10 ms·

I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. Mostly little electronics parts and specializ

by geor9e 2y ago

I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. Mostly little electronics parts and specialized tools for my workshop. Buying from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much. Obviously it's over now. Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a $75-$150 or more bill per package, even a 75 cent envelope will be charged +$75. I feel bad for the unaware people still ordering. I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet. I guess they are hoping for a reversal in the next 2 weeks.

roxolotl 2y ago
Wait why would $0.75 have a $75 charge? Is there a minimum tariff that’s not as widely reported reported on? That would be a 10000% tariff. Or is this just exaggeration
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway7394 2y ago
  There's a minimum charge, as well a percentage. > Washington will also increase the per postal item fee on goods entering after May 2 and before June 1 to $100 from the planned $75. Parcels entering after June 1 will pay a fee of $200 per item instead of $150 announced previously, according to the Wednesday order. ref. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-again-increases-small-parcel-tariff-on-china-shipments https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-aga...
  - roxolotl 2y ago
    Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.
    - nebula8804 2y ago
      Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.
      - marticode 2y ago
        They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.
      - roshin 2y ago
        If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing. disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
        thelastgallon 2y ago
        And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-should-you-be-a-billionaire-or-be-amish-2012-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh... "Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-and-the-amish https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Brybry 2y ago
    As far as I know, the way it works is shipping companies can do the % package value (ad valorem duty) or the flat rate per package (specific duty) but have to do the same method for all packages and can only change their method once a month.[1] My speculation is the ad valorem duty requires more manpower to implement and so that's why there's the specific duty option. Especially because they originally temporarily halted the de minimis changes due to USPS not being able to handle it. Executive order 14266 is the most recent rates with 120% ad valorem or $100 / $200 specific (gated by date as noted above). [2] [1] EO 14256: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/further-amendment-to-duties-addressing-the-synthetic-opioid-supply-chain-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china-as-applied-to-low-value-imports/#:~:text=(c)%20%20Duty%20Rates https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/furt... [2] EO 14266: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modifying-reciprocal-tariff-rates-to-reflect-trading-partner-retaliation-and-alignment/#:~:text=Sec.%204.%20De%20Minimis%20Tariff%20Increase https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modi...
    - mapt 2y ago
      Wait, what? So I can buy my carton of 120 iphones if I pay a $100 package fee, instead of $200,000 at the 120% rate? Alternately: My Chinese excavator only costs $100 in tariffs? Can someone give me pseudocode here?
      - detaro 2y ago
        Neither of those are going to be postal service packages with a De Minimis value (<$800).
        mapt 2y ago
        Could you unpack the idea further? There are plenty of things where Temu charges $2.00 and I would be fine paying a 120% tariff on that to bring it to $4.40, because Amazon is charging $8.99 and retailers are selling a seventy pack for $30. But I would not be fine paying a $100 tariff to bring it to $102.
  - userbinator 2y ago
    How long will it take him to change his mind again? He has already exempted a bunch of stuff from tariffs, coincidentally the same stuff that is likely to be imported because the US doesn't make much of its own of.
- ferfumarma 2y ago
  I think the issue is related to postal charges, and the reduction (or elimination?) of the "de minimis" exemption plus the tarrifs.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jopsen 2y ago
  In Denmark imports have to pay vat (25%), regardless of tariffs (goods made in Denmark also charge vat). But the processing fee for customs is usually 20-40 USD. Which can exceed the cost of the package in the first place. So when possible I always shop within the EU, or maybe the US.
  - rfmc 2y ago
    That’s all true, but you are leaving out an important piece of information that, at least for AliExpress, the VAT is already included in the price and there’s no additional customs processing fee.
    - Freak_NL 2y ago
      Yeah, you have to try real hard to get a customs processing fee on a package from AliExpress. Customs literally can't keep up with the fire-hose of packages coming in from China, so the current deal is that they, AliExpress, charge and pay VAT and the packages just come through unscathed. Order something from the US into Europe? Expect to pay customs most of the time. From Great Britain post-Brexit? Ditto. China? Rarely.
      - rfmc 2y ago
        It’s all about the VAT collection. I order frequently from Amazon Japan. They add the 25% VAT directly at the moment of purchase and deliver by DHL to Denmark without any extra handling fees. So it’s not about china, but about the company doing the paperwork required for the VAT collection instead of you doing. And by you I mean PostNord in the case of Denmark
      - kalleboo 2y ago
        Any business outside the EU can register for the EU One Stop Shop scheme and charge the VAT directly and avoid fees. Many small time US sellers probably just don’t want to bother, but big platforms like AliExpress centralize it https://skat.dk/en-us/businesses/vat/vat-on-international-trade/vat-on-sales-to-private-individuals/sales-to-private-consumers-in-the-eu/vat-one-stop-shop/special-schemes/about-the-import-scheme https://skat.dk/en-us/businesses/vat/vat-on-international-tr...
rtpg 2y ago
Aliexpress my impression is you can get "useful" stuff that are odd but usable. But I've had the impression that temu and shein was all "direct to garbage" devices, was this not the case?
