FBuyers of Shein and Temu are required to push a little sigh of relief after President Donald Trump returned the strictest policies to Chinese imports, with the new rules in force today.
Trump announced on Monday a large trade agreement after the weekend talks with Beijing which lowered import taxes on all Chinese products of 145% prohibitive at 30%. China, in turn, has reduced its prices on American imports by 125% to 10%. The discounts will keep the next 90 days, while the two largest economies in the world will negotiate a longer -term agreement.
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Trump has also signed an executive decree to temporarily lower the price on low -value packages, directly to consumers from China and Hong Kong, having one of the most impactful movements of his trade war.
The packages evaluated at less than $ 800 have long been able to enter US franchise via the minimis The exemption, which allowed the electronic commerce giants like Shein and Temu to flood the American market for cheap shipments from China. Earlier this year, Trump decided to close the provision, imposing a price of 30% on low -value imports from China and Hong Kong in early April, in force on May 2. Trump affirmed in an executive decree of April 2 that the provision allowed the sender to “hide illicit substances and to hide the real content of the expeditions sent to the United States through misleading shipping practices”. (Reuters reported last year that the exemption from MINMIS had been exploited to the deadly consequences of fentanyl traffickers.) In price increases in TIT-FOR-TAT, the rate of low value for China was increased to 120% June.
But on May 12, Trump reversed the course, reducing the value -based rate rate for low -value imports from China at 54%, starting May 14.
The tariff rules also apply differently to different carriers: the rate of 54% has only an impact on shipments via USPS, while commercial carriers such as DHL, FEDEX or UPS will face the default rate of 30%, even for low value packages, experts told Reuters. Indeed, this means that most imports of China will face the price rate of 30%, while shipping of a value greater than $ 333 but less than $ 800 would be faced with an effective price rate as low as 12.5% by shipping via USPS and by paying the rate rate.
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A few days before the termination of the exemption from Minmis on May 2, American customers began to publish screenshots of receipts from certain online stores, including TEMU, which showed “import costs” of around 145%, more than the cost of the product itself. (Amazon has also planned to display the cost of prices on its products but was fell after a complaint from the Trump administration.)
“Shopping like a billionaire with purchases like a peasant in one day,” said a user on Reddit. (Research of UCLA and Yale economists show that low -income postal codes actually point out a much greater share of their expenses in minimis from China than higher income post codes.) Some customers have declared that they are turning to American retailers like Walmart and Target, in place, although many of these detailers were based on Chinese imports, also the cost of tariffs to consumers.
Shein and Temu saw their American sales drop spectacularly in the week after Trump’s prices on China entered into force. The average price of the 100 best beauty and health products in Shein has more than doubled from April 15 to May 6, according to a Bloomberg analysis. TEMU did a shipping break from China and rather moved to sell stocks of its American warehouses which had been imported from China before the prices. The company said that it would come to the sale of local merchants on the American market. It is not yet clear if or how TEMU will adjust its model according to the new commercial rules.
However, buyers will probably see their wallets doing a little worse than before the prices do not take effect, because the minimis rule previously meant that fast fashion sites like Shein and Temu could offer ultra-basic prices by circumventing tasks and other customs statements every day, allowing millions of cheap packages to come to the United States every day. And the fact that the last decree reduces the price based on the value for low -value imports from China is only effective for 90 days leaves businesses and consumers to work under an uncertainty about what could come.
