Alibaba.com sees US order surge amid 90-day tariff pause
In mid-May, the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs on each other’s goods — a move that sent U.S. small- and medium-sized businesses rushing to replenish inventory, according to Alibaba.com, a business-to-business marketplace that connects suppliers with buyers globally.
Just days after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. was temporarily suspending steep tariffs on Chinese imports, Alibaba.com saw a surge in order volume and product inquiries across key categories, including apparel, packaging, machinery and holiday decor. Alibaba.com told Modern Retail that order inquiries from U.S. businesses were up 40% year-over-year during the week of May 12, with many companies treating the temporary tariff relief as a critical window to bulk up ahead of key shopping seasons.
With more than 40 million active buyers and 200,000 suppliers, Alibaba.com’s size and scope gives it a large sample to assess how U.S. companies are maneuvering in light of the Trump administration’s far-reaching tariffs. The platform’s core base of suppliers is heavily concentrated in Asia, particularly China. Alibaba.com is part of the larger Alibaba Group, which also includes Taobao, Tmall and AliExpress. Earlier this month, Alibaba reported that its international commerce wholesale business, which includes Alibaba.com, grew 16% compared to the year-ago quarter, “primarily due to an increase in revenue generated by cross-border related-value-added services,” the company stated.
To learn more about how U.S. companies are reacting — and how Alibaba.com is trying to support them — Modern Retail spoke with Rah Mahtani, the B2B platform’s head of commercial strategy in the U.S.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How quickly did you see a shift in buyer behavior after the tariff pause was announced?
“It was effectively an instant reaction that we saw on our platform. We saw an immediate spike on May 14 in order volume across some of the more popular consumer-centric products — things like apparel, accessories, jewelry, beauty, personal care and even packaging. We also saw with some non-consumables like renewable energy or machinery that there was a surge in demand. Order inquiries are up 40% from the start of that tariff-reduced period.
We’re seeing increases in order volume for things like Christmas- or holiday-related items or back-to-school-related items. When I say holiday-related items, that includes anything from holiday-themed bags and packaging to the actual decor — like home decor, lawn decor and the traditional type of lighting or trees that you would see during the holidays. We’re seeing that purchase order behavior six-plus months ahead of where it would normally be.”
Are you seeing this as a hedge against future tariff hikes?
“Yes. Business owners are seeing this as a window of opportunity. Words from them that I hear pretty consistently are, “This is my chance to stock up where I have 90 days of certainty,” where they’re bookended by periods of a lot of uncertainty.
We see that both the supply side and the buy side are very adept at adapting to these tight timelines, so they’re actually getting a bit quicker at either producing new products or putting orders in with the sampling time buffered in, as well as getting things dispatched from the factories a lot faster to make sure that all the product lands in time to be ahead of the tariff.”
To what extent is Alibaba.com expanding local warehousing to support U.S. buyers and help suppliers capture demand during the 90-day window?
“Local warehousing is expanding every day because it’s a combination of areas that we own ourselves, warehouses that we’ve either leased or bought into, or warehousing that our suppliers have themselves on the ground. Right now, those local warehouses are relatively close to the ports where product is coming in, and we’ve got coverage in pretty much every major port area at the moment.
We’ve taken a combination of local U.S.-based suppliers and international suppliers that have local warehouses, and we’re taking all of their SKUs, and we’re looking at the velocity of those SKUs, which SKUs are moving the fastest, and then we are making sure that they get listed in a specific local stock pavilion on our website.”
How is Alibaba.com thinking about warehouse expansion beyond port cities?
“The question that we’re trying to answer is, ‘Is it better to get product to our buyers faster, or is it better to give them certainty around what they’re paying?’ For speed, we want to cover more rural areas, but we’re pretty confident in our ability to get product even to rural areas with relative speed because of the logistics network that we built up.”
What else is Alibaba.com doing on the fulfillment and logistics side to support U.S. buyers?
“We’re handling a lot of those logistics ourselves to give guaranteed timelines on delivery and transparency around pricing. We want to make sure that products are getting to people roughly within five days, which is a dramatic shift from what people that globally source are used to.”
How are promotions or discounts playing into this demand surge?
“Right now, there’s not necessarily as high a demand for fast shipping as there is for certainty around pricing or support with margins. You may see on the homepage 50% margin guarantees or 10% discounts on total pricing. Things like that have been more effective.”
Are buyers looking beyond China or are they ramping up orders with Chinese suppliers while this window is open?
“A combination of both. But in the near term, it’s definitely a double down on China. In the long term, there is exploration. But anecdotally, it is very challenging because the infrastructure in other countries is not as established as China’s at the moment.”