- blitzar 2y ago
  They are all different frontends for the same backend - amazon is also a frontend to the same thing but with prices 2-3x'd.
- geor9e 2y ago
  They sell the same stuff in my experience. I would describe Temu as selling the top 10% of AliExpress that's the most popular, with faster and more reliable shipping since they use huge centralized fulfillment warehouses, similar to Amazon warehouses.
  - onli 2y ago
    Aliexpress also changed a lot there. I'm not sure if it goes for all vendors, but my last purchases have been very fast. Some even shipped from Europe, but even if from China the wait time of several weeks did not happen anymore. I assume they made a similar change.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  I've only used Temu a few times, but in my limited experience it is just Aliexpress but with a slick gamified interface on top. Alibaba sellers supplies the same stuff to Aliexpress, Temu, a ton of the Instagram ads and even a lot of the cheap Amazon stuff.
- beAbU 2y ago
  You can't lump shein and temu in the same bucket. My wife is an avid shein user and from what I can tell the quality so far is really good for what you pay. Shein is in reality just an aliexpress/baba wrapper, but they put huge amounts of effort into accurate sizing charts for their clothing, and their customer reviews system actively incentivises buyers to upload pictures of themselves wearing the purchased clothing. So as a potential buyer you can actually see the piece of clothing being worn by someone with a similar body shape than your own. My impression of temu is they are trying to be as misleading as possible with their listings, and the value for money is absolutely terrible because of that: you think you are getting a 6' xmas tree for $20, but when it arrives it's 6".
tyleo 2y ago
Are you saying a consumer will pay $75 later if they order a package from China now and it comes in May?
- Aurornis 2y ago
  There is a minimum fee for packages, yes. At this point I've lost track of all the changes but at one point I remember seeing $100 or $150 per package under some conditions. Carriers will also charge a fee for brokering it. USPS has a $9 fee, other carriers are higher. We went from being free to order things internationally to having out of control fees and taxes on top of everything. There's a lot of sneering at Temu and Shein, but the hobbyist and electronics worlds are about to get hit extremely hard by the lack of access to tools and parts from Aliexpress. It's really sad.
  - yorwba 2y ago
    That there is a minimum fee doesn't necessarily mean the customer pays it on arrival. It could also be charged to the sender in advance, and if they don't pay, the package is simply not delivered at all. If you could cheaply send stuff to random people to make them pay huge fees when they get something they didn't even order, that would be quite bad...
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > If you could cheaply send stuff to random people to make them pay huge fees when they get something they didn't even order, that would be quite bad... You can just refuse to accept the item, and it'll be returned to the sender or destroyed.
    - K0balt 2y ago
      Yet that’s exactly how it works. Each package will have $100 tacked on and in June that goes up to $200. They are basically making small packages impossible, so individuals / hobby buyers will be cut out completely, and a lot of small businesses will lose their supply lines. Big businesses will just raise prices to compensate… or bite the bullet long enough to put everyone else out of business. I suspect this is Walmarts plan.
riku_iki 2y ago
realistically speaking, it is likely not possible to deliver envelop from China at 75c cost, its likely someone else is paying for your 75c envelops (like taxpayers through subsidies).
- ipsum2 2y ago
  You've been downvoted, but you are 100% correct. It is the result of the UPU treaty: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/10/us-withdrawing-144-year-old-treaty-heres-why/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/10/us-withdrawing-144-y...
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    I enjoy the cheap shipping (from Aliexpress China warehouses to Germany), but I really wish this would be improved. It just seems nonsensical. There should be a closer relation to actual cost, but paying 4-5€ for a national shipment, versus essentially nothing for Chinese shipments, is mad.
    - Freak_NL 2y ago
      It gets even weirder when you consider the prices of shipping even within the EU. Within Germany? €3,50 if the seller has a good deal with DHL, within the Netherlands? €4,50 with PostNL. As a normal consumer shipping something the price goes up, and when you want to ship from the Netherlands to Germany or vice versa? €9,50 at least. Vinted seems to be the exception because of their deal with Mondial Relay, so I can order something from Italy for just €5 (but they currently exclude Germany for that feature for some reason). …meanwhile a couple of I²C light sensors, some brass book screws, a router bit or two? Free shipping because of the (whatever) deal or Ali Choice shipping, and just as fast too. Of course with Shein and Temu this isn't about cheap electronics, parts, and tools any more, but wholesale environmental destruction by fast-fashion. It wouldn't get much worse if the Chinese fashion manufacturers just shipped their wares directly to the Atacama desert. Enjoy this while it lasts Nachbar, no tariffs there for us just yet.
      - 2y ago
throw310822 2y ago
> I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet. Well, why would you waste the opportunity to enrage Americans against their government, for free? "Your $5 package has arrived on time, now you only have to pay the $75 extra that the candidate you voted for has decided to take from you". It's the best ads campaign ever, and it's entirely free.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  It's not that complicated. They don't pay the tariffs. The person receiving the package does. Many carriers will slap you with the tariff charge, a brokerage fee, and then send you to collections if you don't pay it. The vendors don't care because they're making the sale and the tariffs are the other person's responsibility. Caveat emptor.
  - robryan 2y ago
    Kind of. People can always refuse to pay it and charge back. I'd imagine the US is about to have a massive amount of unclaimed parcels to deal with.
