YouSaid · the spoken record

Anna Wong

lines on the record: 17
first: 2025-04-25
most recent: 2025-04-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“One could be scraping, you know, you know how on Amazon it actually lists how many of these items are remaining like it tells you like three more left, five more left. Start paying attention to that, and you see that those three more left is dwindling without increasing.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuck in my head, and I have amazed you know this, John. Well, I think anecdotally, it's already these stories are filtering in. I mean, for anyone who will be having a broken AC system, especially a central AC system comes summer, you'll find that many of the parts actually came from China and only manufactured in China. And your service company will tell you they can't do nothing about it because nobody's importing any of those parts. And there will be more and more stories like that in terms of the hard data. I think in April, meaning next month, we will get the April's import volume data, which for the whole month, and it will be clear that the volume is already declining very quickly. And I think for now, for people who collect big data, so web scraping, I think”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes, Joe. And in fact, it was the bread and butter of the richest man in Hong Kong Li Kaqing got his start with making plastic flowers.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To actually take the risk of potentially having the good arrived at the border only to find out that, oh, you are owe 200% of the tariffs. And this is why it's a high probability that given the uncertainty and the time it takes to plan for the goods to be on the shelf in the fall, that I think is the high probability outcome that we'll have empty shelves and lack of varieties.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then plus, you know, different probability of scenarios. So right now, we have seen that tariffs on China is well over 100%. And because of that extremely high cost to that tail outcome, like suppose that there were further escalation between you as a China, now you know that the probability of tariffs on China could potentially even go to 200% if I'm not saying that will happen, but it seems like quite plausible now anything could happen. So in that case, your loss in you're trying to minimize this loss function and then you have massive loss. This is why we are seeing cancellation of orders. It's because in a risk neutral optimization, given these high risk outcome, it doesn't make sense for you.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Between the importer and exporter, how to share the burden. So if a US firm is thinking about restocking, suppose that they have enough stock to last them until June based on the front running we have seen in the imports data so far. So they have enough until June and now they're planning should they start to plan for restocking beyond June then they need to basically think like a risk neutral agent so in economics when one is you know in these models when we think about how does a person make a decision a rational decision in the face of uncertainty you calculate the risk neutral you know optimization equation so it would be you know probability of the scenario of a tariff multiplied by the net cost”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back to the planning for holiday season, right? So firms should be planning now for if they want goods to be on the shelf in October. So it takes at least six months for the whole planning to take place, but does anybody have enough certainty about even in 30 days time to be ready to potentially get hit by tariffs? So an example is what we have seen in February and March in the import price data. I mentioned that almost 100% of the tariffs on China has been passed through at the US border. And the thing is, it's because most of those goods had been in transit already before these tariffs were even on the horizon. So they were already en route in January. So there was no time to discuss.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disinflationary pressure coming from the services sector. And in fact, I think we already have seen some early clues of that in the March CPI report, hotels, car rentals, airfares have all been plummeting, seeing deflation actually in March and even in the S&P 500, you see that it's the airlines stock prices that have been hit the hardest because that's where the discretionary spending will be pulling back.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And real wages will fall. And, you know, services sector account for about two-thirds of the core PCE basket. And so when you think about how at the end of the day, maybe a year from now, what we will see is that there's basically a reallocation between prices, right? So goods prices probably will be higher on a level basis. But at the same time, real wages, which drives services costs will come down significantly. And, you know, some of the most demand elastic sectors in the economy are travel related and with elasticity of demand that's higher than one and also to income as well. Elasticity to income that's higher than one. That means that when the economy slows down, we should be seeing a lot of”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. That is the key question. And when profit margins are squeezed, it means the primary burden of adjustment to tariffs fell on stock prices. And also on unemployment and CapEx. So we are expecting investment to significantly slow down in the second half of this year in response to lower profit. Everything on the investment side respond to profits. And also ultimately on employment and real wages will adjust. So employment, we are expecting it to go up to 4.8% by the end of this year and peaking at 5.3% next year.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Price received, even though it also has increased, has not increased even to the amount of the price paid, which suggests that a lot of the, at least up to March, the evidence is that much of the tariffs, number one, has been borne by the US side. Number two have been absorbed through compression of profit margins.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meaning that the more China exposes it is to in that goods, actually the more deflation you're seeing. And we have seen that negative correlation held over the last three months, as well as for most of last year, which suggests that there is actually another major part to this whole trade war or price pass-through story, which is China is going through a deflationary spiral and domestic prices in China is very, very competitive right now. So that's one element. And I think broadly these three type of prices is consistent with what we are seeing also in soft data. So in recent days, we have seen from Richmond Fed, Philly Fed, and various manufacturing survey data that shows price paid have surged.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Once the US importers bring in those products, they sell those products to intermediate firms or even to wholesale firms, to distributors. So the next stage is looking at PPI. And we also have seen a positive correlation between tariff shocks across products in February and March versus PPI increase in March. So there is also some small pass-through to PPI prices, but not 100%. So finally, from PPI to CPI, you still have that big segment of wholesaler distributors. And this is where that pass-through broke down. We have not seen Much evidence yet that it's showing up in consumer prices.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we can look at some of the data because we already have data up to March for import prices PPI and CPI and that covers basically two months of the trade four where US raised tariffs on China by 10% in February and then another 10% in March. That's already many times larger than in the first trade war. So what we are seeing in prices so far indicate that number one, most of the Chinese tariffs have indeed been fully borne by on the US side by whoever, but just we can see that it's mostly 100% passed through at the border to US importers. This is with two months of data. And second, looking at PPI data, this is the next”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These tariffs feed other countries would be raised. And so basically it exactly fell on this planning and shipping and producing period for holiday season. So I think this is one reason why just based on the high frequency data we have on the volumes and the quantities, the dropping of it, and also just the timing of this period, it suggests that there's a high probability that we may be seeing some empty shelves in the holiday season. And even with less varieties, I consider, I basically consider that part of the empty shelves, just having less variety.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially for it was like toys and apparels and electronics for long lead time. And so in the summer, basically throughout June, July, August is when China should be shipping these things to US. So we are right in this period where all this planning has to happen, yet this is also when tariffs are implemented. As a result, Basically the inventory for Christmas for Halloween is already being disrupted right now. So even though it's still many months away and with the 90 day delay on the reciprocal tariffs, we are not, you know, it's not until July 9th where we have U.S. firms have better clarity on whether”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Joe and Tracy, happy to be here again. So, you know, many people have been talking about how, based on the cancellation of shipment and right now, we have, as you mentioned, we have seen plummeting container bookings already in April, the first two weeks of April. We have seen weekly imports data from China to US, even from South Korea to US dropping very quickly. And typically when we think about holiday season retail, which is which starts really with Halloween in October, the US companies should be planning right now, right? Usually they plan in the spring and then they start putting in the orders now.”
2025-04-25 · Odd Lots · Anna Wong: Empty Shelves Are Coming Soon · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source