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In just two years, Temu has become the world’s biggest online dollar store. Temu will generate $30 billion in US sales this year, a milestone that took Amazon.com Inc. more than a decade to reach. A three-pack of detachable KBDS blades costs $70 on Amazon and $36 on Temu. Amazon’s customers will get their order in a day or two, whereas Temu’s will take 7 to 10 days.  Either way, the factory pockets the same amount of money. Amazon’s 90% markup largely reflects the cost of fast delivery, which has long given the company its competitive edge.  Temu is proving there’s another type of consumer out there. Its homepage perfectly captures the vibe.  Visitors are bombarded with random items RE: Inte helt slumpmässigt. Temu kommer ihåg vad du har köpt och anpassar utbudet efter det, säger en nöjd kund. —faux-leather car seat covers, frog costumes for cats, knockoff handbags, supplements, whatever— and a flurry of banners, countdown timers and prize wheels hawking deals, price drop...

 Bloc needs a regulatory framework to ensure skills transfer from Asian companies, warns report  “We can spend another 10 or 15 years trying and failing with companies like Northvolt,” Julia Poliscanova, senior director at T&E, said.  “Or we can [benefit from] where there is expertise and use it to catch up quickly, just like the Chinese actually did in the last 20 years.” Financial Times 18 February 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/296cd088-7d5f-4e71-b513-6ac5c10f10d7 Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 18 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-18-februari-2025.html

The US State Department has dropped a statement from its website which stated that Washington does not support Taiwan's independence - a move which has sparked anger in China. China said the revision "sends a wrong... signal to separatist forces advocating for Taiwan independence", and asked the US to "correct its mistakes". https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyzy300vlzo What is the 'One China' policy? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-38285354 1997 Clinton-Jiang Summit and U.S.-China Joint Statement https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/10/1997-clinton-jiang-summit-and-us-china.html

  As Donald Trump removes the United States from international forums, China is expected to move into the gap.  But is China capable of replacing the US? And does it even want to? Deutsche Welle 16 February 2025 https://www.dw.com/en/msc-can-china-replace-us-as-world-leader/a-71626675 RE: Om Kina inte vill så kanske EU? Problemets kärna är att det inte går att ha EMU om man inte vill ha ett Federalt Europa, styrt från Bryssel och Frankfurt, eller om det blir Berlin. Rolf Englund i EU-krönika i Nya Wermlands-Tidningen 11 juni 2001 Det är målsättningen om ett ständigt fastare förbund - "ever closer union" - som är själva grundbultsfelet med EU. Kunde vi rulla tillbaka Sovjetunionen skall vi väl kunna rulla tillbaka Europeiska Unionen.  Rolf Englund Barometerns website, 7 juni 2005    "ever closer union" - The United States of Europe https://www.nejtillemu.com/englundcloser0506.htm AI Copilot kommenterar: Du har rätt i att ett federalt Europa skulle innebära en bet...

   ”AI kommer att ha stor inverkan på allt möjligt men sektorn är galet övervärderad. Sedan är det mycket spekulativa flöden och kasinopengar – så fort något nytt kommer in på börsen vill många vara med och spela – så där kommer det att smälla ordentligt”, säger han. Hur sårbar är du själv för en AI-smäll? ”Inte alls, vi håller inte på med sådant där.” Christer Gardell är mer orolig för västvärldens relation med Kina framöver. ”Skulle väst gå för hårt åt och isolera Kina för mycket riskerar världen att slitas isär i ett ‘vi och dom’.  Det är den verkligt stora svarta svanen. Dagens industri 14 februari 2025 https://www.di.se/digital/gardell-varnar-dar-kommer-det-smalla-ordentligt/ Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 14 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-14-februari-2025.html

  It was the moment China’s leaders finally blinked. After four years of standing by as property developers like China Evergrande Group spiraled into default,  Communist Party officials decided in late January that China Vanke Co. — one of the country’s last surviving real-estate giants —  was, for now at least, too big to fail. The unprecedented intervention has triggered a sigh of relief in markets, but it also underscores a somber reality:  The property crisis that hobbled China’s economy and created a nearly $160 billion pile of distressed debt — the world’s largest — is getting worse. Bloomberg 11 February 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-11/china-s-real-estate-crisis-property-sector-debt-is-getting-worse Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 13 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-13-februari-2025.html

