SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, Chinese online sales giant Alibaba said it could create 1 million jobs in the United States over the next five…
SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, Chinese online sales giant Alibaba said it could create 1 million jobs in the United States over the next five years by building a marketplace where American small businesses could sell to China’s burgeoning middle class.
Now Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma says with U. S.-China trade becoming increasingly contentious, the promise cannot be fulfilled.
In an interview Wednesday with Xinhua, the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China, Ma said the idea was premised on a friendly U. S.-China partnership and rational trade relations.
“That premise no longer exists today, so our promise cannot be fulfilled,” he said.
On Monday the United States announced a new round of tariffs to be levied on $250 billion worth of Chinese-made goods, after failing to reach a deal with China on trade issues.
Trade analysts and business groups warn that the U. S. duties and retaliatory tariffs that China imposes on U. S. products will drive up costs and harm consumers in the long run.
When Ma made the statement in January 2017, he wasn’t saying Alibaba would hire 1 million Americans, but rather than it expected American small businesses to find enough customers through it in China that that their sales would rise, allowing them to hire more workers.