    - rapind 2y ago
      I doubt credit card purchases will be an option once we start seeing a lot of chargebacks. They are an absolute pita to deal with for the vendor and processor. I expect your payment options will be limited to those that don’t allow chargebacks.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      I assume we'll see backups on both sides. Containers backed up in Chinese ports and a huge backlog of unclaimed packages and delayed tariff bills waiting for USPS/UPS/FedEx to process them.
  - petersellers 2y ago
    The person you are replying to isn't claiming that the seller pays the tariffs, they are saying that it's not in the seller's interest to notify buyers of the tariff charge because it's essentially free anti-tariff messaging once buyers are hit with the sudden fees.
4gotunameagain 2y ago
I'm sorry for your convenience loss, but I'm happy for the environment. Not only because of the unrestricted consumerism, but also because of the environmental costs of logistics. I too have ordered fusible resistors from aliexpress that I could not find locally. But things I barely need, only for a small dopamine kick ? I do my best to not have a small baggie shipped from the other side of the planet for that. And not even mentioning the effects of insatiability on myself.
- misja111 2y ago
  Who would have thought that Trump would bring in a policy that would benefit the environment? Also, who would have guessed that right wing governments would start buying Tesla's? Quite a plot twist ..
  - onemoresoop 2y ago
    It’s random dice throw. On average Trump has shot US in both feet unnecessarily.
- jampekka 2y ago
  The resistors to your local store have to go through logistics as well. And doing the last mile yourself is a lot more inefficient than a post service doing it. Transport is also quite small fraction of most products' environmental costs.
  - 1over137 2y ago
    >And doing the last mile yourself is a lot more inefficient than a post service doing it. How do you figure?
    - walls 2y ago
      One guy driving a route between 100 places is probably more efficient than 100 people all driving to and from a place.
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
I'm in France, maybe I should open a proxy. You order through me, I reexpedite to the US, with a French stamp lol.
- dmurray 2y ago
  Somebody absolutely should and will open this business. Versions of it already exist in Northern Ireland after Brexit. A slightly greyer version: you open the box, add a ribbon to every item, repackage it, mark it "final assembly in France". Unfortunately for you, your business probably gets outcompeted by the guy who has the same idea in Canada.
- spiderfarmer 2y ago
  That’s already happening.
- ccozan 2y ago
  It does not work. You have to declare the real source of the merchandise. Or it has to go through "substantial transformation" so that is called "Made in France". Country of origin is taxed and not country of shippment.
  - brnt 2y ago
    And nobody ever lied on those Chinese envelopes with the value declaration. ;) Also, I can tell you that the country of origin field has one of the lowest entry qualities of all fields. People just don't bother, and customs don't have the capacity. Also, depending on your warehousing, there is a good chance you simply don't know. If something in your item bucket came from either China, Vietnam, Malaysia or the Philippines, what are you gonna write?
    - xeromal 2y ago
      I bought an instrument cluster for my car for 700$ a year or two ago and they totally put something like "broken car parts - 20$" on the declaration.
  - 2y ago
dr_kiszonka 2y ago
Thank you for saving me money! I have been saving up for a little birthday gift for myself, which I was planning to get from Temu and the extra charge would make it way over my budget. Thanks again!
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Why would you offer some low quality shit from Temu for a birthday? 99 items out of 100 self destruct within weeks of use. It is only useful to people compulsively buying clothing regardless of the quality and who will never wear twice the same thing. Disposable stuff/waste. One would only do that to their worst enemy. OK I am exagerrating a bit and had a handful lf decent stuff from aliexpress/wish/temu. But you can typically only order for yourself as the quality testing is non existent. It is totally unsuitable for gifts. Mechanical pieces are often out of tolerance, clothing way uglier inperson than in photo, electronic stuff can last only days or years but you have no way to know for sure, finitions in general are very bad in general.
  - vultour 2y ago
    Reading this thread is mind-boggling. People complaining that cheap garbage from Temu is falling apart. People proudly proclaiming that they order Chinese crap almost daily. An argument about whether one crap peddler is better than another one. Am I taking crazy pills? Am I the only one who buys things a few times per year? This rampant consumerism is depressing.
    - d3nj4l 2y ago
      It isn’t all or nothing, products from Temu/Shein/AliExpress are not all “crap”; (and the idea that Chinese products are crap is also seriously outdated). Yes, there’s a lot of shovelware on those websites, but if you know how to navigate them you can get the same products that you’d get from Amazon for a third of the price. I’ve bought bags, tools, hobby equipment etc from aliexpress that has lasted me years and saved literally 50% on average.
      - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 2y ago
> I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet Some people are reporting seeing tiktoks - not "ads", but regular videos, inasmuch as there's a difference - where Chinese vendors are saying "see, this is the factory that makes US brands such as lululemon, why not cut out the middleman and buy direct?" > I guess they are hoping for a reversal in the next 2 weeks There's been several reversals already. If trade policy is done by whim, why not wait for a reversal as soon as it starts to bite? The whole category of "US business dependent on Chinese imports for inputs" is probably toast in the meantime. This includes a lot of kickstarters.
- pixl97 2y ago
