The daily business briefing: November 28, 2023

Amazon truck overflows during record Cyber Monday

(Image credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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1. Cyber Monday sets a new record
2. Tesla sues Swedish Transport Agency over strike
3. Amazon deliveries keep rising after it surpasses FedEx and UPS
4. Stock futures steady as November rally pauses
5. ByteDance cuts 1,000 jobs in shift away from gaming

By Harold Maass, The Week US

published 28 November 2023

1. Cyber Monday sets a new record

Shoppers snapped up bargains online as the extended weekend of post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping wrapped up with Cyber Monday, the busiest online shopping day of the year. Adobe Analytics said consumers appeared to have spent $12 billion to $12.4 billion on Monday, which would make it the biggest online shopping day in history, The Associated Press reported. The sales volume provided the latest indication of consumer resilience despite high prices resulting from months of elevated inflation that has finally started to cool. Economists warn, however, that spending is likely to start slowing soon. The Associated Press

Tesla on Monday filed a lawsuit against Sweden's Transport Agency, expanding its battle against Swedish labor unions. The U.S. electric vehicle maker is suing over a strike by postal workers who are refusing to deliver mail and packages to Tesla facilities, blocking delivery of license plates for Tesla cars. The postal workers started their strike on Nov. 20, joining dockworkers, electricians, painters and other union workers refusing to provide Tesla with services in a show of support for mechanics who walked off their jobs at seven Tesla-owned repair shops a month ago. Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the strikes "insane" on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter. The New York Times

Amazon has surpassed UPS and FedEx to become the nation's biggest delivery business, and its lead is increasing, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Amazon delivered more U.S. packages than UPS in 2022, after pulling ahead of FedEx in 2020. The online retail giant had delivered more than 4.8 billion packages nationwide this year before Thanksgiving, which is followed by Black Friday, the unofficial kickoff of the busy holiday shopping season. The company projects it will hit 5.9 billion deliveries by the end of 2023, up from 5.2 billion last year. Amazon was a major customer for the delivery companies a decade ago but has pushed to expand its own delivery network. The Wall Street Journal

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U.S. stock futures were little changed early Tuesday as a November rally took a breather. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were flat at 7 a.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were down 0.1%. The Dow and the S&P 500 fell about 0.2% on Monday at the start of the last trading week of the month. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.1%. All three of the benchmark indexes are still poised to end November with big gains. The Dow and the S&P 500 have risen 6.9% and 8.5%, respectively, as inflation cooled, increasing hopes that the Federal Reserve might hold off on further interest rate hikes. The Nasdaq has jumped 10.8% this month. CNBC

TikTok owner ByteDance is cutting about 1,000 jobs as it shifts away from gaming, once expected to be a focus for the Chinese internet company. ByteDance now plans to discontinue games that were in the works but hadn't launched. Nuverse, the unit housing its video game studios, will continue some operations, mostly exploratory projects, CNN reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. ByteDance reportedly decided to cut back because it believed the gaming division lacked focus and potential for monetizing game titles. It plans to focus on core businesses, including short-video platform TikTok, Chinese sister app Douyin, and e-commerce, a person familiar with the shift told Nikkei Asia. CNN, Nikkei Asia

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.