reduced impulse purchases. However, high-income residents and tourists may continue spending at current levels. 'Overall, I expect a shift toward more value-conscious consumption rather than a dramatic reduction in shopping activity.' This evolving behaviour could also influence retail real estate, with retailers reconsidering expansion plans or renegotiation of lease terms, if they 'face margin pressures from tariff-related cost increases,' he said. Secondary malls and non-prime retail locations could feel 'selective pressure' first, while flagship destinations like Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates are likely to remain resilient, Varghese said. However, at the same time, retailers are also responding to changing shopper expectations by embracing flexible payment solutions such as Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), which has emerged as a key tool to sustain consumer spending amid economic uncertainty. Buy Now, Pay Later a preferred payment method The rise of BNPL is another factor shaping the sector. According to Stuart Porter, a wealth coach based in Dubai, BNPL has become a preferred payment method for both shoppers and retailers. ' BNPL has grown quickly in the UAE because it helps shoppers stretch their budgets without relying on credit cards,' he said. 'For retailers, it's a simple way to boost sales during uncertain times.' Electronics, fashion, and online marketplaces are the sectors leading BNPL adoption. 'These sectors see higher conversion rates when BNPL is available at checkout,' Porter added. In addition, BNPL's popularity has also helped physical retail maintain its relevance. 'Retailers with effective BNPL integration typically report larger average basket sizes, which helps justify their physical store footprints despite higher operational costs,' Varghese noted. Tamara, a BNPL provider operating in the region, confirmed this in its 2025 business trends report. According to the company, '9 out of 10 shoppers say BNPL has improved their purchasing behaviour,' especially amid economic pressure. More than 50 per cent of UAE and Saudi consumers have reduced spending, yet BNPL is enabling continued shopping activity. The report also identified 'phygital' experiences — hybrid online and offline shopping — as a key trend. The Tamara survey found that 50 per cent of consumers visit stores to try items before purchasing online, underlining the importance of seamless integration across channels. 'Shoppers in 2025 expect the best of both worlds,' the report stated, with retailers encouraged to provide services like real-time stock visibility, click-and-collect, smart fitting rooms, and virtual storefronts to meet these expectations. Another major trend is mass personalisation. Businesses are turning to predictive analytics to deliver customised offerings. 'Predictive analytics may reveal that certain products, like black abayas, are most popular on weekends, allowing you to optimise your offers and timing,' the report noted. Aside from this, sustainability and brand values also influence consumer behaviour. '53 per cent of GCC consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products, compared to 46 per cent globally,' the report stated, citing a rise in global searches for eco-friendly products. Due to this, retailers are reacting to these trends, with many of them 'diversifying their supply chains to reduce dependence on any single sourcing region,' Varghese said. 'Some UAE retailers are exploring increased sourcing from regional manufacturers less affected by U.S.-China trade tensions.' 'Others are adjusting inventory management to maintain price stability despite cost fluctuations – bringing in merchandise earlier or negotiating longer-term supplier contracts,' he added. Risk of overreliance on BNPL With inflation pressures nudging shoppers to spread costs, retailers and customers alike are beginning to view BNPL as a 'lifeline,' said Porter. For retailers, this keeps spending up without needing to offer discounts. Trump-era tariffs mostly affected U.S.-China trade, but ripple effects raised import costs globally. 'This made BNPL more appealing as it helped soften price hikes for consumers.' Retailers are using BNPL specifically to counter economic pressures. 'BNPL allows retailers to maintain customer demand even as purchasing power tightens. It's a tool to keep tills ringing in tougher times,' he added. According to Varghese, there could be long-term market distortion 'if BNPL creates artificial demand that isn't sustainable.' 'If consumers increasingly finance everyday purchases through BNPL during a period of rising prices, we could see household debt levels creep upward,' adding that the UAE's consumer credit reporting infrastructure 'is still developing, which could allow some consumers to overextend themselves across multiple BNPL platforms.' Despite this, Porter believes BNPL will continue growing — at least in the near term. 'Economic stress tends to fuel demand for flexible payment options, and BNPL meets that need,' he said. He expects more regulation, increased competition, loyalty rewards, and transparency over the next year. Varghese said prudent developers and landlords should remain cautious. 