  White label goods. My dad was in manufacturing and later importing so growing up I got to learn a lot about the process. He had worked for Heinz when I was young and would always buy the ketchup from some store brands that was about 60% of the cost. He was like, yea we bottle this on the same line as the name brand product. The same hold true for imports. And yea there is a lot of cheap Chinese junk, but if you know what you're looking for you can find the same Chinese products that get name branded and marked up 200-2000% here in the US. The problem with all of these is it's just going to cause and economic downturn where people purchase less, but more US products aren't going to sell. They simply aren't built here, and even if they are they'd still be many times more expensive. Even with the tariffs it would still be cheaper from China.
Havoc 2y ago
Much like brexit this will be a case of hindsight for many - people realising too late that they voted against their own interests
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cbeach 2y ago
  Brexit literally just resulted in the UK having lower tariffs and a probable free trade deal with the largest economy on the planet. ...unlike our friends on the European continent.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Brexit has been a disaster for the UK otherwise and anyone with eyes can see that
    - automatic6131 2y ago
      A "disaster" is a overstatement to the point of falsity. Still an unforced error and a bad idea but let's not exaggerate.
      - aprilthird2021 2y ago
        Why do you think it's an exaggeration? I mean it has measurably put them in a worse financial spot than before. I'd call the US tariffs a disaster and I'm not sure which one wiped out more from which nation's economy
  - jplrssn 2y ago
    The UK-EU trade volume is three times larger than that between UK-US.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > probable free trade deal While hoping is free, the negative impact of Brexit has been extensively documented. Hell, there's even a Wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit
anal_reactor 2y ago
What a great day to be European. I think that websites like Temu or AliExpress are particularly popular in poorer countries because we're used to scammy tactics, and we know how to navigate them. We know what to buy in order to get what we want, and for this purpose, AliExpress is awesome, because there are so many products you can't find locally. Meanwhile customers from rich countries expect better customer service as the default, and are willing to pay higher price for it.
- brettermeier 2y ago
  According to this report (https://www.earnestanalytics.com/insights/temu-growing-fastest-among-high-income-earners https://www.earnestanalytics.com/insights/temu-growing-faste...), Temu is growing fastest among high income earners. Would be interesting from which countries most customers come from.
simgt 2y ago
> I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. > I feel bad for the unaware people still ordering. I personally feel bad for the environment and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production. Good if the beneficiaries are gone from your part of the world.
- arghwhat 2y ago
  > I personally feel bad for the environment 1 item per day is certainly not efficient, but nowadays temu and aliexpress batch things over a small period so that shouldn't really happen... > and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production Remember that taking away bad jobs does not save anyone, quite the contrary. People go from having shit jobs to no jobs, or even worse jobs with lower-profile companies. Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries. E.g., by buying even more stuff from those regions, but from manufacturers paying better wages (and selling goods more expensively), so they end up having to massively expand and hire more.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    > Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      "If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs." This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere between two and six decades late depending on who you feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.
1over137 2y ago
>Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a $75-$150 or more bill per package Not "anyone"; only the 4% of humanity that lives in the USA.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
  ~20% of AliExpress and Temu packages is probably the more pertinent number.
conductr 2y ago
> Buying from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much. Most things I have bought on Ali express have no US source. I also have mostly bought small electronics and components and generally pay the Amazon premium for speed and only go to Ali express when I can’t find what I need, so third is quite a bummer to hear as I’d simply have no source for that item. Although, it did seem too good to be true, the minimal shipping costs that is.
PaulHoule 2y ago
I bought a bunch of off-brand Lego kits usually with Chinese themes (pagodas, nine-tailed foxes) from Temu. What I thought was hilarious about Temu was that the size of things was usually different from you had in mind. Most of the time Temu items were smaller than I imagined but once in a while you'd get something much bigger.
chrisBob 2y ago
One positive that could still come out of the tariffs is the US consuming less junk. I just spent a few months in Germany, and the trash can for our APARTMENT BUILDING is roughly half of the size of the one at my single family home in the US. And here I see lots of my neighbors overflowing their 96 gallon wheeled tote very week. The world would be much better off with out all of this waste.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Germany is definitely top-tier on reducing waste. Before I left the UK it had got to the point where actual landfill-bound unrecyclable trash was a tiny portion of the waste output. The sad thing is, UK and Germany are tiny compared to all the other countries that don't give a shit.
- imzadi 2y ago
  I live in Germany. One reason the toters can be smaller is because there places to dispose of your recyclable goods (free) on almost every corner. The toters are just for compost and regular trash.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
As long as they arrive before may 2nd.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
After the inavsion of Ukraine and sanctions were put on Russia every western company laundered their goods through Kazakhstan and into Russia. Im sure we will see a similar situation whith chinese goods finding their way into the country via vietnam.

