The Chinese buyer will do it for Alibaba

Try as I might, I can't really think of an Asian B2B media link for the Obama victory. Remembering the scary 1992 pre-election rhetoric of W.J. Clinton, Esq. and what happened after that, I don't think an Obama administration is really going to become a Smoot-Hawley-ite protectionist mob. Having the benefit over his predecessor of intelligence and an apparent willingness to listen, I also don't believe he's going to pursue the manipulation of the renminbi nonsense any further than he already had to in order to guarantee those union cheques kept flowing in.

So, we'll assume business as usual. Which leaves us with international buyers drying up, PRD factories closing down and generally ugly conditions ahead for the exporters of consumer merchandise in China (aka 'cheap tat').

Interesting to see Joe Tsai of Alibaba then predicting to Reuters that he expects 50% of their B2B revenues to be coming from within China in the future. That would be up from 36% today. At the same time, the article reports that Alibaba is cutting prices for many of its manufacturing customers whose businesses are really hurting right now.