Alibaba has recently opened a new office in Melbourne, Australia. Whilst it is not the first office in the region, it aims to assist the 1,300 Australian businesses, and 400 businesses in New Zealand, who already work on Alibaba's ecommerce platform Tmall. The office's new MD, Maggie Zhou, said that the company planned to use the new location to build an infrastructure that would assist regional businesses in expanding into other international markets. Meanwhile, Alibaba's CEO Jack Ma has warned US President Donald Trump against ceasing trade across the Pacific. In his first executive order, President Trump withdrew the US from a trade deal with eleven trans-Pacific countries, including Australia. In response, Ma said that "if trade stops, war starts", arguing that the world needed global trade.Â
