So the Supreme Court killed the tariffs. And then, like a horror movie villain, the tariffs came back. Different legal hat, same price tag. Section 122 this time, for those keeping score at home. Twenty-nine billion dollars a month the US government is now pulling in on import duties. Twenty-nine billion. That’s not a tariff policy, that’s a subscription service nobody opted into. And like most subscription services, good luck cancelling.
Right. Let’s do the news.
SPONSORED BY
We somehow manage to still be sponsored by Omnisend — a company brave enough to associate with us publicly. Omnisend the email platform not trying to be your CRM.
THE STORIES
Story 1 — A flip-flop story just in time for the summer. Amazon and USPS:
Amazon and the US Postal Service finally agreed to keep seeing each other. USPS retains about 80% of Amazon’s delivery volume, that’s still over a billion packages a year. Now, Amazon had threatened to cut two-thirds. The USPS said it would literally run out of cash by October. So what we got was a compromise or, as it’s known in logistics, the thing you do when you realise you can’t actually deliver to 160 million addresses by yourself. [deadpan] Amazon is spending four billion dollars building out rural delivery. USPS has accumulated 118 billion in losses since 2007. It is still less than the 128BN AWS generates annually. If this were a marriage, you’d call it co-dependent. But in logistics, we call it strategic alignment. Same thing.
Story 2 — Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol Gets an Upgrade
Google updated its Universal Commerce Protocol this week. For those unfamiliar, UCP is the open standard that lets AI shopping agents talk to retailers, check inventory, build carts and check out all inside Google Search and Gemini. New features include multi-item carts and loyalty linking. Which means an AI agent can now buy three things at once from your store and apply your loyalty discount. And you, the retailer, don’t even get to say hello. Google’s framing this as “frictionless.” Retailers are framing this as “we just became a warehouse with a checkout API.” If you’re European watching this, UCP is US-only for now. But don’t get too comfortable. It’s coming. And it’ll bring GDPR questions the size of a French customs declaration.
Story 3 — Saks Global Rises from the Ashes (Sort Of)
Saks Global, the luxury retailer that went Chapter 11 in January owing Chanel 136 million dollars yes, Chanel,has secured 500 million in exit financing and plans to emerge this summer. Over 650 brands are shipping again. Inventory in March was up 18%. Online conversion jumped 11%. They even reversed three planned store closures. If this were a rom-com, we’d be at the part where the couple gets back together. But in luxury retail, trust is rebuilt one paid invoice at a time. Good luck to them. And send Geoffroy van Raemdonck a coffee, the man’s done this bankruptcy thing before. At Neiman Marcus. In 2020. Some people collect stamps. He collects restructurings.
Story 4 — Amazon Buys a Robot Dog
Amazon acquired RIVR, a Swiss robotics company formerly called Swiss-Mile, that makes a four-legged wheeled robot designed to carry parcels from the van to your doorstep. It’s a dog on roller skates. I am not making this up. Their CEO literally called it that. It can climb stairs, carry 60 kilos and navigate uneven terrain. So basically it does everything your current delivery driver does, except it doesn’t ring your bell and run away. Amazon shut down its own Scout delivery robot programme in 2022. Now they’ve bought a Swiss one. Because if there’s one thing the Swiss know how to do, it’s be neutral while delivering things precisely on time.
Story 5 — The WTO Drops the Ecommerce Ball
Here’s one that flew under the radar. The World Trade Organisation’s moratorium on customs duties for digital goods, the one that’s been in place since 1998, just collapsed. For the first time in nearly three decades, they couldn’t reach consensus. What does that mean? It means countries can now start taxing digital commerce at the border. Streaming services, SaaS, digital downloads, all fair game. If you’re running a cross-border digital business, you may want to Google “tariffs on code.” Actually, they might tariff the Google too.
Story 6 — The Agentic Commerce Cold War
The divide is widening. Google rolls out UCP and says “let the agents shop.” eBay says “absolutely not” and bans AI buy-for-me agents from its platform. Amazon is suing Perplexity while simultaneously building its own Buy for Me feature. So to recap: Google wants AI agents to buy things. eBay says no. Amazon says no to yours but yes to mine. And the merchant in the middle is standing there like a bartender at a bar fight going “does anyone actually want to buy something?” The agentic commerce future is coming. It’s just arriving via three different doors, with three different bouncers, and none of them are talking to each other.
Big thanks again to Omnisend for backing the show. We offered them a four-legged robot to deliver the invoice. They said they’d prefer email. Fair enough. Head to Omnisend.com and tell them the lad with the accent sent you.
Thanks for watching the V Spot. That’s the 6 minutes you won’t get back this week.
