>It makes me wonder why Aliexpress doesn't have more warehouses in the US I'd suspect they do. Here in Australia, it's really common to get AliExpress goods d

>It makes me wonder why Aliexpress doesn't have more warehouses in the US I'd suspect they do. Here in Australia, it's really common to get AliExpress goods delivered in 2-3 business days, with an AusPost label on the box and a return address in Melbourne. Even for goods not physically located in the country, they're clearly doing something clever in terms of consolidating packages, booking out large chunks of air cargo space and dispatching from a local warehouse. Same deal with the Australian return address, but 7-10 days instead of 2-3. You can tell when they're coming via this route, as they'll have the shipping method "AliExpress Standard Shipping". CaiNiao is still your bog standard 4-6 weeks by boat. This is a pretty new thing, and only came about after China lost access to subsidised global shipping (as in, subsidies from other developed countries, not the Chinese Government) in 2021. AliExpress sellers also lost access to subsidised shipping from the Chinese government in the last few years. Prior to this, for certain locally manufactured goods, they could send them overseas at a rate of something like 1 yuan per half-kilo (essentially US$0.02 or so for a USB cable), hence why you'd get all these $1 items with free shipping.