Here in Norway, the biggest issue is that China is still officially a developing country, so the Norwegian state subsidizes the freight cost. In practice it's cheaper too send a letter or parcel from China to Norway than doing the same within Norway.

Temu and Shein do use loopholes in Europe/Germany, at least in Germany the reporting (and politicians lamenting) on such has increased recently so there will probably be some rule changes, most probably regarding the 150 euro minimum for customs duties.

https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/temu-shein-spd...

Basically my understanding is that now the seller must do the tolls/taxes before sending the package. Really hits small time sellers in places like UK, but Ali and Temu and so on are so big they can just implement it, pay taxes and still be cheaper than adding local middlemen in the mix.

Temu dumps incredible amount of money on marketing here.

Because the great majority of stuff being put up for sale on Amazon comes from Shein and Temu, or some smaller Chinese lookalikes. In pure colonial style the Westerners just want a bigger cut without bringing anything new to the table.