'Retail concepts that have become highly dependent on BNPL-driven sales could face challenges if regulations tighten or consumer sentiment shifts,' he noted. Luxury retailers, however, may remain insulated from some of these pressures. 'Luxury brands operate with fundamentally different dynamics than mass-market retail. Their customers are generally less price-sensitive, and these brands typically maintain higher margins that can absorb some cost increases without dramatically affecting retail prices,' Varghese said. 'The UAE's position as a luxury shopping destination is supported by tourism from regions where these same goods may cost significantly more due to taxes or import duties.' If prices continue to rise, some global brands might adjust their UAE strategy by introducing different product lines or adjusting their positioning 'to maintain market share despite changing economic conditions,' he added. In the longer term, the UAE's broader economic strategy could buffer against these headwinds. 'The real estate sector continues to mature and evolve in response to global economic shifts, not just reacting to them but increasingly setting regional trends,' Varghese said. 'Developers and retailers who recognise the changing relationship between physical and digital retail, and who can create value beyond just facilitating transactions, will continue to thrive regardless of tariff pressures. 'The UAE's advantageous geographic position and business-friendly regulatory environment provide significant buffers against global economic headwinds. Rather than viewing potential challenges as threats, forward-thinking market participants will find opportunities in this evolving landscape to create new value propositions for increasingly sophisticated consumers,' he added. Nevertheless, in the face of these challenges, flexible payment options such as BNPL are becoming essential for sustaining retail activity in the UAE. In the UAE, BNPL adoption leads the Gulf region thanks to high smartphone penetration, strong e-commerce growth, and a young, tech-savvy population – making it an ideal environment for BNPL compared to neighbours like Saudi Arabia or Qatar.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Commentary: Rising from mudflats to world-class cargo hub, the ports of L.A. and Long Beach face a wave of Trump tariffs
Where the Southern California land meets the Pacific waters, the beaches are the glamour-pusses, but it's the ports that are the workhorses that bring in the heavyweight bucks. Lately, maybe not quite so much. The yo-yoing import tariffs imposed by President Trump have been toying with the massive twin-engine economies of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. They're operated separately by the cities of L.A. and Long Beach, but considered together, they are far and away the busiest container port complex in the U.S., or maybe the Western Hemisphere. It's from here, on San Pedro Bay, that the journeys by trucks and rail and plane begin, ferrying out to the rest of the country the billions of goods, overwhelmingly Chinese-made — all those holiday toys, all that kitchenware and household tools, even all that MAGA gear — that fill store shelves and warehouses and shopping lists. The ports had to invent themselves in the first place, out of muddy marshes and shallows, to become the present-day enterprises doing billions of dollars of business and compete and partner with the massive Asian container ports across the Pacific. Now the tariffs taffy-pulling may spur another moment for reinvention. The ports have many ways to divvy up their numbers, to claim to be first and biggest and most. Together, their operations range more than 15,000 acres on land and water, and two years ago they rang up almost $22 billion in what's called direct revenue to local service providers, ponied up $2.7 billion a year in state and local taxes, and accounted for at least 165,000 paychecks, and many thousands more across the nation's consumer supply chain. Earlier this month, a reporter asked Trump about the slide in cargo traffic at U.S. ports, with the cascading wallop to businesses and workers and customers. To the contrary, said Trump: Such a slowdown 'means we lose less money ... so when you say it's slowed down, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.' It is, in fact, a bad thing. When you so much as tap the brakes on the port operations — and the initial 145% tariffs imposed on China and less elsewhere was more like slamming them on — the pileup effect is a trade SigAlert of immense proportions. In early May, the tariff effect meant that the ports clocked a cargo drop of something between 25% and 30%. The port of L.A. has come far from its unpromising beginnings. Hollywood-fashion, it fudges a bit about its age — to make itself older. The port dates itself from October 1542, when the Spanish seafarer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo spotted the mudflats of the San Pedro coast as he sailed past. The captain of the first European ship to reach the future U.S. West Coast