 ”Den explosionsartade ökningen av inköp från giganter som Temu och Shein är ett stort orosmoln”, enligt Svensk Handel. En betydande del av tillväxten i e-handeln drevs av en kraftig ökning av e-handelsköp från utländska e-handelsföretag. Omsättningen från dessa skattas till cirka 18 miljarder kronor, en ökning med över 50 procent jämfört med 2023.  En förklaringsfaktor till utvecklingen är den ökade handeln från lågprisaktörer som kinesiska Temu och Shein. Var tionde svensk konsument i åldern 18–89 år har handlat från ovanstående aktörer.  Det motsvarar över 800.000 konsumenter per månad. DI/TT 12 februari 2025  https://www.di.se/digital/darfor-oroas-svensk-handel-av-temu-och-shein/ Regeringen är positiv till frihandel och konkurrens - men företagen måste följa reglerna.  https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/regeringen-tar-krafttag-mot-shein-och.html Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 12 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-12-f...

  Sverige tillhör de länder som e-handlar allra mest.  Enbart under oktober månad i fjol handlade 600.000 svenskar från kinesiska e-handelsplattformar som Temu och Shein Regeringen är positiv till frihandel och konkurrens - men företagen måste följa reglerna.  Ebba Busch, energi- och näringsminister (KD) Elisabeth Svantesson, finansminister (M) Romina Pourmokhtari, klimat- och miljöminister (L) Erik Slottner, civilminister (KD) med ansvar för konsumentfrågor Detta är en debattartikel. Dagens industri 10 februari 2025 https://www.di.se/debatt/regeringen-tar-krafttag-mot-shein-och-temu/ TEMU bättre än EMU https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/temu-battre-emu.html Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 10 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-10-februari-2025.html  

  Bloomberg 5 February 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-05/us-trade-gap-ballooned-ahead-of-trump-term-tariff-promises Det är dollarn bakom allt - Monetary Creation and Destruction del 5 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/det-ar-dollarn-bakom-allt-monetary.html Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 6 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-6-februari-2025.html

The EU plans Temu, Shein and Amazon liable for dangerous or illegal products sold online, in a crackdown on the flood of imports from China. The EU imported 4.6bn lower-value parcels in 2024, a fourfold increase on 2022. More than 90 per cent were from China.  The sheer volume of these items puts an “unsustainable strain on the authorities”, according to the draft. Financial Times 1 February 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/0b2b5c80-40f8-4ec9-bc91-2b4abbb88893 TEMU, EU och Kina https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/12/temu-eu-och-kina.html Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 5 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-5-februari-2025.html

 which he seems to announce and put on hold at whim — are symptomatic of a deeper challenge to U.S. manufacturers that I want to write about today: how U.S. companies keep pace with China in the industries of the future — artificial intelligence, advanced logic chips, electric vehicles, clean tech and autonomous cars   And they have to make those bets while competing against China, where the government wakes up every day and asks manufacturers:  How can I help you? And: Let’s take the long view together on how we win globally. To understand that better, I visited Ford Motor headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., last week to see how it is competing with China’s E.V.  Let me repeat that a little slower: To be globally competitive in the cars of the future, U.S. automakers need battery tech transfer from China. We are talking about a total reversal from 25 years ago, when China needed tech transfer from GM and Ford to build internationally competitive cars. My fellow Am...

  Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are up to something, and Sun Tzu might be able to explain it.  The ancient Chinese general, strategist and philosopher of war taught that “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” That’s what both are trying to do.  Signum Global’s Andrew Bishop believes a deal is imminent.  Beijing doesn’t want a trade war, he argues, given the prevailing weakness in its economy.  John Authers Bloomberg 5 February 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-02-05/trump-xi-play-to-win-at-sun-tzu-s-art-of-trade-war Sun Tzu - Wikipedia The Art of War - Wikipedia China’s trade retaliation carries a warning of worse to come https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/04/xi-jinping-shows-how-he-will-return-american-fire Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 5 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-5-februari-2025.html

  med att införa egna handelstullar på 10 procent på amerikanska varor.  På kol och naturgas höjs tullen till 15 procent.  SvD/TT 4 februari 2025 https://www.svd.se/a/RzXaR2/usa-s-tullar-mot-kina-har-tratt-i-kraft Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 4 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-4-februari-2025.html

“There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen,” says a quote from Vladimir Lenin, who may have copied it from someone else.  US companies like Nvidia (NVDA) would profit from making those chips, which other US companies would buy and use to develop AI applications in vast new US data centers.  The main worry was getting enough electricity to power it all. China, it was thought, would be hobbled for lack of the necessary chips, and thus present little competition. DeepSeek just poked a massive hole in that happy narrative.  When the topic involves China and technology, one of my go-to sources is Gavekal Research.  They know how the Chinese economy works and are really good at explaining it in ways Westerners can understand. Louis Gave knew DeepSeek was a gamechanger as soon as he saw it. He posted a report calling this Another Sputnik Moment. Gavekal’s Beijing-based tech analyst Tilly Zhang followed up with a deeper explanation. This is a good...

