Temu To Stop Selling Goods From China Directly To US Customers (bbc.com) 97
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Temu has said it will stop selling goods imported from China in the US directly to customers from its platform. The online marketplace said sales would now be handled by "locally based sellers," with orders fulfilled from within the country. The move comes as a duty-free rule for low-value packages is closed.
Temu, and rival Chinese retail giant Shein, had previously relied on the so-called "de minimis" exemption to sell and ship low-value items directly to the US without having to pay duties or import taxes. Temu said it had been actively recruiting US firms to join the platform. "All sales in the US are now handled by locally based sellers, with orders fulfilled from within the country. "The move is designed to help local merchants reach more customers and grow their businesses," it added.
Supporters of the de minimis loophole, which applied to parcels worth less than $800, argue it helped streamline the customs process. But both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, said it damaged American businesses and was used to smuggle illegal goods, including drugs. In February, Trump briefly closed the loophole but the suspension was quickly paused as delivery services and customs agencies struggled to adjust. During the pause, the U.S. Postal Service even stopped accepting parcels from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Temu, and rival Chinese retail giant Shein, had previously relied on the so-called "de minimis" exemption to sell and ship low-value items directly to the US without having to pay duties or import taxes. Temu said it had been actively recruiting US firms to join the platform. "All sales in the US are now handled by locally based sellers, with orders fulfilled from within the country. "The move is designed to help local merchants reach more customers and grow their businesses," it added.
Supporters of the de minimis loophole, which applied to parcels worth less than $800, argue it helped streamline the customs process. But both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, said it damaged American businesses and was used to smuggle illegal goods, including drugs. In February, Trump briefly closed the loophole but the suspension was quickly paused as delivery services and customs agencies struggled to adjust. During the pause, the U.S. Postal Service even stopped accepting parcels from mainland China and Hong Kong.
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Yes, I did vote for the end of duty free shipping. When it is cheaper to send something across the PACFIC OCEAN to somewhere within CONUS than from point to point within CONUS, that is a big fucking problem.
Re: By design (Score:2)
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So you have made it more expensive to do both. Golf clap for you.
Indeed!
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So you have made it more expensive to do both. Golf clap for you.
Some of us might be horribly punished by the Trump administration's policy of purposeful inflation, but that's a sacrifice he is willing to make.
Article misses main points (Score:2, Interesting)
Temu was able to ship small packages with value under $800 to the USA cheaper than it was to send the same package from a US address to the address next door because of the UPU treaty giving below market shipping rates to China.
The president wanted the USPS to not lose money on packages delivery from ones inbound from China and in the prior presidential term, from Amazon.
The aim was to not have the USPS subsidize larger shippers for the most expensive remote places to deliver to.
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Paradigm Shift (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:3, Insightful)
You know dude, part of the "mend it don't end it" shtick one usually finds on the left...that does speak to me. I grew up in a poor country. We fixed things. We didn't stay there and we didn't stay poor but the "know how to fix your shit in case of emergency" got deep into my brain early on and the living off of disposable Chinese trash does bother me and always has.
I don't like having to junk a perfectly good coffee maker or children's toy or whatever because one made-in-china plastic piece cracks to piece
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Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:2)
Okay I did have a $50 coffee maker that lasted me nearly 15 years.
At about the 10 year mark a solder joint broke and the heating coil stopped working. Took me all of fifteen minutes to fix it.
Then at the end it started leaking and the problem was a cracked plastic pipe. No way to fix it without breaking it more. But the kicker is that that plastic pipe didn't need to be there. It could have been a length or the same rubber tube present elsewhere in the coffee maker and used for the same hot water.
I ended up
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I agree that in reality most people ignore the blue book value. That only matters for good cars that still have lots of life left in them. Aka, assholes and richer people trading their cars in for the social status of the latest model.
But it's not a $3000 repair vs $10000 for a used car. It's $3000 now vs $200 a month and your bank account only has 1k.
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But the kicker is that that plastic pipe didn't need to be there. It could have been a length or the same rubber tube present elsewhere in the coffee maker and used for the same hot water.
I ended up replacing it with a $200 coffee maker. And it still annoys me that a one dollar part made me replace a perfectly usable appliance.
