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Comment by matthewaveryusa | Hacker News Reader

Good. Deminimis is what allows low effort arbitrage of sales straight from foreign countries to the detriment of any local business engaged in anything beyond drop shipping with maybe a few extra steps. We really don't need subsidized trinkets going from ali express to landfills faster than greased lightning.

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Sure, tell me more how it is awesome that I can't order $100 of dollars of small bulk electronic components for my hobby work direct from Huaqiangbei and get them here in a week. There is no US manufacturer replacement. Instead I have to turn to an import/export middleman also sourcing from Huaqiangbei but at 4x cost. In the eloquent words of our dear leader: SAD!

The 100 you payed was subsidized which distorted the market to the point where all US manufacturing of your components is not only gone, but the expertise is as well. The first step to re-establishing normal market dynamics is to remove the distortions. It started in 2019 with the removal of ridiculous UPU international postage rates and this is the next step. Slap on a small tariff less than the VAT in europe to give a little competitive incentive for all the harm done and just maybe the US can start making stuff here again.

Look, I'm all about the race to the bottom but the market needs to be fair

In the usual course of things, punitive tariffs are one side of the equation.

The other side sees the tariffing government making capital available along with other assistance in order to grow the local industry of the thing being tariffed.

What you have done is engaged in a trade war for no readily apparent reason other than the fact that the shit businessman in the White House doesn't understand that a deal doesn't have to have winners and losers in order for it to be a good deal.

That’s not what a subsidy is. De minimis was just the observation it’s not worth the money to enforce on cheap items.

What are the subsidies?

It's not clear that adding bureaucracy to help local businesses at the expense of the consumer is a net win

It's also not clear that allowing factories that underpay exploited workers to ship stuff over is a net win

I think with all economic policy it's good to weigh the pros and cons and have a serious discussion of them.

What I object to is that in practice people just side with their politics "team" like in sports and create post-hoc justifications for policy created for unrelated reasons.

I'm in favor of evidence-based trade policy, but this isn't that unfortunately. The closest thing we have to evidence-based policy is the economic consensus, and the current administration is making a big show of disagreeing with the consensus for non-evidence-based reasons.

It is impossible to establish causality in complex economic systems to be able to have evidence based decisions.

The current economic direction is not a consensus. The Western democracies are increasingly politically polarized and economically volatile.

Between the many different crises (unaffordable real estate, populational collapse, unsustainable environmental practices and global warming, increasing inequality, hollowing out of small and medium sized cities, and the list goes on), it is very difficult to justify the status quo.

There's also not really an objective outcome for a given policy, because you don't have a single grouping with aligned preferences.

You can estimate the impact objectively, but not whether that impact is good or bad.

If you don't like democracies or science then what is your proposed solution?

That's an unfortunate and charged statement that misrepresents what I said.

A fundamental aspect of science is rigor. And a fundamental aspect of democracy is opposition.

But your position is that you're opposed to evidence based policy. Which means you can't realistically hope to be in favor of an informed populace or democracy.

And you don't understand what the economic consensus is so you don't know what you don't know and aren't in a position to assess the level of rigor.

Plus your other comments, e.g. calling drug users zombies and criminals, make it clear that the anti-democratic impulses shown in this thread aren't just a one-off accident.

The alternative here is the exploited worker will no longer have any job. Doesn't seem like that is a legitimate concern for their well-being.

Your right, it's obviously much better to give money to bezos' warehouses that underpay exploited workers instead.

But it's not like as if ending de minimis would mean those goods will stop coming over. It still will, just through brick and mortar retailers and amazon FBA.

De minimis also impacts all goods, including those made by well-paid laborers and from countries that meet our exceed American labor standards.

I'm sure those workers that you genuinely care about can't wait to put down their soldering irons and get back to sustenance farming.

This is just a subsidy for American warehouses like amazon, who just act as middle men, making cheap crap slightly less cheap crap.

As opposed to the status quo of "this is just a subsidy for aliexpress/temu merchants, making cheap crap slightly cheaper"?

Why is it a subsidy? It’s just a lack of an artificial barrier.

What happens to a profitable local business when the its cost of a cheap foreign raw material goes up? Sourcing locally might not be the answer, especially if the cost of a local acquisition goes up to be just below china+tariff.

That's not the whole picture. Everything on eBay, Shopify, Etsy, that weird online shop that sells that weird thing you're into from London or Prague, whatever, all of it is now going to cost more money for everyone in America if it originates outside of the US.

Yes, the majority by volume is from China, and from large trash sites that rightly aren't sustainable...