  Pessimism prevails on the continent as businesses turn their eyes to Trump’s America.   No single, acute crisis explains the pessimism; it’s a complex of pathologies.   Almost everything has gone wrong for Europe in the past few years. It has struggled with Covid, a spike in the cost of energy and the rise of far-right parties who despise the European project.  China threatens its markets, Russia threatens its territory, and Trump threatens both. Seven U.S. stocks are worth more than the stock markets of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland, combined. Greg Ip Wall Street Journal 31 January 2025 https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/the-darkening-skies-over-europes-economy-76e51f90?mod=panda_wsj_digest

Money doesn’t solve all problems, but $37.4 billion should solve a few.  That was what Microsoft and Meta have in combined capital spending in the December-ended quarter.  The expenditures were higher than what Wall Street had anticipated, not to mention nearly double from the same period the previous year.  The bulk of it is going to chips and data centers to power generative artificial intelligence services.  Wall Street Journal 29 January 2025 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft-and-metas-ai-splurge-still-not-enough-for-nvidia-916daca2 “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow in 1987 DeepSeek has made us wonder, when does it happen for AI? AI Has Rocked the Stock Market, But What Will It Do for the Economy? Weekend Essay | The Big Take Bloomberg 31 January 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/will-ai-take-our-jobs-3-scenarios-for-how-it-could-impact-the-econo...

The country is focused on exports, but China is slowing imports and U.S. tariff threats are growing.  Politicians are offering few alternatives. Trade in goods is more critical to Germany’s economy than oil is to Texas or tech to California— an overdependence that is the result of decades of government policy that supported export manufacturing while creating hurdles to investment in new sectors such as IT or in the country’s infrastructure. Exports support roughly one in four German jobs. More than two-thirds of cars produced in Germany are exported.  Since the mid-1990s, exports’ share of Germany’s GDP doubled, reaching 43% of GDP,  four times the share in the U.S. and twice as high as China.  Wall Street Journal 26 January 2025 https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/germany-economic-model-broken-exports-095a488d?mod=hp_lead_pos7

  When adjusted for inflation, China’s trade surplus last year far exceeded any in the world in the past century, even those of export powerhouses like Germany, Japan or the United States.  Chinese factories are dominating global manufacturing on a scale not experienced by any country since the United States after World War II. China has gone from importing cars to becoming the world’s largest car exporter, surpassing Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Germany.  A Chinese state-owned enterprise has started making single-aisle commercial jetliners, in an attempt to replace Airbus and Boeing jets someday.  Chinese companies produce almost all of the world’s solar panels. Japan’s surplus, for example, peaked in 1993 at $96 billion. That works out to $185 billion in today’s dollars, or less than a fifth of China’s surplus last year. Germany ran enormous trade surpluses in the years after Europe’s financial crisis a decade ago. But its surplus peaked in 2017 at a sum equal to...

  Denna bild tycker jag skall bli ikonisk och viral. Dela gärna. https://www.shine.cn/news/in-focus/2501075144/

  Nearly 46 years ago, US President Jimmy Carter made history by welcoming Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China, to Washington.  The visit, which irrevocably changed the course of the global economy, marked the first time a leader of Communist China set foot on US soil: It’d be a real shame if the remaining goodwill between Beijing and Washington died with Carter. Yet there are signs that this is happening.  “On Friday, TikTok will make its final arguments to the US Supreme Court as it faces an unprecedented ban due to national security concerns.” The US “has been throwing around perceived national security risks as reason to come after Chinese tech companies, but leaders haven’t always been very forthcoming about what exactly that means,”  Bloomberg Opinion maril 10 January 2025 Deng Xiaoping ran China despite having no formal title other than Most Honorary President of the Chinese Bridge Association https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/06/deng-xiaoping-ra...