You don't own a 3D printer? Turn in your geek card. :-D
But seriously, yeah, broken plastic does tend to be the most common cause of things getting thrown away these days, and it usually isn't worth the time to 3D print a replacement part unless it is something pretty simple. Then again, if there are enough of them, you might get lucky and find that somebody already modeled it. :-)
Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:2)
Food-grade 3d printer plastics exist?
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Remember that your $200 coffee maker, and you, both need to last 60 years for it to be better value that your $50 coffee maker.
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Repair is an option only if your time is worthless.
Repair is only worthless if you value the acquisition of money above all else.
You hate throwing away a coffeemaker?
Yes.
You can fix it, or you can buy a new one for $50.
Yes.
by the time you get it all said and done you'd probably have spent $200 in time and effort.
I don't bill the universe by the hour. If I take some leisure time to fix it, like a normal person, I would not have some magical way of making that $200 by using that time differently. And then I
Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:2)
So you don't really get a choice in that (Score:3)
Also if you're going to wear the kind of ratty clothes that have been mended while being cheap then you are going to take a social penalty for that. Speaking is a nerd who grew up poor in America and often wore ill-fitting clothes because I grew too fast for buying school clothes once a year you get the shit kicked out of you and bullied. It's why
Re: So you don't really get a choice in that (Score:2)
Unless the government steps in and demands repairability no business is going to build a repairable device. Nor are they going to make clothing that's fixable.
Automobiles and even lawnmowers are mostly repairable. The market demands it so it happens. You can even buy re-treaded tires.
Clothing can be very repairable depending on what you're talking about. Shoes used to be quite fixable too. If the factories were still here, I imagine the availability of spare soles, liners, and the like would be enough that shoe repair could still be a viable business.
Also if you're going to wear the kind of ratty clothes that have been mended while being cheap then you are going to take a social penalty for that. Speaking is a nerd who grew up poor in America and often wore ill-fitting clothes because I grew too fast for buying school clothes once a year you get the shit kicked out of you and bullied. It's why I made it a point to buy a lot of clothes for my kid.
I got picked on as the poor immigrant kid. For a little while. Right until the point I figured out that inflicting
With your user its obvious that (Score:2, Insightful)
You are a right wing extremist. You need to understand a little bit about American politics. Not much just a little.
So Trump doesn't have enough votes in our lower chamber, the US House of Representatives, to cram through The 5 trillion dollars in tax cuts for billionaires he wants. There's a handful of Republican politicians that run on the deficit and they would lose their primary elections if they added 5 trillion to the national debt for anything let alone for tax cuts for billionaires.
So Trump is doing
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Also if you're going to wear the kind of ratty clothes that have been mended while being cheap then you are going to take a social penalty for that.
This says more about the socioeconomic background of where you went to school than being a universal truth of how your peers will see ratty, worn-out clothes.
Also, kids have a knack for picking up that you're poor and that you're ashamed about it. On the flipside, some kids who come from low income backgrounds absolutely own that shit to the point they make it seem "cool". Others, you can tell they're on their last frayed nerve about that pair of hand-me-down pants they're wearing and bullies are quick to
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Of course there's some exceptions when you're talking products that don't even last their warranty period, but the general idea behind "cheap Chinese shit" is that it allows people of lower incomes to have a somewhat higher standard of living. If your only option was a $200 coffee maker, you'd probably just stick with instant coffee. Or maybe just brew it on the stove manually, I suppose.
A great example of this shift was in the first Back to the Future film, where Marty mentions having two televisions, wh
Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:2)
The other line from that film was 80s Marty telling 50s Doc that "all the best stuff is made in Japan."
Japan in the 80s wasn't some slave labor backwater. And yet somehow they kept their manufacturing base and managed to be rich at the same time. Clearly it's possible.
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And yet somehow they kept their manufacturing base and managed to be rich at the same time. Clearly it's possible.
The key difference between Japan and the USA is right there in what you've just written: They've largely kept their manufacturing base. Here though, the factories have long since been shuttered, bulldozed and replaced with empty fields or mixed-used retail properties.
There's an expression that "you can't close the barn door after the horse has escaped." Now we've got the Trump administration going "Just close the damn door, we'll figure out the missing horse thing... eventually."
Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:2)
Factories get built in America all the time. Usually for things like cars and furniture where transportation costs over the ocean are not negligible.
It would stand to reason that erecting some trade barriers would change the calculus on some of the "cheap shit" too.
