The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending (theatlantic.com)
- Reference: 0178967884
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/01/1818247/the-age-of-cheap-online-shopping-is-ending
- Source link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/08/online-shopping-de-minimis-tariffs/684051/
China lost access earlier this year; the exemption now terminates for all countries. Platforms including Shein, Temu, and marketplace sellers on Amazon, Etsy, and eBay built business models around direct shipping from manufacturing hubs in Asia and elsewhere. Import duties will apply to all international packages regardless of value, with tariffs reaching 50% for some countries. The policy shift affects everything from $30 specialty faucet parts shipped from Britain to handmade crafts from India, fundamentally altering the economics of cross-border e-commerce that emerged over the past decade.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/08/online-shopping-de-minimis-tariffs/684051/
It's ending... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but only for Americans.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
EU is going in the exact same direction, for exact same reasons. Even methodology is mostly the same, such as cancelling de minimis loophole for imports (happened some time ago notably, before US), increasing import tariffs, changing postal payment rules, etc.
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> EU is going in the exact same direction, for exact same reasons. Even methodology is mostly the same, such as cancelling de minimis loophole for imports (happened some time ago notably, before US), increasing import tariffs, changing postal payment rules, etc.
Most of those have always been in place for decades. The de minimis for most places is usually some trivial amount like $20 or so. This has been true for ages and the customs of the country expects it.
The US was unique in that they don't have many of t
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You appear to be arguing against specifics of implementation, rather than the principle. I expressed no opinion on that.
Re:It's ending... (Score:5, Insightful)
VAT is like a sales tax, not a tariff. It applies to locally produced goods as well as foreign ones. Maybe this is your definition of worse, but is at least fair in the sense of it applies to everyone.
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A tariff is a tax. It's paid by consumers.
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I didn't say it wasn't. I was responding to the parent post that said that VAT was like a tariff. Aside from the fact that it is a tax on goods, it is very different. VAT taxes all goods (I'm sure there are always some exceptions), tariffs just tax foreign ones. This is a major difference.
Re:It's ending... (Score:5, Informative)
> A tariff is a tax. It's paid by consumers.
A tariff is a tax, but not all taxes are tariffs. A VAT is not a tariff, because it is not specific to imported goods.
Tariffs are generally understood by economists to be worse than sales taxes, because they distort the market in consumer-harmful ways, such as reducing competition and reducing the benefits of economies of scale.
Consider two companies that each build silicon chips. One has a manufacturing line that produces CPUs and a line that produces RAM chips. The CPU line is in one country, the RAM line is in another country. Both lines operate at 100% capacity and produce the number of components needed for both countries.
The second company has a similar setup, but because of high tariffs, determines that they need to build RAM and CPUs in both countries. Now you have redundant manufacturing capacity, and that capacity is being used at half capacity. The fixed costs of manufacturing are now double. It is still less than the tariffs would cost, but it does substantially increase the price of goods.
In both of these scenarios, the same amount of manufacturing work is being done in both countries. No country is "winning" with these tariffs. But because there's redundant capacity that is not being used efficiently, the costs for consumers are significantly higher.
This is what tariffs do. Tariffs are madness. They are using a nuclear weapon when what you need is a sniper rifle.
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There's also another mechanism where tariffs hurt the consumer. When you applly a tariff to protect local production you should take care of balancing it so that the cost of the imported item plus tariff is only slightly higher than that of the homegrown variety, assuming they have the same approximate value. If you overtariff your imports the local producers no longer need to keep their prices low to compete, especially if local production is small or there are only few manufacturers that don't need to com
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Not quite.
A tariff is an import tax, paid by the importer.
The importer passes on the higher costs to wholesalers/retailers
They then pass on the higher cost.
And each time it gets passed, there is an admin cost, + % profit, so it goes up more than you think.
BUT the what happens in the end is that sales taxes are applied to the higher price, so consumers get hit twice.
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The EU allows VAT up to 25%, no more.
So that's what you pay in places like Denmark, in other countries it might be something like 6 or 19%.
It's a sales tax on end users.
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There is no max that I'm aware of, but Denmark and a number of other countries have 25% yes, and most are 20-25%. Hungary has the largest at 27%. Countries decide the rates themselves.
