
Search
or Search by TOPIC



Search Supply Chain Videocasts

Sign-Up Free Newsletter

Supply Chain by the Numbers

Aug. 28, 2026

Supply Chain by the Numbers for Aug. 28, 2026

Vietnam Exports Rising. Automation Buying Criteria. Fake Amazon Vendors. Order Picking Robots


h
$114 Billion
That was the US trade deficit with Vietnam for the first half of the year, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. That perhaps surprisingly is a larger gap than the US had with semiconductor hub Taiwan, Mexico and even China. The effective U.S. tariff rate on Chinese imports was 23.2% in June, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, well above the global 7% average. Trump said his aim was to revive U.S. manufacturing. Instead, the tariffs moved production from China to its southwestern neighbor, Vietnam, where the effective rate stood at 6.5% in June.

$9.5 Million

That’s how much an Atlanta women and several co-conspirators stole from Amazon over some 10 years. That as there was news this week that Brittany Hudson was sentenced to over 16 years in federal prison on Wednesday, the Justice Department announced. From January 2022 to June 2022, Hudson and her partner, Kayricka Wortham, defrauded Amazon using a scheme that involved bogus vendors and invoices that they created in Amazon's vendor system, according to the DOJ announcement. Wortham and another co-conspirator at Amazon approved the fake vendor profiles, which allowed them to submit invoices. Hudson and Wortham then submitted over 1,000 fictitious invoices, falsely claiming the phony vendors had provided goods and services to Amazon.



10
That’s how many different criteria companies were recently asked to rate in terms of selecting a warehouse automation vendor, in a survey from Interact Analysis. The result: The answers varied by group. Among respondents with a strong desire to automate the top selection criteria was “system flexibility for changes in your business.” The next most important criteria, was “ease/speed of integration into your facility.” The top criteria for companies that lacked a strong desire to automate was “safety.”

$4.6 Billion
That will be the global market size of robotic order picking systems in 2030, up from $1.7 billion in 2025. That is according to a new report from Interact Analysis. The 22% average annual growth rate follows a period of slower sales driven by fewer greenfield developments and longer sales cycles, Interact says. The report defines robotic picking to include the use of stationary robots with robotic arms to automate picking and handling tasks within warehouse operations, including palletizing, depalletizing, and item or case picking. Robotic palletizing and depalletizing remain the largest opportunities throughout the forecast period, and together made up the largest share of the market in 2025.

Feedback

No Feedback on this article yet.