The U.S. coronavirus epidemic is out of control: The world's richest man has a sudden change of style with the president

Merchants and politicians are not too different. There are no eternal enemies or friends, only eternal interests.

At a press conference at the White House yesterday, some media asked President Trump. I heard that the White House recently maintained daily contact with Amazon founder and CEO Bezos on new crown pneumonia? Trump did not deny, "This is true, but I don't know the details. As far as I know, some government officials are working with Amazon or Bezos. This is great. We have received a lot of great assistance from competent people I believe he is one of them. "

As we all know, Trump and Bezos have a terrible relationship because of the Washington Post. During the election, Bezos's newspaper gave Trump the hardest hit. After taking office, Trump repeatedly blasted Amazon on Twitter, and then the US Department of Justice launched an antitrust investigation against Amazon. The US Department of Defense also awarded Microsoft a $ 10 billion cloud computing contract, which triggered Amazon's appeal court.


Why did Bezos suddenly become a close friend of the White House? Didn't he and Trump have a relationship at once?

Now Trump really needs Amazon. This year is the year of the US election. He originally thought that the victory was in control, but did not want to meet two huge black swans. The new crown pneumonia epidemic has begun to rag in the United States, and the US economy will undoubtedly be hit hard. Saudi Arabia is again fighting a crude oil price war with Russia. The once-proud performance stock market fell directly into a bear market. Now he is in dire straits, controlling the spread of the epidemic as soon as possible, and ensuring the stability of the people's livelihood is the only way out.

Last week, the White House held a video conference with a number of technology giants on the West Coast of the United States to discuss how to coordinate the new crown epidemic. These include Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Amazon. During an emergency conference on the weekend, Trump also announced that Google helped the government build an assessment website for the detection of the new crown virus. Although it was actually done by Verily, another subsidiary of Google ’s parent company Alphabet, the credit is not too much of a problem for Google. After all, not many people outside the technology industry know what Alphabet is.

Due to the increasingly severe epidemic situation, schools in the U.S. states have generally suspended school classes to prevent the gathering and contact of people. Silicon Valley and other severely epidemic areas have followed the Chinese experience and implemented home isolation orders to prohibit people from traveling unnecessarily. Except for supermarkets and pharmacies, other stores are closed directly, and the restaurant only accepts takeaway (you can also take your own packaging for the time being). If the epidemic continues to spread, it will not be ruled out that more states will begin to shut down and even take stricter control measures.

Obviously, such control measures are the most effective means to control the epidemic, but they will inevitably hurt the economy. According to Trump's forecast, the United States may not control the epidemic until July-August, which also means that the economy will be hit for four to five months. The catering, retail, entertainment, aviation, travel, real estate and other industries are undoubtedly the first to suffer, and there may be a large number of failures and unemployment.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin even predicts that without effective rescue measures, the unemployment rate in the United States may reach 20%. Under such a grim situation, the US federal government announced today that it will issue a total of US $ 100 billion in cash subsidies to the American public in the next two weeks to cope with the difficulties of life due to future income decline and unemployment.

In the epidemic control process in China, the two e-commerce giants Ali and Jingdong played an important role, and Amazon's status in the United States is equivalent to the combination of Ali and Jingdong, which will obviously play a more important role in the United States' anti-epidemic process. . So how can Amazon help the Trump administration and American society?

Let's take a look at Amazon's place in the US economy. eMarket data last year showed that Amazon's retail business accounted for 44% of the US e-commerce market. Amazon not only has a huge self-operated platform, but also a third-party seller platform, equivalent to Tmall plus JD.com; it has a chain food supermarket, Whole Foods, and a fresh delivery service; it has a complete smart home hardware system and digital entertainment content. Ecology; there are warehousing networks throughout the United States, and its own logistics system has been initially established; not to mention, Amazon also has powerful big data and cloud computing services.

In this outbreak, Amazon will play a key role in the following areas.

Material supply: As the epidemic is getting worse, it is expected that US state governments will adopt stricter control measures and people will stay at home for a long time. Although supermarkets and pharmacies are still open, online shopping is obviously the safest choice, which means that Amazon, which dominates the U.S. e-commerce market, will become an important source of people's supplies, not to mention that Amazon's products range from fresh food to household stores It contains almost everything needed for people's livelihood.

Guaranteeing people's livelihood: Due to the recent surge in orders for essential products such as medical supplies, Amazon has prioritized orders to prioritize the replenishment of household goods, medical supplies, and other high-demand products in order to deliver these to US consumers faster Products; meanwhile, Amazon will suspend replenishment of non-essential supplies.

Job hunting: The new crown pneumonia is another nightmare blow for the traditional retail industry, but also a big new growth opportunity for Amazon. Yesterday Amazon just announced its intention to recruit 100,000 new employees in the United States for storage and logistics in the future. As the economy is about to fall into recession, the large-scale recruitment of new employees will help absorb a large number of people who are unemployed due to new coronary pneumonia and ensure social stability. In addition, Amazon also announced an increase in hourly wages from $ 15 to $ 17.

Regulate the source of supply: At the end of February, the US Congress and the Department of Justice contacted Amazon separately and asked Amazon to rectify the new crown pneumonia-related products on the third-party seller platform. Amazon has removed more than 1 million fake propaganda products that can prevent new crown pneumonia, and removed tens of thousands of maliciously raised health and hygiene products, as well as fake and inferior masks with substandard quality and fake certification marks.

Stabilizing prices: In addition to removing false promotional products from the shelves, Amazon also blocked thousands of third-party sellers who pushed up prices and banned masks, hand sanitizers, and other epidemic prevention products from continuing to be put on the shelves at the later stage, completely blocking the traitors of the treacherous ox party possibility. In addition, Amazon has promised to cooperate with the State Departments of Justice to conduct criminal investigations into these treacherous scalpers. Tennessee sellers who had previously hoarded 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer were forced to donate the supplies under pressure from Amazon and the State Department of Justice.

Whether Trump likes Bezos or not, he encountered huge black swans like New Crown Pneumonia in the year of the election and needs Amazon's support more than ever. Maintaining people's livelihood is to maintain his election situation and keep the hope of the November election. For Bezos, the epidemic is not only a big opportunity for Amazon's business growth but may also help to resolve one of his worst headaches in the past few years.

If the United States controls the epidemic in the future, it wouldn't be surprising if Trump and Bezos talked and laughed. After all they are successful businessmen.