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> ...but only for Americans.
What, no more cheap, disposable, and unreliable crap?! Stop the presses!
If only... (Score:1, Interesting)
there was a place where they historically made this stuff that they could turn around and manufacture this stuff again. Now let's open the flood gates of people who think we can bomb adversaries with the solar panels our industrial sector now makes.
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I think tariffs are doomed to be ineffective based on my understanding of economic history. Assuming that your understanding of economic history is better, and that tariffs can lead to a competitive domestic industry: Doesn't it bother you to see your preferred economic policy applied in a haphazard and nonstrategic manner that ensures the results will be absolute shit?
Like, if I thought that Ukraine could win against Russia by dropping solar panels, I would be pissed if they were just smuggling them into R
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Since you talked about economic understanding, please tell us, what are the difference between today and the 1930's that will make the current attempt with tariffs not merely do better than that one did, but in fact have the diametrically opposite result?
Re:If only... (Score:4, Funny)
You see Trump supports a thing so the reality distortion field must go into effect. You heard form the admin itself "We need to listen to experts less" so folks like Rothbard, Friedman, Adam Smith etc, you don't have to consider their ideas valid.
Re:If only... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're expecting this to lead to a surge of American manufacturing, don't. That would require long term investment, which requires being able to make long term plans. You can't do that when the rules change from one week to the next based on Trump's latest whim.
So your international competitors have to pay a 50% tariff, giving you a big advantage. Time to start building a factory, right? Oops, he just dropped the tariff on that country to 10%. There goes your big advantage. Now he's raising the tariff on the country you get your raw materials from, making your whole business no longer viable. Now other countries are creating retaliatory tariffs on American goods, destroying your international business. Are you really sure you should be building that factory right now?
When faced with uncertainty like this, businesses go into survival mode. They cut investment and try to conserve cash to get through whatever comes.
A healthy economy requires stability and certainty. Businesses need to know what the rules are so they can make long term plans based on them.
Let's pretend it does (Score:2)
Even if manufacturing in America shoots up you're not going to see any jobs come from it because new factories are built fully automated.
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> Even if manufacturing in America shoots up you're not going to see any jobs come from it because new factories are built fully automated.
And it may take longer to stand up (some) factories than Trump has left in office.
Regardless of who's next, many/most tariffs probably won't survive -- if any do, now that most of them have been declared illegal by a district and full appellate court -- and assuming SCOTUS doesn't just make things up to support Trump (as tariffs aren't even mentioned in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) Trump used to impose them) ... Trump *could* get Congress to impose these, as the Constitution g
No (Score:1)
US manufacturing relies on parts from overseas, e.g. motors or electronic components made in China. Even if there's an advantage to making some things here (or not much of a disadvantage) you won't move the entire manufacturing chain back to the USA. So having tariffs means that your US-based factory would be paying duties on all the components imported, which might be a wash if the US was only selling to a domestic market. But in today's day and age you need to sell to the whole world. So China (or Vietnam
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Who gets to decide what is junk and what isn't?
If this was the goal why are the tariffs across the board on every good to nearly every nation and not targeted to specific sectors and bad actors?
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So why do we have different rates at all? At that point it's just shuffling the rules of the game.
The point of the tariffs under Trump and Biden was specifically to get companies to move to more friendly, free trade US aligned nations. Vietnam is one of those so why tariff them at all? Pretty clear we can just circle the drain on this forever.
And to be clear Vietnam nor any nation has any actual trade deal, this is all stiff executive whims stuff. 90 deals in 90 deals is still batting 0.000%, nothing but
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Because that's how international trade works. PRC has a massive production suprlus, and its economy is solely underpinned on maintaining it. That means it needs to have access to massive import markets.
The only markets big enough to absorb this surplus are US and Europe. Sellers in PRC openly complain that their domestic sales and sales to poor countries are either net zero or non-profitable due to extreme domestic overproduction. So they recoup their costs by selling to wealthy countries.
And that means acc
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That can all be true but none of that makes the tariffs make sense. Is the primary goal of Trumps global tariff scheme focused on China? None of the tariffs cut any other markets off from China and as we've seen their exports to those markets increase.
