The U.S. administration is cracking down on cheap products sold out of China by companies such as Temu and Shein by saying that companies are no longer exempt from tariffs simply by shipping goods that they claim to be worth less than $800.
U.S. President Joe Biden would no longer exclude these “de minimis” imports from tariffs under a proposed rule released Friday to tax all imports if they’re covered under Sections 201 or 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, or Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
Importers mainly from China have used the de minimis exemption for shipments of $800 or less to flood the U.S. market. The number of these shipments has jumped from 140 million annually to over 1 billion a year, according to a White House statement.
The action comes at a delicate moment for the world’s two largest economies. The United States has tried to lessen its reliance on Chinese products, protect emerging industries such as electric vehicles from Chinese competition and restrict China’s access to advanced computer chips. For its part, China has seen manufacturing and exports as essential for driving economic growth as it has struggled with deflation following pandemic-related lockdowns.
Just one example:
Report finds shein, temu fueled by slave labor in [China’s] Xinjiang – [archived]
This is just one of many similar reports. I think we should always asking ourselves when buying cheap whether there are others who who pay the price, especially in.countries like China where there is no supply chain transparency.
[Edit typo.]
This predisposes that much more expensive one sold locally is not also the same model and manufactured in the same factory. When so much of what is sold at Amazon or Walmart originates from Alibaba or bulk orders from said factory, the only difference in the exploitation is if Bezos gets a cut on top.
Functionally, I think you’ll have a lot more luck pushing for and requiring supply chain transparency from the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, or directly using national economic and political pressure, than focusing on increasing the cost on the small market of people going direct to the source.
Admittedly though this is less true as it has become more widely known that Temu and the like have the same product selection as Amazon, and indeed that seems to be the actual reason this legislation has been proposed.
Nevertheless I can’t see the US government taking slightly more of a cut having much of an effect when most of the products which heavily involve Uyghur labor are meant for internal use or export to the third world. You would need to propose serious practical consequences for the leadership of the CCP and follow though on those consequences to force external end to a political project that’s popular domestically like this, or at least a very closely and precisely targeted BDS campaign, and not just continuing business as usual but with higher taxes.
My thing is that there’s a minimum price for fairness, and then there’s products that present themselves as being marked up for fairness that don’t actually benefit the people a fair price should benefit. Your best bet is to do some research into what the minimum fair price something is, and then look for something that price from a local economy.
Unfortunately, this is next to impossible. The systems in place favor us never knowing where anything comes from, and the research tools we used to be able to use to find fair prices (internet search) have been broken for this purpose for nearly 10 years (not just AI bullshit, but all those SEO pay to play bullshit listicles that even infect real human driven testing processes like The Wirecutter and Gear Lab). I think there’s even an argument to be made that AI is an intentional device to steer us into a digital dark age where finding real trustworthy information is nearly impossible.
Ya, I agree people should be getting a fair wage, I just don’t see how a tax on products sold more directly helps with that in this case. People will just shrug, say it’s still cheaper than the same model on Amazon, and buy it all the same. A company is always going to try and pay the lowest price they can while pocketing the rest, and the best you can typically do is help the workers bargain for more.
I mean things like BDS can work, but they have to be targeted very carefully and specifically to get a board of directors to take a specific action, and the wider the net you cast the more dilute it gets and the more likely companies will call it the cost of doing busines.
US condemnation of the system would probably also have a bit stronger effect if it wasn’t using the same system of minority prison labor farmed out to various companies and saying it’s perfectly ethical fine so long as the people you arrested on thin pretext for race get a few dollars an hour that they then spend right back at the prison.
Put another way, if the EU put the same import tax on products and companies that made things in Mississippi on us because of the general prevalence of undocumented black prison labor in the region, do you think that the we would suddenly change things?
Oh for sure. The solution isn’t to raise the price of unfairly priced products, its to introduce the concept of accountability to the world
Buddy if I buy Panther Marten lures off Ali Express or from Dicks they come from the same factory in the same packaging at the same quality, but one costs $1.12 and the other $7.99.
It’s being manufactured in China anyway, I’m just avoiding the beak wetting Dicks and Walmart do to pay their shareholders.
Plus it ain’t like the US actually has any qualms with slave labor, just look at all the industries that take advantage of prison labor in the States.
This is why we need supply chain transparency and this game is over, buddy, and among the weakest points in this context is China.
I mean the transparency available in the US still hasn’t resulted in an end the same system of minority prison labor here at home.
But what about…
I’m not the one who said making China’s suppply chains as transparent as the US’s would end the system of using minorities as prison labor in Xinjiang, just the one who pointed out that the implementation of said transparency here on the same problem has not lead to the end of said practice.
Also terrible for the environment