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The idea behind cheap Chinese shit is that it's all cheap Chinese shit. I shop on AliExpress. I see so many of the same products advertised on Amazon, Etsy, and specialty websites at significant markups. It's the exact same product. Advertised as higher quality with far better looking ads, better product photos, and better warranty claims than other items. When you lie about your product and it's cheaper, of course more people buy it. Unless you've done a ton of product and industry research, you can'
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Downside: Aside from cheap shit these sorts of retailers also stock a huge variety of niche bits that help avoid throwing things away. I've bought things from AliExpress a couple of times because I had something I could fix but the parts I need couldn't be sourced from the manufacturer anymore and weren't available in normal retail. If th
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is that it allows people of lower incomes to have a somewhat higher standard of living. If your only option was a $200 coffee maker, you'd probably just stick with instant coffee. Or maybe just brew it on the stove manually, I suppose.
Or buy a filter for under £4 and a box of filter papers. It's like the fancy hipster things for making pour over, except cheap and called a filter. Or what Americans call a French Press for under a tenner. There's about a billion cheap ways of making coffee for und
Re:Paradigm Shift (Score:5, Insightful)
Same argument with wind turbines. They didn’t give one fuck about pollution previously but now turbine blades in landfills are a disaster.
Re: Paradigm Shift (Score:1, Troll)
No...he's all for the slave labor in Xinjiang making his stuff for him and everyone here who has to compete with the slave labor can learn to code or something.
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You'd prefer... slave labor in US prisons making your whitegoods then...?
Maybe you're not in a position to be smug about shit, you absolute goober.
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And all the leftists have given up their eco-creds, they're all suddenly interested in trade and profits. I wish they cared about those things during the pandemic, the economy would be much stronger now.
This statement makes as much sense as saying that right-wing extremists only cared about profits and not at all about the 1.2 million dead Americans who died due to COVID-19. Such binary zero sum views are simplistic and false. In reality, most Americans across the entire political spectrum cared about protecting people from death, about people's livelihoods, and many others things, all at the same time.
Funny how taxes work for people (Score:4, Insightful)
When the other guy talks about raising taxes, there's a hue and cry from the republicans. When Trump raises taxes higher than they've been in years, everyone cheers. Even the S&P 500 is doing great now. Life is good!
Re:Funny how taxes work for people (Score:5, Funny)
But wait, I thought people in *other* countries paid tariffs!
Factory jobs were always going away (Score:2)
The problem we have here is that we have these massive increases in productivity and it's all going to the top. You're working harder and you're producing more but you're not getting the fruits of your labor anymore. The link between worker productivity and workers wages died in the 70s and '80s when we killed unions.
What's more 70%
Re: Factory jobs were always going away (Score:2)
If China didn't take them automation would. Trump's own commerce Secretary admitted on Fox news that even if the factories come back the jobs won't. They'll be automated.
Said by everyone whose never seen a factory or a machine shop in their entire lives. Even automated industry requires a non-negligible amount of touch labor. Your fucking smartphone is still assembled *by hand* in China. If it were done here maybe some of it would be automated to offset the cost but a lot of it wouldn't be.
The problem we have here is that we have these massive increases in productivity and it's all going to the top. You're working harder and you're producing more but you're not getting the fruits of your labor anymore.
And yet the median household income has been growing slightly faster than inflation for a good long while.
The link between worker productivity and workers wages died in the 70s and '80s w
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Your fucking smartphone is still assembled *by hand* in China.
Unlikely.
A few manual steps, but 90% is automatic.
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Indeed. Like Amazon warehouses, for example, where one minimal-wage worker supervises 10 robots and suddenly they need 10% of the people for the same job. But the person you responded to cannot do basic math and certainly cannot see the bigger picture.
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Using smartphones as an example, I think the labour involved per iPhone is something like 10-15 hours. You're absolutely right that it couldn't all be automated, but I am confident (as so
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Indeed. I mean they automate a lot of things in fucking China where manual labor is cheap! If it pays to automate there, what do you think will happen in the US?
The fact of the matter is that manual labor is dying. There will be some specialist stuff left, at higher prices, but overall it is becoming less and less of a factor. This also means that more and more people become unsuitable for any job at all. And that is a social problem and needs to be addressed on that level. An UBI is needed, but will in no
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The left wing meanwhile has no fucking clue what to do they keep glomping on to a childish fantasy of 18 to 24-year-olds saving us by suddenly becoming hyper political active and somehow retaining the progressive ideals they tell pollsters despite the hundreds of billions of dollars of right-wing propaganda thrown at them.
