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U.S. is cracking down on Shein and Temu by closing a loophole that makes their cheap goods exempt from tariffs (fortune.com)

submitted 10 months ago by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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The U.S. administration is cracking down on cheap products sold out of China by companies such as Temu and Shein by saying that companies are no longer exempt from tariffs simply by shipping goods that they claim to be worth less than $800.

U.S. President Joe Biden would no longer exclude these “de minimis” imports from tariffs under a proposed rule released Friday to tax all imports if they’re covered under Sections 201 or 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, or Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

Importers mainly from China have used the de minimis exemption for shipments of $800 or less to flood the U.S. market. The number of these shipments has jumped from 140 million annually to over 1 billion a year, according to a White House statement.

The action comes at a delicate moment for the world’s two largest economies. The United States has tried to lessen its reliance on Chinese products, protect emerging industries such as electric vehicles from Chinese competition and restrict China’s access to advanced computer chips. For its part, China has seen manufacturing and exports as essential for driving economic growth as it has struggled with deflation following pandemic-related lockdowns.

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[-] GammaGames@beehaw.org 53 points 10 months ago

I’m curious how many emissions these trash products have added, good riddance

[-] master5o1@lemmy.nz 5 points 10 months ago

Marginal at best when everything is made elsewhere and requires fossil fuels for transport.

[-] Rekhyt@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately, it's much worse than that

[-] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 10 months ago

The land of "free market" is a joke lol

[-] tardigrada@beehaw.org 12 points 10 months ago

Whatever we understand by a 'free market', China must really not complain about a 'non-free' market policy not in the U.S. nor in most othrr countries. That would really be hypocritical.

[-] tardigrada@beehaw.org 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Just stumpled upon that (video, 20 sec): https://infosec.exchange/@littlealex/113131659214334040

Just buy from China. It's cheap :-)

Addition:

Toxic substances found in Shein and Temu products -- (August 2024)

Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said yesterday.

Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at low prices.

Shoes from Shein were found to contain significantly high levels of phthalates — chemicals used to make plastics more flexible — with one pair 229 times above the legal limit.

“Phthalate-based plasticisers affect reproductive functions such as sperm count reduction, and can cause infertility and even premature birth,” an official from Seoul’s environmental health team told reporters.

One such chemical “is classified as a human carcinogen by the International Cancer Institute, so special care should be taken to avoid long-term contact with the human body,” the official said.

The article is longer, very interesting.

Did someone say we need supply chain transparency?

[-] TheAlbatross 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

[removed by mod]

[-] tardigrada@beehaw.org 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Just one example:

Report finds shein, temu fueled by slave labor in [China's] Xinjiang -- [archived]

The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has released a report stating that leading fast fashion brands, Shein and Temu, are powered by "slave labor." The author of the report, Adam Savit, who is also the director of AFPI's China Policy Initiative, said that Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are subjected to forced labor in China's Xinjiang region, benefitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

This is just one of many similar reports. I think we should always asking ourselves when buying cheap whether there are others who who pay the price, especially in.countries like China where there is no supply chain transparency.

[Edit typo.]

[-] sonori@beehaw.org 11 points 10 months ago

This predisposes that much more expensive one sold locally is not also the same model and manufactured in the same factory. When so much of what is sold at Amazon or Walmart originates from Alibaba or bulk orders from said factory, the only difference in the exploitation is if Bezos gets a cut on top.

Functionally, I think you’ll have a lot more luck pushing for and requiring supply chain transparency from the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, or directly using national economic and political pressure, than focusing on increasing the cost on the small market of people going direct to the source.

Admittedly though this is less true as it has become more widely known that Temu and the like have the same product selection as Amazon, and indeed that seems to be the actual reason this legislation has been proposed.

Nevertheless I can’t see the US government taking slightly more of a cut having much of an effect when most of the products which heavily involve Uyghur labor are meant for internal use or export to the third world. You would need to propose serious practical consequences for the leadership of the CCP and follow though on those consequences to force external end to a political project that’s popular domestically like this, or at least a very closely and precisely targeted BDS campaign, and not just continuing business as usual but with higher taxes.

[-] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 9 points 10 months ago

My thing is that there's a minimum price for fairness, and then there's products that present themselves as being marked up for fairness that don't actually benefit the people a fair price should benefit. Your best bet is to do some research into what the minimum fair price something is, and then look for something that price from a local economy.

Unfortunately, this is next to impossible. The systems in place favor us never knowing where anything comes from, and the research tools we used to be able to use to find fair prices (internet search) have been broken for this purpose for nearly 10 years (not just AI bullshit, but all those SEO pay to play bullshit listicles that even infect real human driven testing processes like The Wirecutter and Gear Lab). I think there's even an argument to be made that AI is an intentional device to steer us into a digital dark age where finding real trustworthy information is nearly impossible.

[-] sonori@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

Ya, I agree people should be getting a fair wage, I just don’t see how a tax on products sold more directly helps with that in this case. People will just shrug, say it’s still cheaper than the same model on Amazon, and buy it all the same. A company is always going to try and pay the lowest price they can while pocketing the rest, and the best you can typically do is help the workers bargain for more.

I mean things like BDS can work, but they have to be targeted very carefully and specifically to get a board of directors to take a specific action, and the wider the net you cast the more dilute it gets and the more likely companies will call it the cost of doing busines.

US condemnation of the system would probably also have a bit stronger effect if it wasn’t using the same system of minority prison labor farmed out to various companies and saying it’s perfectly ethical fine so long as the people you arrested on thin pretext for race get a few dollars an hour that they then spend right back at the prison.

Put another way, if the EU put the same import tax on products and companies that made things in Mississippi on us because of the general prevalence of undocumented black prison labor in the region, do you think that the we would suddenly change things?

[-] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 2 points 10 months ago

Oh for sure. The solution isn't to raise the price of unfairly priced products, its to introduce the concept of accountability to the world

[-] Midnitte@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago

Also terrible for the environment

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This just political theater and domestic handouts. It will increase clothing prices for workings while doing nothing to alleviate their exploitation.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024

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