A general view shows shoppers crowding a street lined with stores displaying Black Friday discount sale signs in London, UK, on November 21, 2025. Photo: VCG

As the overseas retail battlefield shifted to Black Friday - the peak season of year-end promotions traditionally kicking off after Thanksgiving, industry insiders told the Global Times that shipments of China-made e-commerce goods to the US have increased from a year earlier, underscoring the resilience and vitality of trade between the world's two largest economies.

Analysts noted that this year's Black Friday cycle began earlier across major international retail platforms, coinciding with the one-year suspension of additional tariffs by China and the US - a development that has offered tangible policy and logistics dividends for cross-border e-commerce players.

A manager at a cross-border e-commerce warehouse in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, who requested anonymity, told the Global Times on Sunday that September and October are traditionally the peak months for shipping Black Friday orders by sea, given that ships can take about a month to reach US ports. 

"Customers typically prepare inventory early. That's why September and October saw the bulk of the outbound flows," the manager said.

Despite the bilateral announcement at the end of October to pause tariff hikes for one year, the overall volume of outbound cargo in September and October still grew 20 to 30 percent year-on-year, according to the warehouse manager.

However, since the tariff pause took effect, some goods that used to be shipped via small cross-border parcels - a common choice during periods of heightened tariff pressure - have begun shifting back to the traditional general-trade channel, the manager said. This shift resulted in a month-on-month decline in Xiamen's cross-border e-commerce outbound volume in November.

"Even so, compared with last year, the overall scale of Xiamen's cross-border e-commerce continues to grow," the manager emphasized. With a maturing logistics ecosystem and expanding air and sea routes, Xiamen's shipments to both Southeast Asian and Western markets have maintained a strong upward trajectory, he noted.

Major international e-commerce platforms are also fueling this year's extended promotion season. On November 20 (local time), Amazon officially announced the start of Black Friday, though its Amazon Global Store launched early deals on November 13.

TikTok Shop, Temu and Alibaba's AliExpress have also rolled out large-scale promotions, with TikTok Shop's US Black Friday campaign, combined with its year-end holiday push, stretching more than a month, from November 12 through the end of December. The lengthened promotional period suggests stronger competition and greater traffic for merchants tapping into overseas demand, said analysts.

Sensing this "window of opportunity," some Chinese exporters expanded their presence in US e-commerce channels this year. Zhu Qiucheng, CEO of Ningbo New Oriental Electric Industrial Development, told the Global Times that categories such as pet supplies and toys have performed well during the Black Friday season. "Sales in Europe and the US are rebounding, though still on the road to full recovery," Zhu said, adding that Southeast Asian markets are seeing especially strong momentum.

A representative of Xiamen-based new-energy products exporter ECO-WORTHY said on Sunday that nearly all of the firm's energy-storage products are sold to Europe and the US via e-commerce channels. "So far this year, our lithium-battery sales to the US are up more than 60 percent year-on-year," the representative noted.

Zhang Yi, CEO of the iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times that consumer demand for Black Friday remains robust, particularly for electronics, home goods and Christmas-related products based on the institute's research data - all categories expected to benefit from stabilized tariffs. He added that the tariff suspension provides merchants with clearer cost expectations, enabling them to plan logistics and inventory more confidently.