Cyber Monday US Spending Growth Trails Europe Amid Tariffs

Cyber Monday spending grew more slowly in the US than Europe, a new phenomenon that reflects the impact of President Donald Trump’s trade war and aggressive interest rate cuts by the European Central Bank, according to data released Monday by Salesforce Inc.

Global online spending, mostly from Europe, increased 5.3% as of noon New York time compared with the year ago period, while US spending rose by 2.6%, according to Salesforce, which tracks transactions of 1.5 billion consumers. Salesforce said earlier that global Black Friday spending grew twice as fast as US sales.

Online holiday spending typically rises more quickly in the US, said Caila Schwartz, Salesforce’s director of consumer insights. She attributes this year’s result to tariff-stung US shoppers and the economic boost European countries are seeing from a series of interest rate cuts that began last year. The estimate could change if US shoppers stampede online in the final hours of Cyber Monday. 

“After a relatively soft 2024 in key markets like the UK, Germany and France, coupled with the lowering of interest rates, the EU consumer is ready to buy this Cyber Week,” Schwartz said in an interview.

The trade war, government shutdown, and weakening labor market are weighing on consumer confidence and making it hard to predict how the holiday shopping season will go this year.

Adobe Inc. issued a slightly more bullish forecast for Cyber Monday in the US than Salesforce, projecting that consumers will spend 6.3% more than they did a year earlier. In an update, the firm said Cyber Monday sales in the US were up 4.5% as of 6:30 pm New York time to $9.1 billion, with peak spending hours of the late evening still to come. Hot-selling items included luggage, exercise equipment, video games and blankets, according to Adobe.

Cyber Monday is once again expected to be the biggest online shopping day of the year in the US. Consumers who waited to buy big-ticket items are being rewarded with steeper discounts averaging 31% compared with 28% on Black Friday, according to Salesforce.

This is the first holiday shopping season since Trump announced sweeping tariffs in April on dozens of countries, sending shockwaves through the global supply chain and prompting ongoing negotiations with China, a major exporter to the US. It can take as long as a year for tariffs to show up in consumer prices and many brands and retailers stockpiled inventory to preempt the trade war’s possible impact.

Tariffs seem to be weighing on video game consoles. In previous years, bargain hunters could usually find Cyber Monday deals on older models made by Sony Group Corp. and Nintendo Co., but such deals are elusive this year, according to Kristin McGrath, a senior editor at the deal-hunting website the Krazy Coupon Lady. 

Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft Corp. all warned they’d be raising the prices on gaming consoles this year, but there had been hope for holiday discounting.

"To see older models selling at full price is unexpected," McGrath said. "We just aren’t seeing strong gaming deals."