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Comment by astar1 | Hacker News Reader

too little too late for Forever 21 and it's 350 locations which once employed 43,000 people at it's peak: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/forever-21-files-for-second-...

The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago.

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I'm surprised the Chinese sellers are able to compete for fast fashion. Clothes are the one thing I don't really buy online because getting sizing right is already hard even when you're not dealing with Temu-style "well actually we said there's a +- 25 tolerance in the fine print and this is within tolerance" bullshit.

AliExpress is indispensable for small technical items. If they're available locally at all, shipping included they'd often cost 10-20x as much.

No idea about Shein, but I was shocked how easy/good Temu return policy was. My wife bought some rugs and some prints and they were not as described/pictured.

Took a minute in the app to generate a qr code, then I had it to the post shop the same day and they refunded within 3 days.

I wouldn't (personally) buy clothes to wear normally from them, but something like beach shoes or a poncho for a festival I'd maybe get there.

TIL Temu has a return policy. I thought the return policy was "throw it in the trash and be out the money (albeit 1/10th of what you would have paid in a regular store)".

People are happy to just try stuff on at home then deal with returns or accept the loss if it doesn't fit or look good.

It's not fast-fashion they are competing with — they invented ultra-fast-fashion. Their platforms (Shein and Temu) are fully geared towards allowing manufacturers to jump on board the latest hypes and trends and have a saleable product on there within a week or so, to sell for a few weeks until it is no longer trending.

You want a 'My tariffs did that' T-shirt? Temu.

https://www.temu.com/search_result.html?search_key=tariffs%2...

Local store chains can't match that velocity.

They tried closing the loophole a month ago. It was such a burden trying to track and collect tariffs on small shipments they gave up.

It is pretty crazy how worker unfriendly US trade policy has been for so long.

They need to get their priorities straight - stop directing trade policy towards tech companies employing 1000's of workers on $250,000 a year and start building factories employing 100's or people on 25c an hour.

> The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago.

Or the US should figure out how to get domestic shipping rates to be as cheap as the rates that Chinese shippers pay to ship to the US.

That would probably require that they receive federal funding to subsidize postage rates, which is unfortunately not going to happen (especially not under DeJoy).

Yes, perhaps the government should subsidize (or allow states to subsidize) the fixed costs of mail, just as we subsidize the fixed costs of roads, so that our business can be competitive. Is this what China does domestically, or what the US does when we charge for international shipping? Point is, we should at least list all the ways that we can be more competitive, rather than cheering isolationism that makes us all worse off.

He resigned last month.

Ah, yeah, just in time to be replaced by another Trump appointee to similar or worse results.

International shipping from China to the US is subsidized by USPS under the Universal Postal Union rules since China is classified as a developing country. Terminal dues to the US have been increasing over the last 5 years to compensate for this.

https://www.ecomcrew.com/why-china-post-and-usps-are-killing...

It's still crazy to me that we classify the second largest economy as a developing country. Especially when said "developing" country is trying to flex it's muscles over the world stage and attack its neighbors.

China can either remain a developing country subject to rules imposed by developed countries. Or it can join the developed countries and shape those rules. It can't do both.

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