US Takes Aim At Shein and Temu With New Import Rule Proposal (theverge.com) 63
The Biden administration is proposing new rules to limit the "de minimis" exemption, which some Chinese e-commerce companies like Shein and Temu use to ship low-cost goods under $800 to U.S. customers without tariffs. The changes would subject certain shipments to closer inspection and tariffs, aiming to protect American consumers and businesses by ensuring a level playing field against Chinese platforms that have exploited this loophole. The Verge reports: Under the proposed rules, the US will prevent companies from claiming the de minimis exemption if their goods are covered by Section 301, Section 232, and Section 201 tariffs, which apply to products from China, steel, and aluminum, as well as washing machines and solar panels. In addition to slapping these shipments with tariffs, the rule change would subject them to closer inspection by US Customs and Border Protection.
The Biden administration said the proposal would help "protect consumers from goods that do not meet regulatory health and safety standards." Even though Shein is headquartered in Singapore, it's known for cheap fast fashion that's mainly manufactured in China. The China-based Temu sells clothes, household items, electronics, and a variety of other goods made in the country as well.
The Biden administration said the proposal would help "protect consumers from goods that do not meet regulatory health and safety standards." Even though Shein is headquartered in Singapore, it's known for cheap fast fashion that's mainly manufactured in China. The China-based Temu sells clothes, household items, electronics, and a variety of other goods made in the country as well.
News for Nerds (Score:2)
Seriously
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nerds vote too.
Re: News for Nerds (Score:4, Interesting)
China subsidizes some exports as a form of dumping, so I'd say that's fair for manufactured goods. But raw materials make no sense even if they're subsidized. If they want to send us raw materials at below what it costs to extract them from the ground, then by all means let them.
Re: News for Nerds (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but there is no difference between Trump and Harris on this issue.
It's sad to see the world heading into a protectionist era. It is mostly China's fault. The implicit deal with the West in the 1990s was that we'd help China's "peaceful rise" and that they'd move toward free markets and liberal democracy while accepting the rules-based international order.
China is sliding back into autocracy, bullying its neighbors, and rejecting international institutions.
Re: News for Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
China also used to heavily focus on innovation, with a ton of their GDP going for stuff like Thousand Talents. Now, it seems they are in full reverse from the Deng days, trying to go back to Maoism, with another cultural revolution implied.
It seems like Xi isn't doing much for China's future. The funny thing is that if Xi didn't turn the pain on Europe, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and start disputes with neighbors, there would be a good chance that Taiwan would be a part of China by now, and Europe would have likely been brought into China's sphere, effectively isolating the US. I don't understand what is gained by the saber rattling. If Xi just kept the court going and had China as the beneficent, giving partner that worked with anyone, he would have been written in the history books as someone on par with Roosevelt as someone who brought a country from bicycles to airplanes and the Space Age.
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The thing with Taiwan and Europe and the US is they are liberal democracies and Xi and the CCP seem ever worried about their population starting to get a taste of that, this is a one-party political system, do they think they would win in an open election?
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The US usually has a voting participation far below 40% of people eligible to vote. So: the country is run by non voters who do not care what the voters vote for.
Your conclusion here makes no sense to me.
USA citizens subsidizing China manufacturers (Score:3)
Thanks to the 1893 Universal Postal Union and successive postal treaties, it is cheaper to send a small package from China to the USA; than it is to ship the same size and weight package within the USA.
https://medium.com/@contact_53... [medium.com]
Agree or disagree, the former president was trying to fix this handout subsidy the USA tax payers were paying to China manufacturers.
Agree or disagree, the former president was trying to get Amazon and other larger shippers to stop using the US Postal Service to ship to all of
lol no (Score:2, Insightful)
There was never any scenario where Taiwan would submit to CCP rule, why the fuck would they. There was never a point in history where the CCP was a benevolent and wise ruler. That said after what they did with Hong Kong the odds went from "never" to "hahaha oh wait you're serious."
The "one china policy" is not a policy that the CCP controls mainland China and Taiwan. It's that the US government recognizes that on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, both peoples agree that Taiwan is a part of "China." But on th
Re: News for Nerds (Score:2)
He's a German. That's just what they do.
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That implicit deal was a long con.
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Ironically, China is presenting itself as the adult in the room, the one that sticks to the international rules and order. Meanwhile the US is unstable, with huge policy changes every 4 years, and abuse of sanctions, tariffs, and currency to force it's ideology onto others.