by geor9e 2y ago

roxolotl 2y ago

Wait why would $0.75 have a $75 charge? Is there a minimum tariff that’s not as widely reported reported on? That would be a 10000% tariff. Or is this just exaggeration

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwaway7394 2y ago
There's a minimum charge, as well a percentage. > Washington will also increase the per postal item fee on goods entering after May 2 and before June 1 to $100 from the planned $75. Parcels entering after June 1 will pay a fee of $200 per item instead of $150 announced previously, according to the Wednesday order. ref. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-again-increases-small-parcel-tariff-on-china-shipments https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-aga...
- roxolotl 2y ago
  Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.
    - marticode 2y ago
      They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.
    - roshin 2y ago
      If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing. disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
      - thelastgallon 2y ago
        And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-should-you-be-a-billionaire-or-be-amish-2012-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh... "Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-and-the-amish https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Brybry 2y ago
  As far as I know, the way it works is shipping companies can do the % package value (ad valorem duty) or the flat rate per package (specific duty) but have to do the same method for all packages and can only change their method once a month.[1] My speculation is the ad valorem duty requires more manpower to implement and so that's why there's the specific duty option. Especially because they originally temporarily halted the de minimis changes due to USPS not being able to handle it. Executive order 14266 is the most recent rates with 120% ad valorem or $100 / $200 specific (gated by date as noted above). [2] [1] EO 14256: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/further-amendment-to-duties-addressing-the-synthetic-opioid-supply-chain-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china-as-applied-to-low-value-imports/#:~:text=(c)%20%20Duty%20Rates https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/furt... [2] EO 14266: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modifying-reciprocal-tariff-rates-to-reflect-trading-partner-retaliation-and-alignment/#:~:text=Sec.%204.%20De%20Minimis%20Tariff%20Increase https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modi...
  - mapt 2y ago
    Wait, what? So I can buy my carton of 120 iphones if I pay a $100 package fee, instead of $200,000 at the 120% rate? Alternately: My Chinese excavator only costs $100 in tariffs? Can someone give me pseudocode here?
    - detaro 2y ago
      Neither of those are going to be postal service packages with a De Minimis value (<$800).
      - mapt 2y ago
        Could you unpack the idea further? There are plenty of things where Temu charges $2.00 and I would be fine paying a 120% tariff on that to bring it to $4.40, because Amazon is charging $8.99 and retailers are selling a seventy pack for $30. But I would not be fine paying a $100 tariff to bring it to $102.
- userbinator 2y ago
  How long will it take him to change his mind again? He has already exempted a bunch of stuff from tariffs, coincidentally the same stuff that is likely to be imported because the US doesn't make much of its own of.
ferfumarma 2y ago
I think the issue is related to postal charges, and the reduction (or elimination?) of the "de minimis" exemption plus the tarrifs.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jopsen 2y ago
In Denmark imports have to pay vat (25%), regardless of tariffs (goods made in Denmark also charge vat). But the processing fee for customs is usually 20-40 USD. Which can exceed the cost of the package in the first place. So when possible I always shop within the EU, or maybe the US.
- rfmc 2y ago
  That’s all true, but you are leaving out an important piece of information that, at least for AliExpress, the VAT is already included in the price and there’s no additional customs processing fee.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    Yeah, you have to try real hard to get a customs processing fee on a package from AliExpress. Customs literally can't keep up with the fire-hose of packages coming in from China, so the current deal is that they, AliExpress, charge and pay VAT and the packages just come through unscathed. Order something from the US into Europe? Expect to pay customs most of the time. From Great Britain post-Brexit? Ditto. China? Rarely.
    - rfmc 2y ago
      It’s all about the VAT collection. I order frequently from Amazon Japan. They add the 25% VAT directly at the moment of purchase and deliver by DHL to Denmark without any extra handling fees. So it’s not about china, but about the company doing the paperwork required for the VAT collection instead of you doing. And by you I mean PostNord in the case of Denmark
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      Any business outside the EU can register for the EU One Stop Shop scheme and charge the VAT directly and avoid fees. Many small time US sellers probably just don’t want to bother, but big platforms like AliExpress centralize it https://skat.dk/en-us/businesses/vat/vat-on-international-trade/vat-on-sales-to-private-individuals/sales-to-private-consumers-in-the-eu/vat-one-stop-shop/special-schemes/about-the-import-scheme https://skat.dk/en-us/businesses/vat/vat-on-international-tr...

rtpg 2y ago

Aliexpress my impression is you can get "useful" stuff that are odd but usable. But I've had the impression that temu and shein was all "direct to garbage" devices, was this not the case?

