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- 🟠 Adidas: Prices Explode Under Trump's Asia Tariffs
🟠 Adidas: Prices Explode Under Trump's Asia Tariffs
Reading time: 4 min 33 sec
☕️ Good morning, friends,
Enough is enough, dear AI! First you take all our jobs, now you’re being racist too.
A Xiaomi car kept urging its Chinese driver to take a break because he looked “sleepy”—and he had his eyes as wide open as possible.
Speaking of sleepy: we’re clearly in the news-summer slump when headlines read “Ex-President Joe Biden visits an ice cream parlor”…
P.S. Sign up for our hands-on AI workshop now. Only two early-bird tickets left.
BENCHMARKS
| Index | Current | 24 h % | YTD % | 52W-H |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇩🇪 DAX | 24,065.47 | –0.81 | +20.18 | 24,639.10 |
| 🇺🇸 NASDAQ | 21,122.45 | –0.03 | +9.55 | 21,457.48 |
| 🇰🇷 KOSPI | 3,245.44 | –0.28 | +35.29 | 3,269.40 |
| 🇯🇵 Nikkei | 41,069.82 | +1.02 | +4.48 | 42,065.83 |
| 🇭🇰 Hang Seng | 24,773.33 | –1.60 | +26.24 | 25,735.89 |
| 🇨🇳 Shanghai | 3,573.21 | –1.01 | +9.52 | 3,674.41 |
NUMBERS
750
That’s how many marathons took place in China in 2024. 7 million runners took part.
23 billion USD
That’s the revenue China’s domestic gaming market generated in H1 2025—its fastest growth rate in five years.
40 %
Those are the record tariff rates Donald Trump is demanding from Laos and Myanmar.
TOP BIT
🧾 Adidas Warns: Trump’s Asia Tariffs Are Driving Up Shoe Prices
Even his sneakers are getting more expensive…
Adidas warns of massive extra costs from new US tariffs on goods from Asia. The sportswear brand makes almost half its products in Vietnam and Indonesia and anticipates roughly $220 million in added expenses for H2 2025 alone. The company is now considering raising prices in the US market. Nike and Puma are also affected.
The Details
💸 Tariff Shock at Adidas: Goods from Vietnam and Indonesia now face duties of up to 46 percent. Adidas plans to hike prices on new models.
👟 Consumer Impact: Nike and Puma also expect billions in added costs. Procter & Gamble has already raised prices on 25 percent of its US products.
📉 Market Reaction: Adidas shares plunged 11 percent on the news—the worst daily drop since April. European carmakers like Mercedes and Porsche also reported declines.
📦 Production Shift Challenging: Adidas and peers stress that local US manufacturing isn’t economically viable. The tariffs therefore hit retail prices directly.
Why It Matters
Rising Price Pressure: The new tariffs could stoke US inflation again.
Growing Protectionism: US trade policy strains global supply chains.
Asia Loses Its Edge: Vietnam and Indonesia have long been safe production hubs—no longer.
European Brands Under Pressure: Companies like Adidas must rethink strategies to stay competitive in the US.
Background
Nearly all shoes sold in the US are imports. Adidas sources 30 percent of its footwear from Vietnam and 23 percent from Indonesia. Before Trump’s announcement, US duties on shoe imports already ran up to 26 percent; the new measures push them above 45 percent in many cases. CEO Bjørn Gulden has warned that higher prices could dampen US consumer demand. Adidas is now testing how far it can raise prices without triggering a sales slump.
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HEAD OF THE DAY
🇲🇾 David Kong
⚰️ From Rubber Tapper to Funeral Pioneer: Born into poverty in Malaysia, David Kong (also known as Kong Hon Kong) worked to support his family from the age of eight.
