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Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

Bad for consumers, but seems like a very good thing for AMZN?

Amazon won't have to compete against the much cheaper Temu, Aliexpress, Shein(?) etc.

Cheaper and better.

This country is so painfully stupid. Now I have to pay 2x as much for inferior products, if not the same exact stuff imported by an American company.

This alone is probably going to cost me about 1000$ to 2000$ per year. We literally don't make much most of this stuff in the US. For example I just ordered a guitar bag, 15$ direct from China. The same exact bag, made in the same exact factory is going to be 40$ on Amazon.

That's assuming this resolves before resellers run out of stock.

If I had any idea this stupid policy change was happening so soon I probably would of brought more stuff.

The next 4 years are going to be very expensive, the price of everything is going to skyrocket.

> We literally don't make much most of this stuff in the US

Not said often enough is that we DONT WANT to make much of this stuff in the US.

People seriously don’t get how remarkable it is that the U.S. is able to get other countries to send them actual usable stuff in return for pieces of paper that the U.S. prints. And how much richer this makes Americans.

I don’t believe the U.S. should be fully free market. Clearly it went too far away from industrialization to the point that the U.S. was reliant on China for critical stuff and has lost the capacity to scale if it needs to. The CHIPS act was the first tiny step towards changing this.

But these actions and the industries targeted needed to be strategic and not random.

The new problem is the factories making a lot of this stuff are heavily polluting, and we have little to no control over that because they are abroad. Part of a good climate strategy must involve regulating them somehow.

At least for China they have an environmental plan far and away better than the US’s “what do the rich want to do?”.

Can you give details of China’s environment plan?. All I hear about are the dozens of coal plants China builds each year. Are they no longer building those plants?

It's all true ..

they have a large population, largest in the world, India second (or not, I don't recall) and with a growing middle class (it alone now larger than the entire population of the US) with western consumption patterns and expectations they have insane power demands and projections.

So, more renewables than anywhere else, more nuclear than anywhere else, and more coal than anywhere else.

That said, they build new coal plants that are state of the art and "less bad" than the many older coal plants they are ripping apart. They also use coal power to supply energy to transition off of coal and create solar farms, etc.

"It's complicated"

See:

https://www.iea.org/countries/china (and drill down)

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2024/chi...

https://www.iea.org/reports/meeting-power-system-flexibility...

compare and contrast with other countries (according to the IEA) and then look at other non IEA big picture summaries.

Renewable energies account for 29% of China's energy production and 21% of US's.

In 2010, this was 19% and 10% respectively.

So, they have a bit of a head start, but are transitioning to renewables just as quickly as the US. Their much larger population does make the overall impact they're having on the environment larger, though, and yes they are still building new coal plants to keep up with rapidly increasing energy needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...

As of August 2024, China has 55 nuclear reactors in operation, 25 under construction, and plans for an additional 36 reactors. In August 2024, China’s State Council approved five nuclear power projects comprising 11 new reactors. Overall, China aims to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035.

China doesn't actually care to much about green energy production, it's more that green energy production just happens to be one of the best ways for China to achieve energy independence.

China doesn't have huge reserves of fossil fuels, and they don't have a truly reliable way of importing them (and any import will always be vulnerable anyway).

So they are left with coal, nuclear, wind, and sun to build energy independence with. This is the primary driver of massive "green" investment (and coal investment too). They want all their energy made in house with what they have, which turns out to be a lot of cheaply accessible sun and wind.

> All I hear about are the dozens of coal plants China builds each year.

I suspect this is partly true and gets repeated a lot, but then nobody follows up with the actual numbers of plants that get built and are producing. I have found these where a lot of the coal plants gets approved but then not actually built, cancelled etc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sHBsK_Ez7C9XA4HKRQSv...

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-puts-coal-on...

Also China's coal use seems to not grow too much anymore.

Yes and. China is still rapidly expanding their electricity production (because their energy use per capita is still way below US/Europe), and they don't have huge amounts of natural gas like the US does. As such, they are building coal plants that in the near term boost energy production, and in the medium term will be used as peaker plants for when the massive amount of renewables that they're also installing don't meet demand.