adjudged it 'a port enclosed and very good.' That may have appeared true to a man whose flagship measured about 100 feet long — the same distance the DMV says you should signal an upcoming turn — but in time, the hunger for harbors would convert the shallow San Pedro waters into a bona fide port. San Diego and San Francisco are more natural ports. For a time from the late 1880s, Redondo Beach, with its steep, deep offshore canyon, did a brisk trade as a port for lumber to build L.A. But, as I like to say, L.A. never let nature thwart its self-invention. Richard Henry Dana was a Boston Brahmin and a Harvard man who took to sea on an ordinary merchant ship. In 1835, he came ashore at San Pedro, a port so rudimentary that sugar barrels and other goods the sailors unloaded had to be carried 'California fashion' up to the blufftop, man by laboring man, and the valuable cattle hides nicknamed 'California bank notes' were rolled down the bluff for sailors to hoist onto their heads and carry out onto the waiting ship. Read more: Tariffs bring shipping slowdown, threatening trucking jobs at L.A. ports When Dana returned to San Pedro just before the Civil War began, he could 'scarce recognize the hill up which we rolled and dragged and pushed our heavy loads.' It was a place transformed, with railroads and wharves running at capacity. Much of this was the work of 'the father of the port,' Phineas Banning, an indefatigable Wilmington, Del., native who bestowed that town's name on the one he founded here. Banning had made the port into a commercial powerhouse. Soon, two of the titans of the age and place — Southern Pacific railroad man Collis P. Huntington and L.A. Times owner Harrison Gray Otis — engaged in a Godzilla-versus-King Kong struggle over where to put L.A.'s official port: Santa Monica or San Pedro? Political money and political muscle came down on the side of San Pedro in 1897. Read more: California businesses are reeling from Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs One way or another, Los Angeles pretty much always got what it wanted. And in 1897, the harbor towns of San Pedro and Wilmington weren't within Los Angeles' civic embrace, and L.A. was eager to get the jump on Long Beach. So in 1909, voters in both towns agreed to be annexed by L.A., tethered by a 'shoestring strip' of land about 16 miles long and a half-mile wide, a legal but comically gerrymandered umbilicus between the bulk of the city and the singularly different seafront and harbor neighborhoods. The work of running a port is a constant maintenance of channels, breakwaters, bridges, and the machinery of seagoing commerce. Importers and exporters opened offices at the port, and pleasure cruise companies sent their passenger ships up and down the Pacific coast, and then to Hawaii and across the Pacific. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sent the U.S. Navy's white-painted fleet on a round-the-world voyage to show the nation's naval might and reach. In 1908, it steamed memorably past crowds waving along San Pedro Bay, just as Long Beach was planning to turn its own marshes and mudflats into a port, and soon dredging a channel connecting Long Beach with the L.A. port. The Long Beach port was dedicated in 1911, and like Southern California itself, went like gangbusters. The Panama Canal opened in 1914, giving U.S. shipping a big flex in seagoing nimbleness at a moment when Europe was going to war. Read more: Commentary: 250 years after saving America's bacon, French have little taste for what Trump dishes out In the 1950s, the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis — soon to be familiar on American shores as the second husband of Jacqueline Kennedy — supposedly declared that Long Beach was 'the world's most modern shipping port.' Shipyards in both ports sent their new vessels from their cradles out into the world. Beginning in the 1920s, oil burst cinematically out of the ground at wells across the coastal South Bay and even into the Long Beach harbor. So much oil got sucked out of the port and its neighborhoods that the ground started to subside, in some places yards deep. The infrastructure damage has run into the billions, and in the 1960s, 'Operation Big Squirt' started injecting water underground to restabilize the land. In 1930, both Ford and Procter & Gamble had set up plants near the water's edge, the better and faster to move products. For P&G's debut, Harriet Hauge, the Long Beach mayor's white-gloved daughter, christened a four-foot-long 'boat' made entirely out of cakes of Ivory soap, whose motto was, 'It floats!' Back in 1908, the Great White Fleet had sailed right past the ports. Within a dozen years, the ports became central to U.S. Navy operations, building ships through World War II, and making Long Beach a sailors' town, the home port for the Pacific Fleet. And then, just like the wartime industries of L.A., the peacetime ports swiveled to more commercial operations. The Navy moved many of its operations to San Diego after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The shipbuilding pretty much came to an end, and the commercial fishing trade of some thousand