blitzar 2y ago
They are all different frontends for the same backend - amazon is also a frontend to the same thing but with prices 2-3x'd.
geor9e 2y ago
They sell the same stuff in my experience. I would describe Temu as selling the top 10% of AliExpress that's the most popular, with faster and more reliable shipping since they use huge centralized fulfillment warehouses, similar to Amazon warehouses.
- onli 2y ago
  Aliexpress also changed a lot there. I'm not sure if it goes for all vendors, but my last purchases have been very fast. Some even shipped from Europe, but even if from China the wait time of several weeks did not happen anymore. I assume they made a similar change.
nebula8804 2y ago
I've only used Temu a few times, but in my limited experience it is just Aliexpress but with a slick gamified interface on top. Alibaba sellers supplies the same stuff to Aliexpress, Temu, a ton of the Instagram ads and even a lot of the cheap Amazon stuff.
beAbU 2y ago
You can't lump shein and temu in the same bucket. My wife is an avid shein user and from what I can tell the quality so far is really good for what you pay. Shein is in reality just an aliexpress/baba wrapper, but they put huge amounts of effort into accurate sizing charts for their clothing, and their customer reviews system actively incentivises buyers to upload pictures of themselves wearing the purchased clothing. So as a potential buyer you can actually see the piece of clothing being worn by someone with a similar body shape than your own. My impression of temu is they are trying to be as misleading as possible with their listings, and the value for money is absolutely terrible because of that: you think you are getting a 6' xmas tree for $20, but when it arrives it's 6".

tyleo 2y ago

Are you saying a consumer will pay $75 later if they order a package from China now and it comes in May?

Aurornis 2y ago
There is a minimum fee for packages, yes. At this point I've lost track of all the changes but at one point I remember seeing $100 or $150 per package under some conditions. Carriers will also charge a fee for brokering it. USPS has a $9 fee, other carriers are higher. We went from being free to order things internationally to having out of control fees and taxes on top of everything. There's a lot of sneering at Temu and Shein, but the hobbyist and electronics worlds are about to get hit extremely hard by the lack of access to tools and parts from Aliexpress. It's really sad.
- yorwba 2y ago
  That there is a minimum fee doesn't necessarily mean the customer pays it on arrival. It could also be charged to the sender in advance, and if they don't pay, the package is simply not delivered at all. If you could cheaply send stuff to random people to make them pay huge fees when they get something they didn't even order, that would be quite bad...
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > If you could cheaply send stuff to random people to make them pay huge fees when they get something they didn't even order, that would be quite bad... You can just refuse to accept the item, and it'll be returned to the sender or destroyed.
  - K0balt 2y ago
    Yet that’s exactly how it works. Each package will have $100 tacked on and in June that goes up to $200. They are basically making small packages impossible, so individuals / hobby buyers will be cut out completely, and a lot of small businesses will lose their supply lines. Big businesses will just raise prices to compensate… or bite the bullet long enough to put everyone else out of business. I suspect this is Walmarts plan.

riku_iki 2y ago

realistically speaking, it is likely not possible to deliver envelop from China at 75c cost, its likely someone else is paying for your 75c envelops (like taxpayers through subsidies).

ipsum2 2y ago
You've been downvoted, but you are 100% correct. It is the result of the UPU treaty: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/10/us-withdrawing-144-year-old-treaty-heres-why/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/10/us-withdrawing-144-y...
- Semaphor 2y ago
  I enjoy the cheap shipping (from Aliexpress China warehouses to Germany), but I really wish this would be improved. It just seems nonsensical. There should be a closer relation to actual cost, but paying 4-5€ for a national shipment, versus essentially nothing for Chinese shipments, is mad.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    It gets even weirder when you consider the prices of shipping even within the EU. Within Germany? €3,50 if the seller has a good deal with DHL, within the Netherlands? €4,50 with PostNL. As a normal consumer shipping something the price goes up, and when you want to ship from the Netherlands to Germany or vice versa? €9,50 at least. Vinted seems to be the exception because of their deal with Mondial Relay, so I can order something from Italy for just €5 (but they currently exclude Germany for that feature for some reason). …meanwhile a couple of I²C light sensors, some brass book screws, a router bit or two? Free shipping because of the (whatever) deal or Ali Choice shipping, and just as fast too. Of course with Shein and Temu this isn't about cheap electronics, parts, and tools any more, but wholesale environmental destruction by fast-fashion. It wouldn't get much worse if the Chinese fashion manufacturers just shipped their wares directly to the Atacama desert. Enjoy this while it lasts Nachbar, no tariffs there for us just yet.
    - 2y ago

throw310822 2y ago

> I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet. Well, why would you waste the opportunity to enrage Americans against their government, for free? "Your $5 package has arrived on time, now you only have to pay the $75 extra that the candidate you voted for has decided to take from you". It's the best ads campaign ever, and it's entirely free.

