The U.S. is cracking down on cheap Chinese goods loved by American shoppers
The U.S. is cracking down on cheap Chinese goods loved by American shoppers
A White House plan to narrow a trade loophole could mean painful times ahead for Chinese sellers on platforms such as Temu and Shein — and higher prices for U.S. consumers.
I'm pretty sure nobody loves cheap Chinese goods. It's more people love to be able to afford eating, having a roof over their head, and maybe some shitty, but cheap, headphones.
Hello, fellow citizen! Nice to see you. Are you well? How is the wife/husband/partner/thruple/keyboard today? Ha. Ha. 😶
Yeah and also, sometimes it's really hard to find NMIC products.
I don't love em...I just have no damn choice because greed always wins
Many times I’ve wanted products. Could see it comes from Asia and don’t want to risk the quality. It’s flooded online. Difficult to find a true seller and one that isn’t just reselling that same shit I’m avoiding. It’s so irritating.
Oh no I love my RUXIBTAN earbuds and my HURQIO keyboard.
That particular strain of nonsense is actually specifically an Amazon thing, because you cannot sell "non branded" merchandise on Amazon, a policy that's in place allegedly to combat generic whitebox goods from flooding the site. Your product has to be sold under a registered trademark, but the loophole is that said trademark does not actually have to make any sense whatsoever.
Now there are brokers who will assist anyone in registering a trademark that is literally just a random string of letters for this express purpose. All you have to do is concoct a combination that no one has used yet, and register it with the USPTO.
Therefore the entire scheme falls flat on its face, and manifestly fails to make any impact in the problem it purports to solve. But it does probably give Amazon a legal escape hatch to accusations of being a dumping ground for Chinese knockoff products, because they can point to all those trademark registrations and say, "No, see, everything sold here is all totally from a 100% legitimate brand!"
I wasn’t aware there were alternatives not made in china.
Does this mean fewer duplicate white label items?
If anything it means the duplicate white label items will be harder to spot
Fine, we'll get a bidet! TP is just way too expensive now.
get it on temu while you still can
The horror.
Protectionism in the "land of free market" (irony)
There’s probably a degree of protectionism going on but these platforms sell unsafe products
Which is something that can, and often does happen in unregulated free markets. The invisible hand is not necessarily very good at things like consumer protection, among other things.
If that was the issue, they'd take steps to ensure safety, ask for certifications, etc. rather than more tariffs and lower "de minimis" exemption. Clearly these decisions are made for economic reasons, not to ensure higher quality products and protect consumers.
Although chinese goods are famous for crappy short lifespan products but in the end we loved it because no one in this god green earth (except china) can make something cheaper & sell it at ridiculously cheaper....only china can do that thing.
I say this not to mean I am defending them, I hate that many products on the market today seem cheap because they flood the market with very cheap stuff. Yes... even though in the end we as consumers find it difficult to distinguish which goods are premium and which are crap.
We should learn from them, if they can do it, why can't we?
"Cracking down" is among the worst newpaper propaganda phrases.
It's meaningless and it implicitly justifies the "cracker".
I’m curious what definition of “cracker” are you using?
Great! Now I'll have to buy the same products from Walmart for ten times the cost. At least the Waltons can wet their beaks on it now.
Why underpay and exploit labor in China when you can also underpay and exploit labor here, too, and pay more for the privilege?
I mostly use Ali Express (admittedly, not mentioned in any of the articles about this change in tariff applications) for fishing gear. Many of the big names in fishing lures, Blue Fox, Panther Marten, Kastmaster, etc. have all moved their production overseas. When I buy the "knock offs", it shows up in the same packaging I see in Dick's or Walmart with the same product inside. But I can choose to pay $7.99 for one lure or $2.16 for 3. It's coming from the same factory, made by the same people, the only difference is how much it costs and whose pockets get filled from paying that price.
Oh, also, the cheapo Chinese braid line (its being manufactured to be sold in Japan under their brands) is way superior to what we get in the USA, way stronger and thinner. And I get 500m of it for $17.
Alternatively you could buy from a dollar store where it's 12 times the price but in a smaller package so it seems cheaper.
dyisland brakes