It's working too. Why do you think so many developing nations look to China for partnerships, rather than the US or Europe?
China has a capitalist economy with Chinese socialism, which is a bit like Europe. Capitalism is the basic mechanis
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Ironically, China is presenting itself as the adult in the room, the one that sticks to the international rules and order. Meanwhile the US is unstable, with huge policy changes every 4 years, and abuse of sanctions, tariffs, and currency to force it's ideology onto others.
I know, right? We should just stop this whole "democracy" thing and stop holding elections. Appoint a dictator for life and go with it forever. No course corrections. Just stable policies that never change. /s
NO.
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Maybe you should try to improve your democracy. Make it less partisan.
Think about it. You shouldn't be seeing such massive swings in policy, if your democracy represents the people. The people don't change their minds so drastically over such as short period of time. The problem is you have a system where one minority gets the power to make huge changes that the majority don't want.
The UK is the same, always minority rule, never truly representing all the voters. Our system is arguably even worse than yours
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Democracy is slowly evolving.
We here in the US patterned our government on what came before us -the UK parliamentary system, but we tried to improve it where we saw flaws. The EU patterned their union on the US federal system -making improvements where they saw our flaws.
None are perfect. But western democracy is far better then the strongman great-leader system you call "the adult in the room".
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I'm not sure that's right. The US system is closer to the French one, and of course you used to be good friends with the French because they cut their king's head off.
The EU is patterned on European systems in use in many countries, but also unique because it evolved out of trade deals. That's why you have the council.
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The French just supported us as a way of saying F-U to their English cousins... They never really liked us.
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They gave you a pretty nice statue.
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Re: News for Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
China subsidizes some exports as a form of dumping, so I'd say that's fair for manufactured goods.
At the end of the day though, the tariffs just amounts to additional inflation, since we're still getting damn near everything from China anyway. I haven't been a fan of this since the previous administration, as I've personally witnessed how it's been jacking up the prices for parts in my line of work.
Re: News for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
China subsidizes some exports as a form of dumping, so I'd say that's fair for manufactured goods.
At the end of the day though, the tariffs just amounts to additional inflation, since we're still getting damn near everything from China anyway. I haven't been a fan of this since the previous administration, as I've personally witnessed how it's been jacking up the prices for parts in my line of work.
The only difference between the candidates in this regard is that Harris knows that raising tariffs costs Americans money, while Trump thinks it costs China money. I mean yes, ostensibly, if they tax things so much that American-made goods become cheaper, but first, America has to actually make goods...
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The tariffs do not cost China anything.
A lost sale in US: why would they bother?
They sell a car for $20,000. Make a profit of $5,000.
Does not fucking matter how much tariff you put on top of that.
The profit: stays the SAME!!!
And as soon as you make to much paper work for them, they simply stop selling cars to you. Basically every damn new car here in BKK: is an EV, from China or Singapore, and a few from Japan.
Every car dealer here is switching from gasoline to EVs.
You are so damn stupid, you Americans, you
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if they tax things so much that American-made goods become cheaper, but first, America has to actually make goods...
But wouldn't taxing products be necessary (yet not sufficient) to achieve this goal? How would anyone in America make goods while competing with cheap imports?
I thought many people believe in offsetting the cost of the products made without regulation (labor, environmental, etc.). Are those people against tariffs because Trump is proposing them?
Harris knows that raising tariffs costs Americans money, while Trump thinks it costs China money.
Aren't both of these true? Obviously, tariffs would increase prices, but doesn't the American government collect tariffs from Chinese companies?
Re: News for Nerds (Score:3)
"Aren't both of these true? Obviously, tariffs would increase prices, but doesn't the American government collect tariffs from Chinese companies?"
Tariffs are paid by the importer. The exporter just has tougher competition due the increased end price. But the exporter does not pay any part of the tariffs.
So, tariffs on Chinese goods cost Americans money, but it costs China potential sales. If they can make up those sales elsewhere, it doesn't adversely affect them.
In some cases it can actually increase profi
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if they tax things so much that American-made goods become cheaper, but first, America has to actually make goods...
But wouldn't taxing products be necessary (yet not sufficient) to achieve this goal? How would anyone in America make goods while competing with cheap imports?
Modern factories are so automated that there's not much labor involved, which means the cost of labor has only a small impact on the final cost of the products produced. And there are plenty of places in the U.S. where land and electricity are dirt cheap, so those costs can also have only a small impact, if desired.