That's because there is no actual "left" in this country. There's just corporate Democrats who are too scared the money faucet will get turned off if they publicly humiliate the sponsor [getyarn.io], and an electorate that believes anyone even remotely left of Joe Biden is going to take half their paycheck in taxes.
That being said, there are a handful of leftists who rather foolishly actually do open their mouth every once in awhile (such as Bernie Sanders) and prove that there's a kernel of truth to the right-wing tal
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The problem with America and you Americans is: you only have left and right.
That is a pretty difficult way of steering a ship forward.
Other countries focus on moving forward and solving real problems instead of undoing all solutions of the previous administration.
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Other countries focus on moving forward and solving real problems instead of undoing all solutions of the previous administration.
Indeed. The US is basically in a kind of understated civil war now, where more gets destroyed than built. That cannot end well. Society is build on cooperation. If that ends, that society ends as well shortly after.
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Indeed. Propaganda has replaced actually doing good. The rich get richer (and even complete morons like Musk or Trump can do it, if they just get lucky and have a lot of seed money), everybody else lives in fear and suffers. At the same time, the religious delulus get stronger and almost nobody can fact-check the most simple things anymore. I mean people seem to really believe that tariffs ultimately get paid by the seller! I cannot even imagine how mentally dysfunctional I would have to be to believe utter
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I mean people seem to really believe that tariffs ultimately get paid by the seller!
They all known and argue that any increase in costs, whether it's from taxes or from regulations, gets passed on to the consumer. Except tariffs, apparently.
Re: Factory jobs were always going away (Score:2)
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Is economic entanglement with China good or bad, given several decades of hindsight?
It's been a net positive in that more people can afford various goods that otherwise would've been out of their income bracket. Granted, having a dependency on China presents problems when things go wrong with the supply chain, or a change in direction of the political winds.
Is having to compete with slave labor good or bad for the American worker?
Is it work that pays a decent wage and is something Americans actually want to do? It's like there was a big stink in Florida awhile back about migrant workers who were here legally, and sure enough, the right-wing peanut gallery chim
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Yes, "entanglement" with China, and every other country, is a good thing for humanity. Trade is not a one-way street. Every transaction has goods or services going one way, and money going the other. Both parties benefit. Entanglement is a powerful force that keeps countries from going to war with each other.
Your philosophy seems to be "USA good, China bad." Well I've got news for you...the USA isn't so "good" either, and China has a good side. Sure, they are different cultures and different thought pattern
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Yes, "entanglement" with China, and every other country, is a good thing for humanity. Trade is not a one-way street. Every transaction has goods or services going one way, and money going the other. Both parties benefit. Entanglement is a powerful force that keeps countries from going to war with each other.
It does. That is why, for example, the EU and EEC is such a great success. (Compared to the state before, that is.) Yes, some countries do not have the maturity for it and trying to get Russia into this as well was a mistake that Europe made. But overall, the only known way to stability and peace is trade.
Re: Funny how taxes work for people (Score:2)
More like âif Trump says the sky is hot pink, weâ(TM)re still gonâ(TM) say heâ(TM)s full of shitâ(TM). Truth, science, the constitution⦠easy counterpoint to whatever mad daft crap pours out of this regime.
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Everything is always three layers of bullshit deep so you gotta have your thinking hat on.
It really is not. People struggle to understand the most simple things, and conservatives are the least mentally capable overall. Hence they are easily manipulated and believe the most stupid crap. We really need a classification as "stupid-evil" for these people. I have stopped thinking that being stupid absolves you of responsibility for the crap you do.
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Well, yeah, almost every country has a significant tariff regime, so that's a true statement.
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Re:Funny how taxes work for people (Score:4, Insightful)
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And then...Trump eliminates the income tax.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
On second thought... do.
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When Trump raises taxes higher than they've been in years, everyone cheers.
Except for the liberals [theguardian.com]. They're crying about how they are "wreaking chaos" on business, families and the economy. It's nice to finally see the left go anti-tax.
Re:Funny how taxes work for people (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nice to finally see the left go anti-tax.
Generally, the left is in favor of progressive taxation (the more benefits you derive from society, the greater implied obligation you have to pay some of it forward back into society), which tariffs are not. Most of us on the left, or left-leaning abhor the idea of raising taxes on people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
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Nothing funny. People in general are fucking dumb (right-wingers even more so) and do not understand the most basic things.