They are building more renewable capacity than the rest of the world combined, and have an 86% renewable target for 2050.

What's the US target for 2050?

Please stop trusting whatever CCP says

Ignore the investment, the land, the input costs, the pollution etc. - the jobs pay 50c an hour (+ and the jobs making the input materials and parts pay 50c an hour) and the rich owner of the factory might rake in a cool $25,000 a year.

Either all the things cost way more or everyone from employees to owners lives like peasants.

The other issue is American quality has gone down the tank. 10-15 years ago I’d look for American quality over Chinese, but nowadays I prefer the Chinese manufacturer almost 100% of the time. Not always the case but anecdotally chinas quality has gotten better while American stuff has gotten worse.

Yes. People associate Chinese manufacturing with low quality products, but I feel those people misunderstand systems. It's not Chinese manufacturing that is low quality. It's really the sites like Temu and Shein that create low quality products -- because of their aggressive pricing, they create a cascade of systemic cost pressures on manufacturers, who have to cut corners.

AMZN on the other hand probably provides more headroom and reduces cost pressure on manufacturers. If you know how to shop on Amazon (avoiding 3P sellers, and only getting 4 star and above products), you generally get high quality products.

I've only rarely gotten anything bad from Amazon (from Chinese manufacturers).

I've bought Chinese products like Anker batteries, Thermopro thermocouples/sensors, Jigoo (weird name I know) dust mite vacuum, Tapo camera, Levoit humidifier, Cosori air fryer, and little clever tools like toothpaste tube squeezers and the like.

They've all exceeded expectations.

(I recently bought a Insta360 Flow Pro 2 gimbal, also a Chinese product, and it's amazing).

> Levoit humidifier

Be careful with that. I liked mine too until it burst into flames one evening.

I’ve had it for years running 24/7 and nothing happened. You might have gotten a dud.

Bursting into flames shouldn't be possible, that's a LOT worse than a "dud". (Assuming parent isn't exaggerating)

Not exaggerating. I had it for a little over a year. I used it in my bedroom. As usual I started it going and then went into my bathroom to brush my teeth before bed. Partly through brushing my teeth I smelled something burning. I came out and saw the humidifier in flames.

It does raise the question of certification and product safety in general, there are so many electrical devices that probably don't meet Western safety standards. A humidifier is basically a heating element in a plastic housing, it should be engineered with safety features (overheating protection etc) so it shouldn't be able to just catch fire, someone clearly didn't do their job properly at some stage. I wonder how product recalls work with that sort of thing.

I don’t think I would make that leap about falling short of Western safety standards.

All electrical products sold in the US are legally required to be NRTL certified (according to US standards). Levoit is ETL certified.

Non certified products are seized by customs or recalled from the market.

It’s very unlikely and I agree, not acceptable, but any household appliance with a heating element has a nonzero fire risk. I read that for UL certified humidifiers the incidence rate is 1 in 100k, similar to fans. The seems worryingly high.

China makes quality things, they just keep it for themselves, and ship their crap to us.

If you are willing to pay (and know where to look), you can get good quality from China just fine.

Most iPhones come from China after all.

That's hilarious. The most popular grocery stores in Shanghai right now are Costco and Sams, with lines everyday out the door, not Chinese grocery stores. Chinese citizens don't want to buy cancerous food products for example.

Then why is lead in everything from China?

Comparative advantage in action!

We must buy different things.

I will absolutely concur with American products getting far worse. Everything is cost cut to the bone.

It's not so much that it is cost cut to the bone, but that the expertise is being lost.

I can tell you with a straight face that american manufacturing is being held up right now by grey beards pushing back retirement because young people have zero interest in manufacturing boiler conduit fittings. You can crash course an IT cert and come out making more money than you would ever make pressing steel couplers.

No, a lot of it really is just obvious cost cutting. Things like replacing metal fasteners with plastic ones that break or strip easily.

With few exceptions.

