That man is back! Cross-border sellers: trembling

Now, the shoe has finally dropped. According to foreign media reports, the US Republican presidential candidate Trump has won more than 270 electoral votes and secured victory. For a time, this news occupied many hot searches on domestic social media.

Among them, there are many people discussing the impact that Trump’s election will have on A-shares.

Of course, it is not just A-share investors, many domestic cross-border sellers are also paying special attention to this election. In the weeks before the election results were released, many sellers had already felt the impact.

The US election is in full swing, and a number of sellers have cut their orders by half

In recent times, many sellers have reported that their store’s order volume has declined sharply, and in some exaggerated cases, it has even been almost halved.

When asked about the reasons, most people believe that it is because the US election is approaching and Americans are focusing on the election results, so naturally fewer people are shopping online.

A netizen with an IP address in the United States said that Americans have been voting, watching TV and browsing TikTok recently. Except for those who plan to buy for free, other Americans do not seem to have any plans to shop.

Judging from what some Amazon sellers have said, recent sales have indeed been very bleak.

"Sales have been terrible these days. With Halloween and the election, Americans are not buying anything, right?"

"eBay has few orders. Is the US economy going to end?"

“That’s too much! My ad exposure today is 0. Is it possible that no one is shopping on Amazon today?”

Even some Temu sellers said that recent sales have been extremely bleak and they don’t know whether they can recover after the election.

However, not all sellers have suffered from the crisis of declining orders. Previously, some sharp-eyed netizens discovered that Trump was using Anker's power bank, which invisibly attracted another wave of traffic to Anker.

In addition, many sellers who specialize in selling Trump-related products have also made a lot of money recently. Data shows that a classic Trump baseball cap with the word "MAGA" printed on it has sold more than 10,000 units on Amazon in the past month.

A seller from Yiwu said that Trump-related products have been selling well this year, and factories even need to work overtime to produce products to meet overseas demand.

Indeed, for Americans, the election is the most important thing for them at the moment. Now that the election is over, American consumers will slowly return to their normal pace of life, and the order volume of sellers should slowly recover. But in the long run, what long-term impact will Trump's re-election have on cross-border e-commerce?

What impact will Trump's entry into the White House have on sellers and the entire industry?

In the early morning of November 6th, US time , Trump announced his victory in the 2024 presidential election.

On the other side of the ocean, a cross-border e-commerce practitioner expressed the most pessimistic sentiment: "Those engaged in cross-border e-commerce can completely give up the US market."

The practitioner believes that, first of all, Trump had advertised during the campaign that if he was re-elected, he would impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods. At the same time, he might plan to cancel China's "most favored nation" trade treatment and impose a tariff of up to 60% on imports from China .

Although the declarations made during the campaign may not necessarily be implemented after he is actually elected, once Trump really implements a more stringent tariff policy, it will directly lead to a significant increase in costs for Chinese sellers, causing them to lose their price advantage. At that time, American consumers will look for cheaper alternatives.

From the overall perspective, for new cross-border brands and individual sellers, it is no longer cost-effective to invest heavily in the US market. If the product and brand do not have a moat, it may be difficult to survive in the US market in the future.

For those sellers who are already doing well in the US market, they can consider switching to the UK and European markets. However, the competition in the UK and European markets will definitely become more and more intense in the future, because there will be more sellers switching from the US market.

On the other hand, exchange rate fluctuations are also a point of focus for many sellers. On November 6, 2024, the day Trump announced his victory in the presidential election, the US dollar exchange rate soared, breaking through the 7.2 mark at one point, setting a new high since August 5.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, many sellers settled their currency overnight, hoping to get their money in their hands at this high point and put it in their pockets. After all, judging from the exchange rate during Trump's last term, the RMB exchange rate against the US dollar even remained at around 6.5, which was very unfriendly to the profits of cross-border sellers.

According to Trump's political inclinations, he advocates using policy means to intervene in the US dollar exchange rate to depreciate it, thereby boosting domestic manufacturing in the United States and reducing the trade deficit.

But this is obviously not good news for China's cross-border sellers. On the one hand, the competitiveness of domestic products will decline, and on the other hand, the profits of Chinese sellers selling products to the United States will also be squeezed.

In addition to Amazon sellers, Temu and other platforms may also be affected. Previously, the US Congress has repeatedly proposed to cancel the $800 tax-free policy for small packages. After Trump takes office, it is not ruled out that he will adopt more radical restrictive policies, and low-price platforms such as Temu may be affected to a certain extent.

However, on the issue of TikTok, Trump's attitude is more moderate than that of the Biden administration, and he has said that "TikTok will never be banned." Now that Trump has officially won the election, TikTok sellers should be able to breathe a sigh of relief for the time being.

Overall, Trump's coming to power will indeed have a certain impact on the cross-border e-commerce industry, but how much impact it will have in the long run remains to be seen.

Some sellers believe that although everyone is talking about Trump’s impact on the cross-border e-commerce industry, in fact, its impact on sellers may not be as great as the impact of Amazon charging a little more fees.

US election

Cross-border e-commerce

Trump