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Bad genetics... (Score:2)
If Wish and and Facebook Marketplace had an illegitimate love child, Temu would be it.
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Re:Bad genetics... (Score:4, Insightful)
"I honestly did not even knew Temu even existed. I wish I had tested it out."
Be glad you missed it. A casino rips you off less.
Shein is another extra-low quality operation. It fills up landfills with polyester.
If the tariffs kill fast fashion the world will be better off.
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You are full of shit.
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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Both Temu and Shein have all kinds of products which have nothing to do at all with "plastics".
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Why do you wish you tested it out? You can replicate the Temu experience by buying something, using it for 1 week and then hitting it with a hammer. Your race to the bottom in terms of cheapness is deplorable. Have a bit more self respect than wasting money on the lowest tier garbage that the world produces.
I'm not one of those "bring back American manufacturing" types, but society would be much better off if Temu, Shein, and Wish didn't exist, and if we banned all overseas sellers from Amazon and demanded
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Want to replicate Temu? Just buy a run of the mill Samsung phone charger, use it for an hour, and then set your house on fire.
Genuinely laughed at this, thank you!
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Non-American here.
I make between 3 and 5 orders from temu per month, various items, both for my and my wife, as well as stuff that my friends ask me to get for them. Yes, they could order themselves, but they generally need one-off things, so it's easier to poll orders.
With over 200 completed orders to date, I do have some expertise into all aspects of Temu. Some key takeaways (this is for EU, mind you):
1. The website and app are awesome. They work very well, are very responsive and their algorithms are tun
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They actually reward people who consistently buy from them. I got numerous items at deep discounts, for exemple a $35 item which I was offered to me at 68% off if I bought $30 worth of other products from them
Wow. The fact that you believe that, just wow. You do realize, assuming the original price was real, that the profit they make off the other items makes up for the discount? Though more likely that original price was an inflated MRP and the product is never actually sold at that higher price for any meaningful amount of time too.
My mom wears clothing that is over a generation old. I have a suit that went from my Granddad to my dad to me. Their cost is effectively free. Your bathrobe isn't even going t
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Not sure whether your hostility is innate or acquired, but whatever. it shows, and not in a good way.
Wow. The fact that you believe that, just wow. You do realize, assuming the original price was real, that the profit they make off the other items makes up for the discount?
Yes and no.
Yes, because they indeed make a profit overall, across all their products.
No, because they offer deep discounts to certain customers, those which go above a certain purchase threshold (be it monthly, yearly or lifetime). Therefore, product X that I buy, using my own account, might have a discount that sends the price even below the production price. This is a common reward method in the Far East.
S
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I got a few things from Temu.
The quality is excellent, and the items are cloth: which will last probably 30 or 40 years.
You are just an idiot.
This may end in failure for Temu (Score:3)
Question: Goods sourced from local sellers? How would that be competitive with everyone else based in the United States?
The only way I can see this working is if they import in bulk in huge quantities to get economy of scale, break down the palettes or shipping containers and then distribute to individual customers in the US. Even this would be labor intensive. If they try this, they probably will do in in a southern state where the there are no state minimum wage laws. They could pay as little as the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for these warehouse jobs. (If they can find workers willing to work for such a pittance.)
I suppose they could also bulk ship to Mexico, but that runs the risk of Mexico getting hit with higher tariff rates and maybe also face the elimination of de-minimis for them.
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local junk (Score:2)
is not better than imported junk. they're both still junk.
Re:local junk (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo. The cheapest trinkets made in the USA will be the same quality as the cheapest from China. You think the people in these new factories are going to get paid a wage to support a family in 2025?
Re: local junk (Score:2)
How do they earn their income now? Bank of Mom and Dad? Government checks? Flipping burgers and stocking shelves? I head those pay great.
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The cheapest trinkets made in the USA will be the same quality as the cheapest from China.
Kinda, but also kinda not. The cheapest trinkets in China aren't subject to any of the safety regs. They are supposed to be on import but we all know how well that works. With either made in USA, or making local sellers actually accountable for the goods they sell rather than merely creaming off profit, you'd expect to see fewer wildly unsafe goods.
Just look at some of the teardown videos of phone chargers.
You think t
De-minimis ... (Score:2)