US takes aim at Shein and Temu with new import rule proposal | Hacker News Reader

US takes aim at Shein and Temu with new import rule proposal

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24 pointselashri9 comments

I'd be fine with a 100% tax on drop shippers. Scourge of e-commerce.

They've actually driven me near completely off of Amazon. I normally don't even bother to look up products there anymore but rather go to a retailer I trust to have at least minimal supervision over their inventory.

It’s bizarre people support this compulsive shopping loopholes. We need to protect our own manufacturing. Letting them ship with no taxes is insane. National interest first.

The problem with that attitude is that there is a lot of stuff that is available on AliExpress that is just not purchaseable anywhere else, at any price. I would rather support US manufacturing, and I do vote that way with my dollars whenever I can. But when I want to play with a camera board, and I don't need the best (you usually don't need the best, and I'm skilled enough at these things that I can respond appropriately if I choose poorly and buy a total piece of crap), my choices are $5 from AliExpress, $50 from other grey-market sources that get me the exact same board, $500 for a "name brand" product that turns out to be made in China, or $5000 for a "Made in USA" part that is just as flaky (probably because no one buys it to debug it)... if I am just prototyping feasibility it is an easy choice. And that's before we get to Chinese-designed stuff that is offered nowhere else in the world. They do make some interesting things in China, and AliExpress is often how they offer them to the world.

I also have a German tool habit. I do not want to deal with US Customs every time I import another set of nice $80 tools to replace mine (which is usually because I've gifted them to someone else/hooked them on high quality stuff). I do not want US trade rules to make my life harder just because Temu is full of crap.

Is there not another way to hit back at these guys?

This kinda seems like it's throwing a drowning man a brick. China has deflation pressure[1], and this is going to mean even less money chasing their goods. It makes me wonder if the US is trying to avoid the deflation contagion spreading here. It's also possible that NATO has evidence that China has been caught red-handed supporting Russia[2] militarily in breach of sanctions, and this is just the first phase of China going through some things.

Of course China can tit-for-tat this move, but then again if they're about to enter a deflationary period then they might be importing fewer raw goods anyway. If they're about to be hit with severe sanctions for materially supporting Russia in the Ukraine invasion then they're absolutely going to be importing fewer US goods.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/economy/china-is-risking-a-deflationary-...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3278160/us...

I think it’s simply coincidence that the executive branch is finally getting around to this, after years, at the same time the Chinese economy is coming off the rails. Regrettable, but such is life.

It's hard to support this when the effect will be higher prices for consumers and literally nothing else. It's a noble goal but man, wrong bill, wrong time. All the shit is still going to come from the same factories in China because no one else is making most of this stuff, the tariff isn't going to move the needle to on-shoring most of these industries, for Temu it's textiles. I really don't believe that this tariff will buy the US anything.

> The Biden administration said the proposal would help “protect consumers from goods that do not meet regulatory health and safety standards.”

This for your safety, of course.

No different then Trump tariffs. Trade wars only hurt consumers. But both dems and reps want to be "tough on china"

This assumes cheap goods are the only goal.

Exactly. The idea of global trade is supposed to be about comparative advantage. Let Iceland with their cheap geothermal power make aluminum and trade it for US agriculture. But since the shipping container, trade is no longer that. It's about allowing businesses to circumvent the labor and pollution controls at home leaving local industry uncompetitive.

Tariffs are taxes, and good taxes will promote things we want and decentivize things we don't want. I'm much more sympathetic to complaints about solar panel tarrifs than I am about tariffs on cheap purses and fidget spinners.

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