vessels that once kept canneries working in high gear has moved elsewhere. In its stead came a cargo trade of astounding scale. In the late 1950s, shipments started being standardized in cargo containers that made it easier and faster to unload a ship and hasten its cargo on its way. About 20 years later, free-trade agreements began moving mass-produced goods in thousands of enormous containers from factories in South Korea, in Vietnam, and most of all from China, into the hands of American consumers — via the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. All of this changed port jobs, and lost port jobs, and created other jobs all along the cargo chain. Los Angeles was a town hostile to organized labor, but labor forces in the harbor had the backing of national longshore unions, including the radical-leaning International Workers of the World, the so-called 'Wobblies,' and the city resisted their strength with formidable anti-union organizing laws. The Southern California chapter of the ACLU was born out of an incident during a strike in the L.A. harbor in May 1923. Police had arrested about 30 leaders at the port workers' strike and walkout. Then several hundred men who had called for the work stoppage were rounded up and held without bail in a specially built 'stockade.' Several days later, author Upton Sinclair stood on a hilltop above the harbor, and began reading from the Bill of Rights. He was arrested. So was the man who took his place, and the man after that and the man after that. L.A. was now engaged in the movement of the moment: rising organized labor and civil rights versus government and private industry joining forces to suppress them. [At one point, the KKK was helping L.A. police in a show of force to break the strike.] Then, in 1934, a nearly three-month strike by port workers up and down the West Coast ended in the creation of the longshore and warehouse workers' union, which represents harbor workers to this day. Read more: Palm trees are about as L.A. as it gets. But is it time to bid them a frond farewell? The present battle is over robot automation and the risks of job losses in those changeovers. Workers have not been alone in their grievances against the harbor. The harbor neighborhoods are probably the most polluted part of a very polluted city, owing to the filth that the port generates. Every day, as my colleague Thomas Curwen described it a few years ago, the big rigs take a shortcut through a small Wilmington neighborhood, sending out dirt and noise and diesel fumes. It isn't just one street. Port roads jammed with diesel trucks, oil refineries processing fuel, ships idling to be unloaded, make for some of the worst air in the state. Residents of that Wilmington street petitioned and pleaded and then resorted to blocking off the street briefly to the trucks that shook the ground and spewed the filth through their neighborhood. Wilmington has been told that solutions are around the corner, yet just the plans for a remedy don't have to be completed for another two years. In the city of Los Angeles, there are three 'proprietary' departments, operations that pay for themselves, pretty much without tax money and with their own commissions, independent of the City Council, powerful entities unto themselves. The airports and the Department of Water and Power are two; the third is the port. In 1967, The Times investigated the doings of harbor commissioners, and a grand jury, following up on that, called for indictments of past and present commissioners for perjury and criminal conflicts of interest. Two of the four were convicted of accepting bribes. The name of the president of the harbor commission, Pietro Di Carlo, a leading citizen of San Pedro, had come up in the investigation in connection with a contract with a troubled development company that Di Carlo had had associations with. And one morning in early November 1967, about six weeks before the indictments were issued, and a few hours after he went to 6 a.m. Mass, he was found dead in a channel in the harbor, face down, his hat floating nearby. The coroner found that no foul play was involved, and that his death was accidental. His widow said that he had gone to the harbor to reserve a boat, and had been taking medicine that sometimes made him dizzy. This scandal was a stain on Mayor Sam Yorty, who had appointed the harbor commissioners. A few years later, Times political columnist Bill Boyarsky wrote about the political clout of big donors sponsoring a Yorty fundraiser. Annoyed, Yorty confronted Boyarsky at the fundraiser. 'Boyarsky, I don't know what I'm going to do with you.' Boyarsky, remembering the dead man in the water, put up his hands in comic defense. 'Oh no, mayor,' he said. 'Not the harbor!' Yorty was not amused. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Free Malaysia Today
23-05-2025
- Business
- Free Malaysia Today
Australia's new haul of Chinese online goods helps tame inflation