In general, if I’m going to buy something that’s going to last 2 uses, I might as well just buy the cheapest one.

"This country is so painfully stupid."

Not all of the country is stupid, a lot of us didn't vote for the idiot who is causing all this lunacy. Unfortunately, not enough of us.

hah, I would say that blaming voters is the best example of american stupidity I can think of. What do you expect when you have two parties that agree on virtually everything but abortion? Blaming the voters just enables this dynamic. At some point people need to get pissed off that we haven't had policy worth voting FOR since well before I was born, just an endless cycle of people explaining why nothing will ever improve and all our problems are intractable.

Trump is easy to laugh at, but he genuinely understands this country and how democracy functions on a level most people in DC and in newsrooms across the country completely fail to grasp. Why people aren't more pissed with the democrats for pushing unpopular losers is baffling.

I miss wrote, I should have written, "Unfortunately, there weren't enough rational voters to stop the idiot."

Admittedly I’ve not looked past the linked page, but does this stop direct importing via other means? If not, and it holds, I’d expect to quickly see a bunch of US-based importers pop up very quickly just to resell onto the usual channels.

Yep. Inflation across the board through many inflationary policies is the goal because it's good for the rich who can keep their liquid and illiquid assets hedged and bad for ordinary people because it's a "tax" without a pay increase.

>15$ direct from China. The same exact bag, made in the same exact factory is going to be 40$ on Amazon.

Do you have examples of this? It hasn't been the case for me. Usually the prices are similar and I tend to find that Amazon is slightly cheaper.

Amazon , 40$ https://a.co/d/6HSc2A6

AliExpress , 17$( see coupons below). https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806198514308.html

Plus AliExpress tends to offer coupons.

So let's say you buy 300$ of stuff from Amazon, and 300$ of stuff from AliExpress.

Even if the products are the same price, AliExpress will offer a 30$ off coupon.

Amazon has to build in a higher margin though, they practically have a no questions asked return policy for anything less than say 100$. AliExpress is a bit more difficult here.

I even remember getting on chat support with Amazon, and telling them I was basically too dumb to put a table together right. No return, they just refunded me $200. You don't get that with AliExpress.

$17 is temporarily half off with list $37.19. So normally it's pretty similar.

Everything on AliExpress is always half off.

Lenovo does this too.

It's just marketing.What matters is at the end of the day what you paid for it.

> This alone is probably going to cost me about 1000$ to 2000$ per year.

This is a temporary hold while they figure out what’s going on.

They’re not announcing that shipments from China are over for the year.

They're not going to stop. But they'll need more people / time. And everyone will have to pay extra for that.

> by an American company ... > cost me about 1000$ to 2000$ per year.

they sponsored 2025, they collect the benefits, and peons pay.

Bezos donations to Trump are taking money right out of our pockets and putting it in his.

People started realizing Temu/AliExpress/Shen are literally selling the same exact stuff.

Now Amazon is going to get their 50% markup. I'm literally going to just stop buying a lot of stuff if this policy isn't reversed.

It's not like you can buy an Xbox built in Texas, this has the potential to make almost every product more expensive.

Or it's going to save you a ton because you are not spending money on frivolous shit.

Probably 80% of the listings on Amazon I see come from Chinese resellers drop shipping off AliExpress.

Reverse image search usually finds the original.

I wouldn't even mind paying extra for the Amazon return policy, but I hate the dozens of listings for the same product.

The same amazon that happily ships from the US TO Hong Kong free of charge (above USD49) with SF Express (a Chinese company). Funny how that goes.

All those cargo planes gotta go back, worth filling them up with stuff.

Isn’t half of Amazon just resellers of aliexpress with a markup?

No, no definitely nowhere near half, don't be so pessimistic. It's at least 90%. ;)

I got the distinct impression Amazon shifted mix significantly in that direction, via the resellers and the resellers themselves shifting

Which reminds me of a rule: price up, demand down

Why does any regulation that affects China follow this recipe?

"Good for <US tech company>. Guess they won't have to compete."

For about a week until their stock from China runs out... However this won't last that long.

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