Supply Chain Research

This week’s hearings by the USTR into proposed duties in its section 301 review of Chinese IP practices has drawn a mixture of requests for leniency and calls for extra products to be added to the list. The former has included a call by Best Buy’s CMO, Mike Mohan, for flat-panel televisions to be excluded. That’s unlikely given TVs are the single biggest category in the original list and were equivalent to 9% of the total. Shipments from China climbed 17% on a year earlier in the first quarter to reach 53% of total U.S. TV imports. Buyers are taking a more cautious approach recently thou...