Singles Day sales top $38 billion despite trade tensions and protests

With the help of Taylor Swift, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, was able to shake it off on Singles Day. The shopping festival, an anti-Valentine’s Day celebrated Nov. 11, smashed to a record $38 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV), a rough measure of total transactions, a 26% increase year-over-year. The eleventh edition of the annual Singles Day tradition marked Alibaba’s first without founder Jack Ma at the helm.