China's factories rushed to expand into overseas markets as Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs made accessing the US more difficult. (EPA Images pic) SYDNEY : As businesses globally fret about sky-high US tariffs reviving rampant inflation, in Australia, the redirection of cheap Chinese goods is expected to provide relief for consumers and policymakers worried about stubborn cost pressures. Alibaba's Taobao and are the latest Chinese e-commerce platforms to enter the Australian market, seeking to tap into the bargain-starved country's appetite for online deals. The expected flood of cheap goods from China, on top of a recent slowdown in inflation, is among several reasons the central bank felt confident enough to cut interest rates this week. In an economy like Australia's that manufactures very few finished products domestically, Taobao is finding new markets outside of its core Chinese-speaking consumer base. 'I don't shop a lot, but if I do buy something, I will buy it online… If I can get it cheaper through Taobao, 100% I'll buy from them,' said Jodi Clarke, a therapist in Melbourne, whose first purchase on the site included three look-alike Hermes Kelly bags for A$129 ($83.24). China's factories are rushing to reach more new markets overseas as the domestic economy slows, with U. President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs making it much more difficult to access the US, the world's largest consumer market. Frederic Neumann, chief Asian economist and co-head of global research at HSBC, said the expansion of Chinese e-commerce platforms overseas will intensify disinflation pressures, especially for consumer goods. 'What the world is facing is a growing inflation divergence between the US and other economies, with prices climbing in the former, and stabilising, if not outright declining, in the latter,' said Neumann. While the flood of Chinese goods has raised alarms in manufacturing-dependent countries in Southeast Asia, Australia's overwhelming reliance on imports for many household items diminishes most such concerns. The Reserve Bank of Australia judges recent global trade developments to be disinflationary in net terms for Australia, one of the reasons it opened the door to more interest rate cuts on Tuesday. 'Because Australia has a higher share of Chinese products in most parts of its import basket compared with other economies, the redirection of tariff-affected exports is likely to place additional downward pressure on Australian import prices, especially in the short term,' the RBA said in its quarterly economic update this week. Australia bought a whopping A$110 billion of goods last year from China, easily its biggest trading partner. Chinese trade data for April showed exports to Australia jumped 9% from the previous month while shipments to the US tumbled almost 18%. The RBA also noted cheap goods from China are unlikely to displace much Australian production and could even benefit industries reliant on imported inputs, such as clothing retailers. Goldman Sachs has estimated the redirection of Chinese goods into Australia, particularly in toys, furniture and clothing, could subtract 20-50 basis points from headline inflation over the next year or two. Those forecasts were made before China and the US agreed to pause steep tariffs this month. Headline consumer price inflation held at 2.4% in the first quarter, comfortably within the RBA's target band of 2% to 3% and having come down from the 7.8% peak in late 2022. Increased competition Chinese e-commerce platforms are not completely new in Australia, with Temu already capturing big chunks of online sales, but their broadening appeal to Australians comes as they wrestle with lingering cost-of-living pressures. Singapore-based online fast-fashion retailer Shein, which sells clothes made in China, earlier this month held a pop-up store in Sydney and launched its first Australia-focused brand, Aralina. Alibaba had been a low-key cross-border player until last year when it started investing aggressively to boost global sales, including in Australia. Its main competitor also launched its Australian site in March. The push was initially designed to reach more Chinese buyers overseas, but Trump's tariff chaos thrust those e-commerce sites into the spotlight, with Taobao now offering an English version of the app. Taobao is already promoting sales in English for the annual '618' shopping festival on June 18, one of China's largest. It offers free shipping to Australia for clothes worth more than 249 yuan (US$34.25). Consumers interviewed by Reuters say Taobao's app is easy to use and has translation functions to help communicate with sellers. High shipping costs can sometimes be a hindrance, but in some cases it is still cheaper than buying locally. The site's growing profile in English-speaking communities has elevated the 'Taobao haul' trend on TikTok in markets like Australia. Australian consumer Jessica Cox shared her first Taobao experience on social media, which included purchases of imitations of AirPods Max headphones. She also bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner and New Balance shoes, which were on the way. 'I thought I'd give it a try as a lot of people were saying they are pretty close to being mirror fakes,' she said. 'I thought, what do I have to lose?'