Aurornis 2y ago
It's not that complicated. They don't pay the tariffs. The person receiving the package does. Many carriers will slap you with the tariff charge, a brokerage fee, and then send you to collections if you don't pay it. The vendors don't care because they're making the sale and the tariffs are the other person's responsibility. Caveat emptor.
- robryan 2y ago
  Kind of. People can always refuse to pay it and charge back. I'd imagine the US is about to have a massive amount of unclaimed parcels to deal with.
  - rapind 2y ago
    I doubt credit card purchases will be an option once we start seeing a lot of chargebacks. They are an absolute pita to deal with for the vendor and processor. I expect your payment options will be limited to those that don’t allow chargebacks.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I assume we'll see backups on both sides. Containers backed up in Chinese ports and a huge backlog of unclaimed packages and delayed tariff bills waiting for USPS/UPS/FedEx to process them.
- petersellers 2y ago
  The person you are replying to isn't claiming that the seller pays the tariffs, they are saying that it's not in the seller's interest to notify buyers of the tariff charge because it's essentially free anti-tariff messaging once buyers are hit with the sudden fees.

4gotunameagain 2y ago

I'm sorry for your convenience loss, but I'm happy for the environment. Not only because of the unrestricted consumerism, but also because of the environmental costs of logistics. I too have ordered fusible resistors from aliexpress that I could not find locally. But things I barely need, only for a small dopamine kick ? I do my best to not have a small baggie shipped from the other side of the planet for that. And not even mentioning the effects of insatiability on myself.

misja111 2y ago
Who would have thought that Trump would bring in a policy that would benefit the environment? Also, who would have guessed that right wing governments would start buying Tesla's? Quite a plot twist ..
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  It’s random dice throw. On average Trump has shot US in both feet unnecessarily.
jampekka 2y ago
The resistors to your local store have to go through logistics as well. And doing the last mile yourself is a lot more inefficient than a post service doing it. Transport is also quite small fraction of most products' environmental costs.
- 1over137 2y ago
  >And doing the last mile yourself is a lot more inefficient than a post service doing it. How do you figure?
  - walls 2y ago
    One guy driving a route between 100 places is probably more efficient than 100 people all driving to and from a place.

BiteCode_dev 2y ago

I'm in France, maybe I should open a proxy. You order through me, I reexpedite to the US, with a French stamp lol.

dmurray 2y ago
Somebody absolutely should and will open this business. Versions of it already exist in Northern Ireland after Brexit. A slightly greyer version: you open the box, add a ribbon to every item, repackage it, mark it "final assembly in France". Unfortunately for you, your business probably gets outcompeted by the guy who has the same idea in Canada.
spiderfarmer 2y ago
That’s already happening.
ccozan 2y ago
It does not work. You have to declare the real source of the merchandise. Or it has to go through "substantial transformation" so that is called "Made in France". Country of origin is taxed and not country of shippment.
- brnt 2y ago
  And nobody ever lied on those Chinese envelopes with the value declaration. ;) Also, I can tell you that the country of origin field has one of the lowest entry qualities of all fields. People just don't bother, and customs don't have the capacity. Also, depending on your warehousing, there is a good chance you simply don't know. If something in your item bucket came from either China, Vietnam, Malaysia or the Philippines, what are you gonna write?
  - xeromal 2y ago
    I bought an instrument cluster for my car for 700$ a year or two ago and they totally put something like "broken car parts - 20$" on the declaration.
- 2y ago

dr_kiszonka 2y ago

Thank you for saving me money! I have been saving up for a little birthday gift for myself, which I was planning to get from Temu and the extra charge would make it way over my budget. Thanks again!

prmoustache 2y ago
Why would you offer some low quality shit from Temu for a birthday? 99 items out of 100 self destruct within weeks of use. It is only useful to people compulsively buying clothing regardless of the quality and who will never wear twice the same thing. Disposable stuff/waste. One would only do that to their worst enemy. OK I am exagerrating a bit and had a handful lf decent stuff from aliexpress/wish/temu. But you can typically only order for yourself as the quality testing is non existent. It is totally unsuitable for gifts. Mechanical pieces are often out of tolerance, clothing way uglier inperson than in photo, electronic stuff can last only days or years but you have no way to know for sure, finitions in general are very bad in general.
- vultour 2y ago
  Reading this thread is mind-boggling. People complaining that cheap garbage from Temu is falling apart. People proudly proclaiming that they order Chinese crap almost daily. An argument about whether one crap peddler is better than another one. Am I taking crazy pills? Am I the only one who buys things a few times per year? This rampant consumerism is depressing.
  - d3nj4l 2y ago
    It isn’t all or nothing, products from Temu/Shein/AliExpress are not all “crap”; (and the idea that Chinese products are crap is also seriously outdated). Yes, there’s a lot of shovelware on those websites, but if you know how to navigate them you can get the same products that you’d get from Amazon for a third of the price. I’ve bought bags, tools, hobby equipment etc from aliexpress that has lasted me years and saved literally 50% on average.
    - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 2y ago

> I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet Some people are reporting seeing tiktoks - not "ads", but regular videos, inasmuch as there's a difference - where Chinese vendors are saying "see, this is the factory that makes US brands such as lululemon, why not cut out the middleman and buy direct?" > I guess they are hoping for a reversal in the next 2 weeks There's been several reversals already. If trade policy is done by whim, why not wait for a reversal as soon as it starts to bite? The whole category of "US business dependent on Chinese imports for inputs" is probably toast in the meantime. This includes a lot of kickstarters.

