NewAlibaba aims to get more US products on Taobao, Tmall via June trade fair in Detroit
The move is a step in fulfilling Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s January pledge to help create a million jobs in the US.
Jack Ma Yun, the founder of Alibaba Group Holding, will host a two-day trade fair in June to get American businesses to use the world’s largest online shopping platform for selling their products to China’s 600 million middle-class consumers, a step in fulling his January pledge to help create a million American jobs.
The fair, to be called Gateway 17, will be held on June 20 and 21 at the Cobo Center in Detroit, the Midwest automotive city that signifies the birth, subsequent demise and most recent rejuvenation of the US manufacturing industry.
China overtook the US in 2016 as the world’s largest retail market, with US$4.84 trillion in sales, with a voracious appetite for everything from clothing to foodstuff to electronics. Chinese consumers are expected to spend more than US$150 billion on foreign-made goods by 2020, according to a January report by eMarketer.
It’s also made Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall the two largest e-commerce sites on the planet, in the process propelling the e-commerce operator into a US$286 billion company.
“The Chinese market presents tremendous opportunities for U.S. small businesses and farmers to grow their businesses, and in turn, create more U.S. jobs,” Ma said in an open letter on Tuesday. “We are already a gateway for thousands of global brands, retailers and companies to sell to Chinese consumers. And we want to expand that gateway – level the playing field – to make it easy for American entrepreneurs, small businesses and farmers alike to take advantage of the China opportunity.”