So no, tariffs aren't necessary. They might nudge things along a little, but they mostly serve to prop up legacy U.S. companies that either don't want to automate or can't automate (because of
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AliExpress pays tax in Europe. When you buy stuff the add tax on and pay it to your country.
Seems like a better solution. Just have them pay what they should be paying by agreement.
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yes, ofc, but this is "promoting" biden's play.
i might be wrong, i've not really followed this seriously, but my impression is that this editor tends to trumpet that message in particular.
you might think that promoting laughably asinine crap like "The Biden administration said the proposal would help "protect consumers from goods that do not meet regulatory health and safety standards."" would be counterproductive, particularly for an nerdy, supposedly educated and mostly progressive public. apparently not.
Dude do you know how much anime crap (Score:2)
I get it we are mostly comprised of old farts who don't have a lot of money having blown it raising a kid or two, because ironically nerds have kids too and kids are stupidly expensive...
But for a lot of rank and file nerds Temu is chalk full of stuff they buy on a regular basis.
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TBH, most of what I've seen on Temu is just no-name crap that isn't actually all that cheaper than buying from some drop shipper on Amazon or eBay. Temu certainly spends a lot of money on social media advertising to give the impression that they're giving stuff away, but that's just the modern take on as-seen-on-TV ads, where if you convince people your overpriced mediocre products are actually a fantastic deal, you'll almost always find enough suckers to earn a decent profit.
I've personally seen quite a f
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You can also get some extremely elaborate stuff there that's not cheap but is a pretty high qualit
Re:Dude do you know how much anime crap (Score:4, Informative)
I've only made the mistake of checking out the products Temu tends to advertise. Which at least from the ads I've gotten, was consumer goods like drones, electric yard tools, and the sort of hardware store stuff that Harbor Freight carries. I didn't really see anything that caught my eye as a particularly good deal, and the app itself played some obnoxious games with bogus discounts.
I'm sure there's probably some hidden gems on there for niche buyers, such as collectables as you've mentioned (although I'd have to wonder if things like Funko Pops were truly genuine), but I only approached it from the perspective of "do they have any deals that beat Walmart / eBay / Amazon for the same stuff?" and the answer to that ended up being a resounding nope.
Even when I end up tinkering with electronics and need to order some parts, Amazon is almost always my go-to since they ship quickly. It's nice to have the parts for whatever I'm working on arrive before I lose interest and move on to something else, which is usually the case with ordering direct from China. Big ass bag of diodes shows up in the mail several months later and I'm like "Now what were these for again?"
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"do they have any deals that beat Walmart / eBay / Amazon for the same stuff?" ... resounding nope
Really? I have not gotten around to it, but my dad uses Temu and from my understanding they offer cheaper things compared to Walmart or Amazon (e.g., sneakers for something like $6 which were perfectly serviceable). And if it is bad, you don't even have to return it like you would with Walmart, because Temu does not want it shipped back (convenient for consumer but bad for environment).
My impression is that Temu is doing something unnatural price-wise and the "de mimimus" tax sounds like one of the explan
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and the app itself played some obnoxious games with bogus discounts.
My favourite are for listings for anything that is ever so slightly dirty. Like one of the items that came up when I explored Temu's site was a "Soccer themed desktop statue ornament". It was a glass buttplug.
That said I'm not sure where you're looking. I'm see all sorts of things for ludicrously cheap compared to the standard Walmart / Amazon stuff, but not cheaper than comparable ebay or Aliexpress Chinese junk. A meat thermometer for $1? Never seen that at Walmart. Will it work? Probably not, but the poi
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Because I was so going to buy one of Temu's $5 border gateway routers.
Great for business... (Score:2)
So, this means a US business just buys the stuff from Shein and Temu, slaps their label on it, triples the price, and sells it on Amazon or other retail outlets?
Great for businesses, but for the end user, it does nothing for them. They still get the same crap, except have to pay a middleman money for it.
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> So, this means a US business just buys the stuff from Shein and Temu, slaps their label on it, triples the price, and sells it on Amazon or other retail outlets?
the "de minimus" tax waiver applies to purchases of less than $800. Its unlikely that a US business would purchase inventory from China $800 USD worth at a time.
US businesses purchasing more than $800 of goods at a time already pay the full duty rate (the "de minimus" waiver does not apply to these purchases).