... but the second order effects on small businesses and consumers who enjoy buying from them.

What's the moral valence differentiating a "local business" from a local drop-shipper? What really *is* a business selling imported goods—if not a drop-shipper with a storefront?

Bold to hold contempt for free-market capitalism, when it's made your society so staggeringly wealthy, your concern of the day is literally worrying about landfills filling up with surplus wealth. Find some perspective.

a local business needs to select what to sell. This is a valuable service.

Paying someone to reduce my own ability to choose? How does this work? Do they provide the most value if they offer just a single drop-shipped item that they believe I would want?

Wouldn't I just get better value from an independent review mechanism?

How many near identical choices do you need? How muc time do you want to spend evaluating all those options. Someone else to narrow it down saves you a lot of effort.

when the differences don't matter or are things you areenot aware of this is more important.

What a weird argument. Their decision making likely does not match mine. Where does the limitation end?

They should find 2 or 3 options that are good enough.

Nothing stops you from evaluating all possible options - but in most cases you have too many other things to do and a simple set of options lets you get on with life.

>but in most cases you have too many other things to do and a simple set of options lets you get on with life.

What a weird thing to say to someone else.

If it isn't true get a life. Well I suppose someone reading this is confined to a hospital bed or prison cell and thus has plenty of time with nothing better to do.

It is certainly odd that you have to resort to “get a life” statements in your argument here. Why do you feel the need to control what other people do? Should we all spend our time trying to accumulate 22k Karma on some forum?

If you personally want to look at all options for any one widget in your life that is fine, I won't judge you for it. Whoever realize that for whatever that widget most people don't. Also realize that for all the different things you need in life there are more options that you have time to examine while also doing those other things in life you must do.

>If it isn't true get a life.

Seems pretty judgey to me.

Because I’m a rational person, I know when I need to examine different options specifically matching what I need and when I just choose a random one.

You are free to visit shops that offer you just one option for a given category of it is too much cognitive load to make decisions like that. Just don’t force that on me and tell me that it is good for me. You might also want to get a number for the one therapist they offer there too, because having trouble making simple decisions is something that should get attention.

Probably my most-loved retailers are those with strong product curation.

Yes! This administration, once again, adds more government control into the lives of every day Americans by restricting free trade. A win for the United Socialist States of America! I do hope it continues to take an equity stake in local companies too. We really are becoming Great!

I want to weigh in here because I see comments focusing on how these products are useless trash. I think that's missing the point.

This wealthy engineer mindset is too literal. The AI-generated photos and fake reviews aren't bugs. They're features. They let the poor American with $100 of disposable income pretend they found a way to get an Apple Watch for $11. Just for a few days, they get to believe it might be real. When it arrives and it's crap, they knew it would be. But they got to play the fantasy.

TEMU's tagline is "Shop like a billionaire." I want you to really think about that. Marketers test hundreds of combinations to find what resonates. TEMU probably has thousands of marketers. They've tested millions of possible hooks. Millions. And this is what won.

"Shop like a billionaire" is the message that brought new people in the door above all others. Now what about churn? That's not the tagline's job. Don't let your knowledge of what exactly TEMU does and how it functions conceal from you this signal of what many (not all!!) people want.

However I believe they're not scamming people. They're delivering exactly what they're selling, which is the experience of feeling like you could have nice things.

Twenty years ago you could go to a matinee movie for a dollar. Two hours of escapism for a dollar. That product doesn't exist anymore. Theaters decided to serve a different customer base. They went upmarket. But people still want cheap escapism. Now it's $1-3 on TEMU to get that same escape. You browse, you dream, you wait for the package. It's entertainment.

TEMU is making things people want.

> TEMU's tagline is "Shop like a billionaire." I want you to really think about that. Marketers test hundreds of combinations to find what resonates. TEMU probably has thousands of marketers. They've tested millions of possible hooks. Millions. And this is what won. "Shop like a billionaire" is the message that resonated above all others.

Not saying you’re wrong, but I find “Shop like a billionaire” to be a deeply weird slogan.

Yeah. Do billionaires shop? Don't they have people who take care of that for them?

I asked a friend who is probably right in the target audience (very low to no disposable income) how he reads that slogan. He said “never worry about the price”. It’s in line with the people it might try to attract, the ones for whom the price is of utmost importance, above all else.

Wire $1,000 to my bank account and I will wire $1,000,000 (or equivalent in financial experience product) back in just a few days. Only one condition - you have to explain what happened to you afterwards.

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