Zawya
23-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Australia's new haul of Chinese online goods helps tame inflation
SYDNEY - As businesses globally fret about sky-high U.S. tariffs reviving rampant inflation, in Australia, the redirection of cheap Chinese goods is expected to provide relief for consumers and policymakers worried about stubborn cost pressures. Alibaba's Taobao and are the latest Chinese e-commerce platforms to enter the Australian market, seeking to tap into the bargain-starved country's appetite for online deals. The expected flood of cheap goods from China, on top of a recent slowdown in inflation, is among several reasons the central bank felt confident enough to cut interest rates this week. In an economy like Australia's that manufactures very few finished products domestically, Taobao is finding new markets outside of its core Chinese-speaking consumer base. "I don't shop a lot, but if I do buy something, I will buy it online... If I can get it cheaper through Taobao, 100% I'll buy from them," said Jodi Clarke, a therapist in Melbourne, whose first purchase on the site included three look-alike Hermes Kelly bags for A$129 ($83.24). China's factories are rushing to reach more new markets overseas as the domestic economy slows, with U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs making it much more difficult to access the U.S., the world's largest consumer market. Frederic Neumann, chief Asian economist and co-head of global research at HSBC, said the expansion of Chinese e-commerce platforms overseas will intensify disinflation pressures, especially for consumer goods. "What the world is facing is a growing inflation divergence between the U.S. and other economies, with prices climbing in the former, and stabilising, if not outright declining, in the latter," said Neumann. While the flood of Chinese goods has raised alarms in manufacturing-dependent countries in Southeast Asia, Australia's overwhelming reliance on imports for many household items diminishes most such concerns. The Reserve Bank of Australia judges recent global trade developments to be disinflationary in net terms for Australia, one of the reasons it opened the door to more interest rate cuts on Tuesday. "Because Australia has a higher share of Chinese products in most parts of its import basket compared with other economies, the redirection of tariff-affected exports is likely to place additional downward pressure on Australian import prices, especially in the short term," the RBA said in its quarterly economic update this week. Australia bought a whopping A$110 billion of goods last year from China, easily its biggest trading partner. Chinese trade data for April showed exports to Australia jumped 9% from the previous month while shipments to the U.S. tumbled almost 18%. The RBA also noted cheap goods from China are unlikely to displace much Australian production and could even benefit industries reliant on imported inputs, such as clothing retailers. Goldman Sachs has estimated the redirection of Chinese goods into Australia, particularly in toys, furniture and clothing, could subtract 20-50 basis points from headline inflation over the next year or two. Those forecasts were made before China and the U.S. agreed to pause steep tariffs this month. Headline consumer price inflation held at 2.4% in the first quarter, comfortably within the RBA's target band of 2% to 3% and having come down from the 7.8% peak in late 2022. INCREASED COMPETITION Chinese e-commerce platforms are not completely new in Australia, with Temu already capturing big chunks of online sales, but their broadening appeal to Australians comes as they wrestle with lingering cost-of-living pressures. Singapore-based online fast-fashion retailer Shein, which sells clothes made in China, earlier this month held a pop-up store in Sydney and launched its first Australia-focused brand, Aralina. Alibaba had been a low-key cross-border player until last year when it started investing aggressively to boost global sales, including in Australia. Its main competitor also launched its Australian site in March. The push was initially designed to reach more Chinese buyers overseas, but Trump's tariff chaos thrust those e-commerce sites into the spotlight, with Taobao now offering an English version of the app. Taobao is already promoting sales in English for the annual "618" shopping festival on June 18, one of China's largest. It offers free shipping to Australia for clothes worth more than 249 yuan ($34.25). Consumers interviewed by Reuters say Taobao's app is easy to use and has translation functions to help communicate with sellers. High shipping costs can sometimes be a hindrance, but in some cases it is still cheaper than buying locally. The site's growing profile in English-speaking communities has elevated the "Taobao haul" trend on TikTok in markets like Australia. Australian consumer Jessica Cox shared her first Taobao experience on social media, which included purchases of imitations of AirPods Max headphones. She also bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner and New Balance shoes, which were on the way. "I thought I'd give it a try as a lot of people were saying they are pretty close to being mirror fakes," she said. "I thought, what do I have to lose?" ($1 = 1.5497 Australian dollars)
Argaam
21-05-2025
- Business
- Argaam
G7 weighs joint tariffs on low-value Chinese imports
Canada's Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne confirmed that talks are underway among G7 members to address the surge in inexpensive Chinese goods, which are often sold through e-commerce platforms at prices that evade traditional tariffs.