I think a better example of what ac
The Record (Score:2)
Alibaba exist so you can FIND AND NEGOTIATE DIRECTLY with a Chinese factory. 10.000 ekickbikes with some modifications? Sure. Copies of decrapted Swedish mining drills from the 1970s out of production? Sure. Copies of various larger construction equipment? Yupp
Shein, Temu, Aliexpress and others exist so you can buy cheap consumer goods almost directly from the first or second redistributor warehouse near manufacture. The entire point of it is that your local home improvement + automotive store Biltema or Ha
A lot more than Shein and Temu (Score:2)
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"small"
Re: A lot more than Shein and Temu (Score:2)
Re: A lot more than Shein and Temu (Score:2)
You did not!
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At one point did I say "chinese" startups
Well if you didn't then you should have. After all small companies importing things into the USA for under $800 are not "Startups" in fact if you start a company doing this you're borderline not classified as a business at all during your small turnover.
FFS, also take away the free postage advantage. (Score:4, Insightful)
And we blame things like Amazon and Walmart killing local merchants, this is worse and our own government enables it.
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I mean if they're going to subsidize shipping they could start with subsidizing American companies instead, before considering foreign ones.
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Can't.
The international postage discount is set by a UN treaty (which the US signed and ratified) in an effort to provide a break to "developing nations". The fix is to stop classifying China as a developing nation and admit that they are equally advanced.
Protecting consumers? (Score:2)
(makes note to lay in a good supply of aluminum round stock, rectangular stock, and structural extrusions)
I understand how this protects American businesses, but fail to see why making things more expensive "protects consumers".
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I understand how this protects American businesses, but fail to see why making things more expensive "protects consumers".
What's wrong comrade, why don't you believe the news that a four-alarm fire in Downtown Moscow clears way for a glorious new tractor factory? [imdb.com]
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The rationale stems from the fact that every consumer is actually (working for) a producer as well. So unless your work is competitive enough, you will be out of work and so won't be able to consume at all.
So when products are available at substantially different prices - not due to some kind of technical efficiency like a better manufacturing process but due to what I'll call social differences, some of the lower-price sales will displace the higher-price sales. This puts pressure on the higher-priced pro
Fix the postage exemption (Score:5, Informative)
It's time the stop the BS "developing country" exemption that China gets under the Universal Postal Union rules that allow Chinese online sellers to ship stuff to the US all the way from China for less than it would cost someone in the US so ship to he same thing yo the next state over.
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But that's not what's happening here. Biden is fucking over consumers who like to buy stuff online.
No, he's fucking over consumers who are buying cheap shit from China at the expense of the American economy. As he should. The fucking race to the bottom isn't something to be proud of or support. It just contributes more to global waste.
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Yep Exactly the same in Australia.
They ship a bag airfreight from China for $2, yet it costs me $10 to ship that bag one suburb away.
Imagine the transport energy being wasted.
Ending the developing country rubbish would put a big brake on trivial trinkets being shipped halfway around the world.
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Regardless of whether China qualifies as a "developing country" by whatever other measures someone might use, they certainly aren't a "developing country" in terms of their manufacturing and industrial base (or their ability to export manufactured goods all over the world) and don't deserve the special treatment they get under the Universal Postal Union rules. It makes sense for shipping stuff from countries in Africa or central Asia that don't have any real export or manufacturing base to be given the spec
Not just Shein and Temu (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not able to find the article, but this one [npr.org] is close enough. In short, not only do Shein and Temu ship directly to people using this loophole, but so do fentanyl and other drug distributors. They mark the package as something else, have the value declared less than the $800 limit, then ship through the U.S. postal service.
Since it's shipped directly, Customs doesn't get involved. Whether or not this new import rule will have any effect is anyone's guess.
wrong (Score:2)
These are the wrong targets. They are not selling strategically important goods. They are selling low tech stuff. Targeting these companies is just adding to inflation of everyday goods.
My suggestion (Score:3)
2. Imports under $800 stay tariff free - but one complete shipment counts. For example all Temu goods on the same airplane or ship. >br>
3. Prices are displayed as by local stores. Important taxes in the price. In Europe, VAT included.
4. Temu etc are legally responsible for delivering the goods offered as described. Not just money back if misdescribed but actually delivery of the promised item for the price offered.
Especially the last rule would make sure that it is in Temu's best interest to throw out fraudulent sellers. If a fraudster sells 8TB SSD drives for $30 then Temu should be responsible to deliver. These offers will disappear very quickly, which benefits both customers and honest sellers.