Three trajectories for a pressure sector of the price shock
By brutally hardening its commercial policy, the Trump administration has opened a new front against logistics globalization. Customs rights imposed on Chinese imports now reach 54 %, while Vietnam, India and the European Union are struck at unpublished levels. This pricing wave is not a simple technical adjustment: it fractures the e-commerce chain, from the acquisition strategy to the final delivery, including pricing, sourcing, production and customer promise.
The stake exceeds the short term. It redraws the foundations of a model hitherto based on optimization, fluidity and price. For brands, platforms, traders and consumers, three scenarios are taking shape.
Compromise: negotiation and price parenthesis
In this first scenario, customs increases are used as a negotiation lever. It would not be a break, but a tactic. Washington displays its firmness, but opens the door to exemptions. Beijing counterattack without excess. Brussels alerts but does not break. Result: certain product categories benefit from differentiated treatment, taxes stabilize, and supply chains take their breath.
It is, in a way, the Apple scenario. During the first Trump mandate, the apple brand had obtained exemptions from the Apple Watch and the AirPods. It could reissue this strategy, provided that the dialogue between the company and the White House is settare again. The European Union, on the other hand, is already considering targeted protection measures to mitigate the impact on its most exposed exporters.
In this context, the brands are reassessed their margins but retain their industrial architecture. Logistics flows are temporarily slowed down, but not unstructured. Consumers pay more, but without collapse of choice or availability.
Decoupling: a two -speed world
But if the geopolitical tension sets in, this compromise could give way to a structural decoupling. The United States would extend and amplify its pricing strategy. China, in return, would restrict its exports of critical components or rare land. Europe, taken between two blocks, would see its room for maneuver is reduced. Brands should then choose their camp: produce for the West or for Asia, but more for both.
This scenario is already materializing for platforms like Shein or Temu. Their economic model-based on the customs exemption “minimis”, which allowed millions of Chinese packages to enter the United States without taxation-is about to be neutralized. From May 2, this franchise will disappear. Prices will have to integrate full customs duties, with the immediate effect of a loss of competitiveness on their target heart: ultra low-cost.
Amazon, for its part, will have to revise its marketplace in depth. Asian sellers will have to adjust their prices to absorb new taxes, or risk a sudden fall in their volumes. Shopify, a key platform for the international D2C, could be forced to introduce differentiated tariff structures according to geographic areas, breaking the promise of a global and standardized trade.
In this configuration, e-commerce ceases to be universal. It becomes regional, asymmetrical, segmented. The buyer no longer buys a product, but a local version of this product, subject to a tax and logistical treatment specific to its market.
Adaptation: Strategic reconfiguration and resilience
Faced with this reality, a third scenario is outlined: that of a deep adaptation. Brands that have room for maneuver – financial, industrial, logistics – begin a transformation. They no longer seek to get around the taxes, but to redefine their model.
This is the case of Decathlon, already established industrially in Morocco, Portugal or Turkey, and which could accelerate its deployment in Mexico to serve the North American market with local sourcing. It is also the positioning of Back Market, whose local reconditioned model takes on an immediate comparative advantage against the new surcharged imported. Nike, for its part, continues to invest in automated production units in the United States, capable of making an increasing part of its catalog on demand.
In this logic, e-commerce becomes less dependent on the globalized flow and more rooted in local value creation loops. Less massive imports, more local assembly. Less volume, more value. The reconditioned, rental or personalization gain land, not for ideological, but economic reasons.
A chain under tension, a model to be reinvented
This recomposition affects all the links in the chain. Acquisition marketing, so far calibrated for optimized average baskets, becomes less profitable. Paid campaigns are suspended, acquisition costs explode. Production, exploded, must be relocated in emergency without a scale effect. The margins contract. Logistics slows down, stocks are increasing, deliveries are slower. The customer experience is deteriorating: unexpected costs upon receipt, stock breaks, extended deadlines. And yet, most brands must maintain impeccable service to hope to keep their customer base.
It is not a fleeting crisis. E-commerce goes from globalization to a post-globale era where it must change matrix, more political, more technical and less predictable.
