International
Inflation clouds ‘Black Friday’ kickoff of US holiday shopping season
| PAr AFP | John Biers |
US retailers unveiled a trove of fresh promotions Friday, as they try to coax sales from reticent shoppers whose holiday cheer has been tempered by inflation and worries over a softening economy.
“Black Friday,” the unofficial start of the US holiday shopping season, announced itself with the annual day-after-Thanksgiving deluge of online deals and early store openings.
Traffic was steady at Macy’s flagship store in midtown Manhattan, where crowds braved drizzly, chilly weather to survey the mammoth department store and take in holiday windows that feature a Santa surrounded by disco balls and fox family of stuffed animals clad in plaid.
But industry experts have been cautious about this year’s prospects, in light of price pressures that have exacerbated concerns about an oversupply of goods.
A year ago, retailers faced product shortfalls in the wake of shipping backlogs and factory closures related to Covid-19. To avert a repeat, the industry front-loaded holiday imports this year, leaving it vulnerable to oversupply at a time when consumers are cutting back.
“Today’s problem is having too much stuff,” said Neil Saunders, managing director for consultancy GlobalData Retail.
Saunders said retailers have made progress in reducing excess inventories, but oversupply will mean deep discounts in many categories, including electronics and apparel.
“This is a holiday season where retailers are going to have to work very hard for very small gains,” he said.
The dynamic has created opportunities for savvy shoppers like Carla Forbes, who began scouring for holiday discounts weeks ago. She nabbed a jacket Friday at Macy’s for $79, down from an original price of $225.
While promotions on watches and jewelry have got “better,” she noted that such deals are not available for staples like food, for which prices have soared.
“You just have to buy it if you want (it),” Forbes said.
Diminishing savings
Leading forecasts from Deloitte and the National Retail Federation project a single-digit percentage rise in sales, but this is unlikely to exceed the inflation rate.
Adobe expects an overall holiday sales increase of 2.5 percent, less than a third of last year’s level. Besides inflation, Adobe cited higher Federal Reserve interest rates and an uptick in brick-and-mortar shopping as factors.
Consumers spent $7.28 billion up through 6:00 pm Eastern time (2300 GMT) for Black Friday, according to Adobe. The company anticipates that when the final tally is in, consumers will spend between $9 billion and $9.2 billion for the day, setting a new record for online sales on Black Friday.
Countries like Britain and France have been marking Black Friday too, but with soaring inflation, merchants there face a similar dilemma.
“The worry is that it could turn out to be more of a Bleak Friday,” said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter.
Anne Campbell, who was visiting New York from Scotland, said the mood felt very different from home, where worries about energy security and a weakening economy dominated.
“Things are very tight in the UK for a lot of people,” she said, contrasting this with spending in the US.
US shoppers have remained resilient throughout the pandemic, often spending more than expected even when consumer sentiment surveys suggested gloominess.
Part of the reason has been the unusually robust state of savings, with many households banking government pandemic aid payments at a time of reduced consumption due to virus restrictions.
But that cushion is starting to whittle away. After hitting $2.5 trillion in excess savings in mid-2021, the benchmark fell to $1.7 trillion in the second quarter, according to Moody’s.
Accompanying this drop has been a rise in credit card debt visible in Fed data and anecdotally described by chains that report more purchases made with food stamps.
Mixed picture
Recent earnings reports from retailers paint a mixed picture on consumer health.
Target stood on the downcast side, pointing to a sharp decline in shopping activity in late October, potentially portending a weak holiday season.
“We’ve had a consumer who has been dealing with very stubborn inflation for quarter after quarter now,” Chief Executive Brian Cornell told a conference call with analysts.
He added that customers are “shopping very carefully on a budget.”
But Lowe’s, another US chain specializing in home-improvement, described the same late-October period as “strong.”
Friday’s crowds in New York were more robust compared with a year ago, said shopper Marvin Thomas, who also ventured out for Black Friday in 2021.
Inflation is a “big problem,” he told AFP, catching his breath outdoors after finding a deal on a hat at Foot Locker.
“I’m not going to deny that it has affected me, but you gotta do what you gotta do.”
International
Austrian man arrested in Croatia with deceased woman as passenger in his car
A 65-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested at a border checkpoint in Croatia after attempting to enter the country in his car with a deceased woman sitting as a passenger, police announced on Tuesday.
The man was detained in a routine check in late November in Gunja, a border area separating Bosnia from Croatia, the police told AFP. Suspicious because they saw “no consciousness or movement” from the passenger, Croatian officers called a doctor, who confirmed the death of the 83-year-old woman, also Austrian, according to her identification.
The woman’s relationship to the suspect is unknown. She had died in Bosnia, and the man intended to repatriate her body to Austria to “avoid the formalities related to transporting a corpse,” according to the police. Croatian media reported that the man was her legal guardian.
Once her death was confirmed, a funeral service took charge of the body.
International
Colombian nationals arrested for human trafficking and disappearance of migrant boat
Colombian authorities arrested two nationals accused of the illegal trafficking of migrants to the United States and of endangering lives due to the disappearance of a boat with 40 people aboard, U.S. Department of Justice officials reported on Tuesday.
Hernando Manuel de la Cruz Rivera Orjuela, 52, and Luis Enrique Linero Pinto, 40, both Colombian citizens, were arrested on December 13 in Colombia at the request of the United States for their alleged involvement in a “transnational human trafficking operation,” the department said in a statement.
According to the charges, the detainees were transporting migrants to San Andrés Island in the Caribbean, where they would then be taken by boat to Nicaragua. The goal was to reach the United States through Central America and Mexico.
The accused are said to have advised the migrants on how to reach San Andrés Island, where they personally received them, arranged accommodations, and “took them to the boats that transported them to Nicaragua so they could enter the United States illegally,” the statement reads.
“These defendants put several migrants on the boat that disappeared off the coast of Nicaragua in 2023,” said Deputy Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, as cited in the statement.
Both men are “directly and personally responsible for the illicit trafficking of migrants on that vessel,” according to the indictment dated October 23.
International
Homemade landmine explosion in Michoacán kills two soldiers, injures five
Two soldiers were killed and five others were injured by the explosion of homemade landmines planted by a criminal group in a mountainous area of the Mexican state of Michoacán (west), the Secretary of Defense reported on Tuesday.
The attack occurred on Monday morning in the municipality of Cotija, a border area between Michoacán and the state of Jalisco, when the military was conducting a reconnaissance mission after receiving information about an armed camp in the area, explained Secretary General Ricardo Trevilla.
“At that moment, an improvised explosive device detonated. Unfortunately, two soldiers lost their lives, and five others were injured,” the military leader detailed. The affected soldiers were airlifted to hospitals in the region by a military helicopter, while the rest of the team continued with the reconnaissance of the area.
Trevilla stated that before the explosion, the military unit had located the dismembered bodies of three people, and upon continuing the mission, they confirmed the camp was abandoned.
Asked about the individuals responsible for placing the explosives, the general suggested they could be criminals linked to the local group Cárteles Unidos, which operates in Michoacán and uses these tactics in their territorial dispute with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the country.
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