Trump close to victory on flagship 'Big Beautiful' tax bill
03/07/2025
Israel orders evacuation of West Bank's Tulkarem
03/07/2025
A 'tsunami of need' feared as US House close to final vote on Trump tax bill
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French diplomat visits detainees held in Iran in first 'proof of life' since Israeli strikes
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Sean 'Diddy' Combs denied bail after prostitution conviction
03/07/2025
Ukraine scrambling for clarity as US downplays halt to arms shipments
03/07/2025
Italy to issue half million non-EU work visas over next three years
03/07/2025
Palestinians mourn director of key Gaza hospital killed in Israeli strike
03/07/2025
French air traffic controllers' strike disrupts early summer season travel
03/07/2025
Dozens still missing after ferry sinks on way to Indonesia's Bali
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Fashion Network
2 hours ago
- Fashion Network
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
President Donald Trump 's two-tiered trade deal with Vietnam aims squarely at practices China has long used to skirt US tariffs: The widespread legal shifting of production to Southeast Asian factories and the murkier and illegal 'origin washing' of exports through their ports. The agreement slaps a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. With details still scarce, economists said much will hinge on the framework Washington establishes to determine what it sees as 'Made in Vietnam' and what it sees as transshipments. Complicating matters is the fact that Chinese businesses have rushed to set up shop across Southeast Asia since Trump launched his first trade war back in 2018. The lion's share of Vietnam's exports to the US are goods like Airpods, phones or other products assembled with Chinese components in a factory in Vietnam and then shipped to America. That's not illegal. 'A lot will depend on how the 40% tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28% of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9% in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities Corp. in Hanoi, said a 40% levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they aren't of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5% of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's skeptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to Southeast Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup Inc. economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in Southeast Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it's not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on April 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabeling, then secure a certification that they were made in the Southeast Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10% universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50%, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145%. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in Southeast Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings LLC in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival Southeast Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than $20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels — the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralized the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days — double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritize checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.'
Fashion Network
2 hours ago
- Fashion Network
Leadership transition at Dsm-Firmenich as Jonathan Simon takes fragrance helm
Swiss-Dutch company DSM- Firmenich has appointed Jonathan Simon as president of its Fine Fragrance division, effective July 1, 2025. He will take over from Jerry Vittoria, who is set to retire in July 2026 after 35 years with the global leader in flavors, fragrances and ingredients. A planned transition period will support a smooth handover between the two leaders. Jonathan Simon joined the DSM-Firmenich group in 2020 and has since overseen the Procter & Gamble key account. He first served as worldwide senior director of Procter & Gamble's beauty care business before becoming worldwide vice president of the American hygiene giant's account in March 2024. Before joining DSM-Firmenich, Simon spent most of his career with L'Oréal, where he worked for 12 years. He began by developing fragrances for brands such as Lancôme, Viktor & Rolf and Cacharel, before moving to the L'Oréal Paris brand. From 2018 to 2020, he was global president of the Garnier brand. His international career has spanned several continents, including Japan, China and Singapore. He holds dual French and New Zealand nationality. Simon's appointment comes at a time of growth for DSM-Firmenich. The group, formed by the merger of DSM and Firmenich, reported sales of €12.8 billion in 2024, up 4%. The Perfumery and Beauty division, worth nearly €4 billion, grew by 7%, underscoring the strategic importance of this segment within the group.
