Amazon: The E-commerce Earthquake and the Global Trade Finance Aftershocks
- William Laraque, Managing Director at US-International Trade Services
- 16.05.2016 08:00 am e-commerce
Amazon, left analyst estimates in the dust and posted a 28 percent increase in sales in the first quarter.
E-commerce helped push Singapore Post to a 58% gain in net profit in the fiscal year ending in March, to $182 million. (Nikkei Asian Review)
The biggest department-store chain in the U.S. is sending worrisome signs about the consumer market. Macy’s Inc. sent the retail world into a tailspin with its report on Tuesday that its sales tumbled in the first quarter, the WSJ’s Suzanne Kapner reports, suggesting that the company and other store operators will have to move more urgently to meet America’s shift to online shopping and fast-fashion chains. Macy’s already has closed weaker locations and expanded its low-price business, but those actions haven’t come fast enough to offset the big changes coursing through the retail market. Overall department-store sales fell 6.1% in March from a year ago, leaving stores and warehouses bulging with goods, and particularly overstocked on apparel.
In banking, commercial banks either retreated from such global market areas as Asia and Africa and have yet to react to the impending effect of e-commerce on trade finance. It is as if Paul Revere rode through Concord yelling "The British are Coming." As a result, the e-commerce platform service providers mobilized, massed and shouted "fix bayonets" and "forward." The bankers took two aspirins, set their alarms for 0800 and went back to bed after writing themselves a note to call their economic seers at 0900 the next morning.
C'est la guerre!
