August 15, 2024
SEATTLE – TikTok for business revealed last week that shoppers can now discover and purchase products from Amazon directly within the TikTok app. Shopping is powered by Amazon through ads placed on TikTok, allowing users to complete product purchases with Amazon in TikTok’s native environment. An article on TikTok.com put it this way: “For both closed-loop ads and open-loop ads, we’re investing in commerce solutions that create a frictionless shopping experience for our users to discover, browse, and buy—wherever and however our community chooses to shop.”
NY Times Analyzes The Supply Chain
NEW YORK – An Aug. 12 article in the New York Times ponders a reconfiguration of the supply chain, specifically an appreciation of the risks of depending on faraway industry to manufacture goods such as computer chips, protective gear, and medicines. “For decades, major companies have behaved as if geographic distance were almost irrelevant,” writes Peter S. Goodman, a reporter for the NY Times. “A factory in China was the same as a factory in Michigan. The internet, container shipping and international trading arrangements had supposedly shrunk the globe.”
Goodman points to a combination of reduced supply and surging demand that “made other countries realize that they had become heavily dependent on a single nation — China — for many items, including medical supplies. Covid eventually faded from the headlines, but policymakers and business executives in the United States and Europe faced pressure to diminish their reliance on China.”
The main response is an intention to make more goods at home. With that in mind, President Biden signed a law that subsidizes computer chips and electric vehicle manufacturers in the United States.
“Wealthy nations are also sending their orders elsewhere,” Goodman writes. “Vietnam has gained factory orders, and India has emerged as another alternative. As the world’s most populous nation, India might eventually develop a supply chain rivaling China’s. Walmart is now moving some production from China to India. In the short term, Mexico is a more realistic option for companies that sell many goods in the United States.”
Recent Comments