article from: SAN author: cat t (of public Number: Uncle Cat in Silicon Valley ), title picture: original picture
Businessmen and politicians are not too different. There are no eternal enemies or friends, only eternal interests.
At yesterday ’s White House outbreak news conference, a media asked President Trump. I heard that the White House and Amazon founder and CEO Bezos recently maintained daily contacts on new crown pneumonia? Trump did not deny: “This is true, but I don’t know the details. As far as I know, some government officials are working with Amazon or Bezos. This is great. We have received a lot of great assistance from competent people, I believe he is one of them. “
It sounds a little embarrassing, after all, the two had almost torn their faces before. As we all know, Trump and Bezos’ relationship is extremely bad because of the Washington Post. Bezos’s newspapers hit Trump hardest during the election. After taking office, Trump repeatedly bombarded Amazon with Twitter, and then the US Department of Justice launched an antitrust investigation against Amazon. The US Department of Defense also awarded Microsoft a $ 10 billion cloud computing contract, which triggered Amazon’s Court of Appeal.
Why did Bezos suddenly become a close friend of the White House? Didn’t he and Trump have a relationship at once?
Now Trump really needs Amazon. This year is the year of the US election. He originally thought that the winning ticket was in his hands, but did not want to meet two huge black swans. The new crown pneumonia epidemic has begun to rag in the United States, and the US economy will undoubtedly be hit hard. Saudi Arabia is again fighting a crude oil price war with Russia. The once proud performance stock market fell directly into a bear market. Now he is in dire straits, controlling the spread of the epidemic as soon as possible, and ensuring the stability of society and people’s livelihood is the only way out.
Last week, the White House and many tech giants on the west coast of the United StatesFrequent meetings to discuss how to coordinate the new crown epidemic. These include Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Amazon. During an emergency conference on the weekend, Trump also announced that Google helped the government build an assessment website for the detection of the new crown virus. Although it was actually done by Verily, another subsidiary of Google ’s parent company Alphabet, the credit is not too much of a problem for Google. After all, not many people outside the technology industry know what Alphabet is.
Due to the increasingly severe epidemic situation, schools in the United States have generally suspended classes to prevent the gathering and contact of people. Silicon Valley and other severely epidemic areas have followed the Chinese experience and implemented home isolation orders to prohibit people from traveling unnecessarily. Except for supermarkets and pharmacies, other stores are closed directly, and restaurants only accept takeaway (you can also pick up and pack for the time being) . If the epidemic continues to spread, it will not be ruled out that more states will begin to shut down and even take stricter control measures.
Obviously, such control measures are the most effective means to control the epidemic, but they will inevitably hurt the economy. According to Trump’s prediction, the United States may not control the epidemic until July-August, which also means that the economy will be hit for four to five months. The catering, retail, entertainment, aviation, travel, real estate and other industries are undoubtedly the first to bear the brunt, and there may be a large number of failures and unemployment.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin even predicts that the U.S. unemployment rate could be as high as 20% if effective rescue measures are not taken. Under such a severe situation, the U.S. federal government announced today that it will issue cash subsidies to the American public in the next two weeks. (may exceed $ 1,000) , It is used to cope with the difficulties in life caused by the decline in income and unemployment.
In the process of epidemic control in China, the two e-commerce giants Ali and Jingdong played an important role. The status of Amazon in the United States is equivalent to the combination of Ali and JD. Play a more important role. So how can Amazon help the Trump administration and American society?
Let’s take a look at Amazon’s place in the US economy. eMarket data last year showed that Amazon’s retail business accounted for 44% of the US e-commerce market. Amazon not only has a huge proprietary platform, but also a third-party seller platform, which is equivalent toTmall plus JD.com; chain food supermarket Whole Foods, as well as fresh food delivery business; complete smart home hardware system, more digital entertainment content ecology; a warehouse network throughout the United States, and its own logistics system has also been initially established; Not to mention, Amazon also has powerful big data and cloud computing services.
In this outbreak, Amazon will play a key role in the following areas:
Material supply : As the epidemic is getting worse, it is expected that the US state governments will adopt stricter control measures and people will stay at home for a long time. Although supermarkets and pharmacies are still open, online shopping is obviously the safest choice, which means that Amazon, which dominates the U.S. e-commerce market, will become an important source of people’s supplies, not to mention that Amazon’s products range from fresh food to household stores It contains almost everything needed for people’s livelihood.
Ensuring people ’s livelihoods : Due to the recent surge in orders for essential products such as medical supplies, Amazon has prioritized orders to prioritize the replenishment of household items, medical supplies, and other high-demand products. This will allow faster delivery of these products to U.S. consumers; meanwhile, Amazon will suspend restocking of non-essential supplies.
Absorb employment : The new crown pneumonia is another nightmare blow for the traditional retail industry, but also a big new growth opportunity for Amazon. Yesterday Amazon just announced its intention to recruit 100,000 new employees in the United States for storage and logistics in the future. As the economy is about to fall into recession, large-scale recruitment of new employees will help absorb a large number of people who are unemployed due to new coronary pneumonia and ensure social stability. In addition, Amazon also announced an increase in hourly wages from $ 15 to $ 17.
Regulated sources of supply : At the end of February, the U.S. Congress and the Department of Justice contacted Amazon separately and asked Amazon to rectify new crown pneumonia-related products on third-party seller platforms. Amazon has removed more than 1 million fake propaganda products that can prevent new crown pneumonia, and removed tens of thousands of maliciously raised health and hygiene products, as well as fake and inferior masks with substandard quality and fake certification marks. .
Stabilizing prices : In addition to removing false promotional products from the shelves, Amazon has also blocked thousands of third-party sellers who soared prices, and banned masks, hand sanitizers and other anti-epidemic products from continuing to be put on the shelves in the later stage. Blocked the possibility that the treacherous oxen party hoards goods. In addition, Amazon has promised to cooperate with the State Departments of Justice to conduct criminal investigations into these treacherous scalpers. Tennessee previously hoarding 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizerWestern sellers, under pressure from Amazon’s blockade and the State Department of Justice, were forced to donate the supplies.
Whether Trump likes Bezos or not, He encountered a huge black swan such as New Crown Pneumonia in the year of the election, and he needs Amazon’s support more than ever. Maintaining people’s livelihood is maintaining his election, strong> Keep the hope of the November election. For Bezos, the epidemic is not only a big opportunity for Amazon’s business growth, but also may help to resolve one of his worst headaches in the past few years. If the United States controls the epidemic in the future, it will not be surprising that Trump and Bezos are laughing and laughing. After all they are successful businessmen.
article from: SAN author: cat t (of the public number: Uncle Cat In Silicon Valley )