Fashion Network
2 hours ago
- Fashion Network
Galeries Lafayette Haussmann enjoys rapid growth, amid store revamp and tourism boom
Business at Galeries Lafayette 's famed Boulevard Haussmann flagship is booming this year, amid a huge flood of tourists into the nation's capital, and a significantly refreshed retail offer. In the first half of 2025, the flagship achieved double-digit sales growth, outperforming the estimated 9% increase in tourists visiting France during the same period. Annually, some 37 million people visit the handsome Art Nouveau store, Europe's largest – 60% of them non-French, a remarkable figure when one considers that 89 million people visited France in 2024. The recent increase in traffic and business has also been driven by a substantial revamp of key floors in this luxury bazaar. 'We have worked hard on improving the customer experience and offer and consumers have reacted very positively,' stressed Guillaume Houzé, board member and director of image, over a summer lunch Thursday. Specifically, the store has expanded its space for prominent French runway brands such as Jacquemus, Lemaire and AMI, particularly in their menswear department, and has focused even more attention on their major league brands on the ground floor. Not surprisingly, the store's top-selling brands are Louis Vuitton and Chanel. In an ongoing revamp of the huge store, private salons have been added to key brands' shop-in-shops at Haussmann. 'The goal is to make the customer experience comparable to a Vuitton flagship. Right now, we believe that Vuitton's store in Galeries Lafayette Haussmann is among the top five stores of Vuitton worldwide,' noted Houzé, great-great-grandson of the store's founder Théophile Bader, who opened the debut store in 1894. Under buying director and board member Arthur Lemoine, the store has also expanded the presence of leading international labels, recently opening a striking Phoebe Philo boutique, adding Bottega Veneta and creating a 110-square-meter store for Paris' favorite new American label, The Row. It has also added the only French shop-in-shop of LVMH marque Patou, which will stage its next show this Sunday in Paris. Meanwhile, the boutique of Courrèges – thanks to the direction of the brilliant Franco-Belgian designer Nicolas Di Felice – has expanded from 20 square meters to 110 square meters. 'We want to nourish that difference in our offer, with more directional fashion, compared to other places in Paris,' explained Lemoine at a suitably Lucullan lunch in Galeries Lafayette's VIP salon. Courgette flowers stuffed in crunchy vegetables served on Andalusian gazpacho, followed by cumin-inflected grilled sea bream, washed down by a rare white Bordeaux, Smith-Haute-Lafitte. The fine menu complements the sophisticated mode available in this giant retailing complex. Familiar fixtures at major runway shows, the duo of Houzé and Lemoine are very excited about the recent debut show of Jonathan Anderson for Dior, where they sat front row. 'Personally, I thought it was formidable! We already have three Dior men's spaces, including for shoes and fashion. And cannot wait to get Jonathan's ideas for Dior in here in early January,' enthused Lemoine. A tour of the main building, or buildings – there are four large, interconnected spaces at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, including a beautiful Art Nouveau structure topped by a glass cupola – underlined how chock-a-block they are this summer. After a couple of years where the space slowly emerged from the Covid pandemic, it is now packed, with lines outside hot brands' spaces. 'Do you know, the Christmas before Saturday, over 300,000 visited Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, which is pretty special,' marveled Lemoine, who is also gradually renewing its beauty, scent and wellness offer, even if Haussmann already has the largest beauty space in Europe. The growing traffic means that the famed flagship alone will break €2 billion in turnover in 2025, impressive numbers for a store with a total retail space of 70,000 square meters. Breaking down revenue by key categories, women's ready-to-wear and men's ready-to-wear each count for 20% of sales; leather goods and bags for 20%; watches for 10%; beauty for 5%; while gifting, books, home, tabletop and restaurants make up the final 25%. Internationally, this family-owned French institution is not resting on its laurels. Galeries Lafayette already has six large department store flagships outside of France, spreading from the Gulf to Jakarta to Shanghai. Next up, a debut store in Mumbai, where work has already begun inside an architecturally distinguished Victoria Gothic building near the central city zone of the Maidans. 'Most of the property like that is owned by the municipality, making alterations very complicated. But our building is privately owned, so we can make the sort of changes to create an exciting store,' enthused Houzé. Galeries Lafayette Mumbai, with 7,000 square meters of shopping space, will open at the end of 2026. One suspects Théophile Bader, whose bust in the VIP salon looks out at the rooftops of Paris to the July sun shining on Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre, would have been pleased.
