Alibaba Group Holding Inc., China’s biggest online retailer, faces an unexpected challenge with the election of Republican Donald Trump as U.S. president, according to Barron’s.

“Trump is figuring out which campaign promises to carry out,” the magazine reports. “His charge that China is ‘killing us’ on trade, threats of 45 percent tariffs and desire to brand Beijing a currency manipulator could slam economic growth in the short run.”

Alibaba, founded by former schoolteacher turned billionaire Jack Ma, is aiming to generate 50 percent of sales outside of China. A clampdown on trade could damp foreign revenue while hurting China’s growing middle class, a key consumer group for the e-commerce company.

“Alibaba’s one-stop shop for everything from retailing to finance to travel to auctioneering to payments arguably makes its quarterly reports more useful than Beijing’s official gross domestic product figures,” Barron’s reports. “As of now, the signs are decent for Chinese GDP.”

While revenue jumped 55 percent from a year earlier to $5 billion in the most recent quarter, Alibaba is reaching plateaus in new customers and the average order price on its e-commerce platform.

“If you don’t have Chinese consumers being engaged and buying American products, and Chinese investors can’t invest in the U.S. and create more American jobs, then you’d be in trouble,” Alibaba vice chairman Joseph Tsai told Barron’s.

Alibaba's stock has risen 15 percent in the past 12 months to $93.76 a share, but is down from its September peak of $109.87.

Trump’s policies may worry investors in technology companies that do business in China, but the Organization for Economic Development anticipates better growth under the new president.

The Paris-based organization today raised its world GDP growth forecast to 3.3 percent for 2017, up by 0.1 percentage point.

“In the aftermath of the U.S. elections, there is widespread expectation of a significant change in direction for macroeconomic policy,” the OECD said. “The boost to U.S. final demand also strengthens import growth” and “the stimulus boosts global GDP growth by around 0.1 percentage point in 2017 and 0.3 percentage point in 2018.”