The Biden administration has proposed rules that could make it more costly for Chinese e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu to ship goods into the US.
In his announcement proposing to crack down on “unsafe, unfairly traded products,” President Joe Biden accused China-founded e-commerce platforms selling cheap goods of abusing the “de minimis exemption” that makes shipments valued under $800 duty-free.
Platforms taking advantage of the exemption can share less information on packages and dodge taxes. Biden warned that “over the last 10 years, the number of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimis exemption has increased significantly, from approximately 140 million a year to over 1 billion a year.” And the “majority of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimis exemption originate from several China-founded e-commerce platforms,” Biden said.
Wierd to claim de minimus is being ‘abused’ when simply more people are using it. It’s not as if people ordering from Shien are breaking up their orders to ship in packages less than 800 dollars, they’re just not spending that much on a single order of clothing.
It’s a bit more nuanced than that. The article doesn’t talk about it, but this NYT article touches on how these Chinese sites are exploiting the de minimis exemption loophole to circumvent US anti-forced labor law, which companies have to comply with to keep their supply chain free of slave labor (Uyghurs in Xinjiang for example):
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/business/economy/shein-temu-forced-labor-china.html
I think the assertion is that it’s intended for actual low volume low value trade, and that a retailer operating in the US but packaging the shipments in China (to bypass the normal import laws that apply to companies operating traditionally and importing in bulk, then packaging here) is not how the exception is intended to be used.
Yes, but your not thinking about the American investors.