pixl97 2y ago
White label goods. My dad was in manufacturing and later importing so growing up I got to learn a lot about the process. He had worked for Heinz when I was young and would always buy the ketchup from some store brands that was about 60% of the cost. He was like, yea we bottle this on the same line as the name brand product. The same hold true for imports. And yea there is a lot of cheap Chinese junk, but if you know what you're looking for you can find the same Chinese products that get name branded and marked up 200-2000% here in the US. The problem with all of these is it's just going to cause and economic downturn where people purchase less, but more US products aren't going to sell. They simply aren't built here, and even if they are they'd still be many times more expensive. Even with the tariffs it would still be cheaper from China.

Havoc 2y ago

Much like brexit this will be a case of hindsight for many - people realising too late that they voted against their own interests

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cbeach 2y ago
Brexit literally just resulted in the UK having lower tariffs and a probable free trade deal with the largest economy on the planet. ...unlike our friends on the European continent.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Brexit has been a disaster for the UK otherwise and anyone with eyes can see that
  - automatic6131 2y ago
    A "disaster" is a overstatement to the point of falsity. Still an unforced error and a bad idea but let's not exaggerate.
    - aprilthird2021 2y ago
      Why do you think it's an exaggeration? I mean it has measurably put them in a worse financial spot than before. I'd call the US tariffs a disaster and I'm not sure which one wiped out more from which nation's economy
- jplrssn 2y ago
  The UK-EU trade volume is three times larger than that between UK-US.
- sofixa 2y ago
  > probable free trade deal While hoping is free, the negative impact of Brexit has been extensively documented. Hell, there's even a Wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit

anal_reactor 2y ago

What a great day to be European. I think that websites like Temu or AliExpress are particularly popular in poorer countries because we're used to scammy tactics, and we know how to navigate them. We know what to buy in order to get what we want, and for this purpose, AliExpress is awesome, because there are so many products you can't find locally. Meanwhile customers from rich countries expect better customer service as the default, and are willing to pay higher price for it.

brettermeier 2y ago
According to this report (https://www.earnestanalytics.com/insights/temu-growing-fastest-among-high-income-earners https://www.earnestanalytics.com/insights/temu-growing-faste...), Temu is growing fastest among high income earners. Would be interesting from which countries most customers come from.

simgt 2y ago

> I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. > I feel bad for the unaware people still ordering. I personally feel bad for the environment and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production. Good if the beneficiaries are gone from your part of the world.

arghwhat 2y ago
> I personally feel bad for the environment 1 item per day is certainly not efficient, but nowadays temu and aliexpress batch things over a small period so that shouldn't really happen... > and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production Remember that taking away bad jobs does not save anyone, quite the contrary. People go from having shit jobs to no jobs, or even worse jobs with lower-profile companies. Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries. E.g., by buying even more stuff from those regions, but from manufacturers paying better wages (and selling goods more expensively), so they end up having to massively expand and hire more.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  > Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    "If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs." This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere between two and six decades late depending on who you feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.

1over137 2y ago

>Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a $75-$150 or more bill per package Not "anyone"; only the 4% of humanity that lives in the USA.

ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
~20% of AliExpress and Temu packages is probably the more pertinent number.

conductr 2y ago

> Buying from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much. Most things I have bought on Ali express have no US source. I also have mostly bought small electronics and components and generally pay the Amazon premium for speed and only go to Ali express when I can’t find what I need, so third is quite a bummer to hear as I’d simply have no source for that item. Although, it did seem too good to be true, the minimal shipping costs that is.

PaulHoule 2y ago

I bought a bunch of off-brand Lego kits usually with Chinese themes (pagodas, nine-tailed foxes) from Temu. What I thought was hilarious about Temu was that the size of things was usually different from you had in mind. Most of the time Temu items were smaller than I imagined but once in a while you'd get something much bigger.

chrisBob 2y ago

One positive that could still come out of the tariffs is the US consuming less junk. I just spent a few months in Germany, and the trash can for our APARTMENT BUILDING is roughly half of the size of the one at my single family home in the US. And here I see lots of my neighbors overflowing their 96 gallon wheeled tote very week. The world would be much better off with out all of this waste.

qingcharles 2y ago
Germany is definitely top-tier on reducing waste. Before I left the UK it had got to the point where actual landfill-bound unrecyclable trash was a tiny portion of the waste output. The sad thing is, UK and Germany are tiny compared to all the other countries that don't give a shit.
imzadi 2y ago
I live in Germany. One reason the toters can be smaller is because there places to dispose of your recyclable goods (free) on almost every corner. The toters are just for compost and regular trash.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

As long as they arrive before may 2nd.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

After the inavsion of Ukraine and sanctions were put on Russia every western company laundered their goods through Kazakhstan and into Russia. Im sure we will see a similar situation whith chinese goods finding their way into the country via vietnam.