After experiencing the chaotic burial of his father-in-law and witnessing the lack of dignity in cemeteries, he recognized an opportunity to reform the industry in 1985. Despite rejections from multiple banks, he secured the license for a private cemetery in 1990 and transformed 50 hectares of land into a serene garden park. Nirvana Asia quickly expanded to over 21 memorial parks and funeral homes across Asia. Following its Hong Kong IPO in 2014, CVC Capital Partners acquired Nirvana Asia for $1.1 billion in 2016, making Kong one of Malaysia's wealthiest entrepreneurs.
👉 Lesson learned: Don’t shy away from taboos—identify unmet needs and fight hard for your license or market approval. Only pioneering spirit gives you the edge to dominate a new segment.
MARKET BIT
🤖 Unitree Drives Humanoid Price Below $6,000
LGES in Michigan
Details
💰 Price Shock: The R1 launches at $5,900—unmatched in the industry.
🎯 Agile Without Hands: Demos show it walking, doing somersaults, and quickly standing up, but without grippers it’s primarily for research, AI training, and light‐assembly testing.
⚔️ Pressure on Rivals: Unitree’s price slash forces competitors to rethink cost structures in the race for market share.
🚀 China’s Industrial Play: As an affordable testbed for algorithms, the R1 fits Beijing’s robotics strategy. Unitree is also preparing an IPO to scale production.
Why It Matters
Democratized Robotics: A humanoid under $6,000 opens doors for labs, startups, and universities to develop human-like robots.
Global Price War: Western vendors must adjust pricing or risk falling behind in the fight for AI-robot market share.
Automation Surge: Affordable humanoids could accelerate robot adoption in manufacturing, logistics, and service sectors—impacting labor markets worldwide.
TOP READS
🏅 DeepSeek Founder Wins Best Paper Award: Liang Wenfeng’s team took top honors at ACL in Vienna for its “Native Sparse Attention,” which makes DeepSeek’s models faster and cheaper. Over half of all first authors hailed from China, with the US at just 14 percent. Full story.
🏆 Gold Rush Despite Record Prices: Q2 global demand rose to 1,249 t—driven by ETF inflows, robust bar and coin purchases in China, and further central-bank buying; jewelry demand, however, fell amid high prices. Full story.
🇰🇷 South Korea Pays Only 15% US Tariffs: Seoul is funnelling $350 billion into Trump-supported projects—from shipbuilding to chips—plus $100 billion in additional energy purchases. President Lee Jae-myung’s move counters the looming 25 percent duties, bringing them down to levels matching Japan and the EU. Full story.
OPTIONAL READS
Thailand: Facing overcapacity, Bangkok reforms its EV subsidies—exported EVs now count as 1.5 vehicles. More.
China: US mulls travel warning after Guangdong reports over 5,000 chikungunya cases; authorities launch large-scale mosquito control. More.
Japan: Fujitsu aims to build a 250-logical-qubit superconducting quantum computer by 2030, backed by state subsidies. More.
BEHIND THE BITS
These influencers are getting way too much attention…
✉️ Letter of the Week from our reader Rolf Kowalski*
“Good morning,
I would also welcome fewer ‘tabloid topics’ in the newsletter. Whether someone has somehow lost 60 kg is not information I want to read here. 😘”
Dear Rolf,
To make it simple, we asked ChatGPT:
“Explain in simple language why we included this story in the newsletter.”
Imagine your dad painted a wonderful picture and a major newspaper wrote about it. You’d be thrilled and want to show it to your friends, right?
It’s the same here: Thomas Derksen is the head of asiabits. A very famous Hong Kong paper—the South China Morning Post—wrote about him because he managed to lose a lot of weight in a healthy way. That’s special. When a big newspaper covers our own CEO, we want to share it with our readers.
That’s why this story made the newsletter.
Wishing Rolf (😘) and all our subscribers a great weekend!
*Real name known to the editors
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Imprint:
The asiabits editorial team: Michael Broza, Thomas Derksen, Raymond Kwok, Eva Trotno and Cindy Zhang
Asiabits Co., Ltd. Room 413, 4/F, Lucky Centre, 165-171 Wan Chai Road, Wan Chai, Hongkong