Holiday Assassin: Biden Is Killing Black Friday with His Seized-Up Supply Chain
This year, Christmas is close to being canceled, Thanksgiving dinner will cost you the arm and leg you haven’t already spent on gas, and even Black Friday is hanging on by a thread.
Welcome to Biden’s America.
The Biden administration has been about as successful in addressing the supply chain crisis as it has in “shutting down the virus,” leading to notably low holiday season discounts — i.e., Black Friday is likely to be very uneventful.
If we’re being honest, our nation could probably use fewer Black Friday department store brawls. But it would have been a lot nicer if retail assaults diminished thanks to a general improvement in our moral fiber and not because of the sheer incompetence of our leaders.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that shoppers holding out for holiday savings may find themselves paying full price — if the items they’re after are in stock at all.
The number of online out-of-stock messages has risen by 172 percent since January 2020, according to the Journal, with apparel, sporting goods, baby products and electronics hit the hardest by sparse supplies.
Adobe, which tracks retail website traffic, anticipates holiday discounts between 5 and 25 percent, less than the typical seasonal discounts of 10 to 30 percent.
“This year’s promotional levels have been lower than historical levels,” Macy’s finance chief Adrian Mitchell told investors at a conference in September.
Gap CFO Katrina O’Connell said at the same conference, “We’re already quite pleased with the fact that we’ve been able to really pull back on discounting in all of our brands.”
“Promotions will likely be strategically placed on goods that retailers have in excess stock,” Casey Runyan, managing editor of the retail discount website Brad’s Deals, said. “Those items might not be on top of shoppers’ holiday wish lists.”
Indeed, as BMO analyst Simeon Siegel pointed out, the deals might end up being dictated not by an item’s popularity, but by supply chain disruptions.
“Shoppers will have to spend up for the hot items, but will find deals on items that get left behind,” Siegel said. The Journal reported that Siegel also “expects discounts to be most prevalent on seasonal items that are late arriving in stores or warehouses due to the backlog at the ports.”
Before the pandemic, most retailers increased discounts nearly every year, and customers got used to anticipating deals come Christmas season. Last year, however, lockdown-related supply chain interruptions left these businesses with less inventory to put on store shelves.
This was helpful to companies like Gap and Home Depot, which had tried for years to reduce holiday discounts. This year, box stores wish they had more to sell, discounts or no.
“We would take even more inventory if we could get it, especially in some categories,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said at a September analyst conference.
The Biden administration vowed in August to take on supply chain issues, yet two months later, container ships are still waiting for days off the coast of California to get their goods unloaded.
The best President Joe Biden has come up with is the brilliant suggestion that truckers drive at night. Of course, truckers already drive at night — although I doubt I have to tell that to anyone other than Joe Biden.
This was yet another cringe-worthy indication that career politician Biden is remarkably out of touch with working-class Americans, despite all his promises to improve their lot.
After vowing to make the wealthy pay their fair share, his handling of the economy is leaving shelves empty, pocketbooks strained and Christmas hopes trampled, all while massive corporations get away with slashing discounts.
Biden’s promises to “build back better” are getting hollower by the day.
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