This is incoherent.
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You have yet to demonstrate the negative effects of China's position, what our long term goal on China is and how the tariffs are going to accomplish that goal. You're speaking to me as if we agree your scenario is such one that can be solved by tariffs. China was happy to make cheap shit for us while we went and made trillion dollar tech enterprises.
> What tariffs are designed to do is to at least partially mitigate damage to outside markets that this PRC policy has causing
Ok so what's places like Canada, Mexico, EU, Japan, Vietnam got to do with that? Why make ourselves hostile to trade with literally everyone else? By all acco
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> You have yet to demonstrate the negative effects of China's position
At this point, negative effects of PRC's dumping policies are so well documented that you would know about them even if you were living under a rock. I suspected bad faith already, but this confirms it.
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Oh I know it but considering your blatant selective quote farming I have no reason to consider you good faith so as one bad faith-er to another doesn't hurt to check you actually understand the idea beyond "dumping bad"
And it's still incoherent to say global, indiscriminate tariffs are an appropriate response to dumping is incoherent and justifying that with "well supply chains move around" is weak sauce and tells me you're just spouting media talking points.
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Incoherent I believe is Trump negotiating USMC trade agreement and then reneging on it and calling the person who did it stupid. I suspect most world leaders are just tolerating the US at the moment and negotiating deals with each other to completely cut the US out. After they've figured out a workable scenario, pull the plug on the US.
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah let's start buying all that coffee and tea domestically...
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> Yeah let's start buying all that coffee and tea domestically...
Don't forget [1]bananas [yahoo.com] could easily be grown in the U.S.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cannot-build-bananas-america-house-173005069.html
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And scotch. And mezcal. And ...
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Trump still needs his merch....all of that comes from China.
Dementia patient fucks up mail (Score:5, Informative)
Don't know why this isn't on the front page of news sites but a good chunk of the world has suspended parcel shipments to the USA. [1]https://www.newsweek.com/map-s... [newsweek.com]
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-countries-suspending-postal-service-united-states-2119247
Repeal the 16th Amendment! (Score:1)
Originally in the Constitution, the federal government did not have the power to create an income tax. Revenue depended largely on tariffs and excise taxes. During the Progressive Era (which you can thank for things like the weekend and the direct election of US Senators), an income tax was seen as a way to tax the rich and fund the government while decreasing inequality. They're rolling in their graves over the way it's implemented: The wealthier pay a lower effective tax on average than the middle cla
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The point of the 16th amendment was simply to create another mechanism for stealing the wealth of the people.
As for the 17th amendment, repeal that motherfucker, along with the 16th amendment.
Re: Repeal the 16th Amendment! (Score:2)
The 17th is well intentioned but it needed a two term (12 years) limit. In practice the way it worked out is incumbent Senators almost always win and stay in office until well after senility has kicked in. Repealing it would just give the governors and state legislatures power to appoint whoever their party likes.
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Talk about senility. Lifetime judge appointments. The latest appeals court ruling is one example, "The twelfth judge on the court, Pauline Newman, did not participate in the case, as she has been suspended from her duties since 2023. Newman, 98, is in a long-running dispute with the court over a request that she undergo a cognitive evaluation in order to continue hearing cases." from [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/2... [cnbc.com]
At least they managed to suspend her. How do you get rid of a belligerent supreme?
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/trump-trade-tariffs-appeals-court-ieepa.html
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LOL. I just read wikipedia on the 17th...
> There was a sense that senatorial elections were "bought and sold", changing hands for favors and sums of money rather than because of the competence of the candidate
Hmm... plus ça change...
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> The point of the 16th amendment was simply to create another mechanism for stealing the wealth of the people.
Specifically the wealth of rich people. Relatively speaking, it's ethically worse to steal from a poor person, that's why stealing another man's horse was often a capital offense.
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> .. and the Constitution amended to require it.
The Constitution has been for some time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a read-only document. The US has become too politically polarized to meet the requirements of a Constitutional Amendment.
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> The Constitution has been for some time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a read-only document. The US has become too politically polarized to meet the requirements of a Constitutional Amendment.
Honestly, right now, I'm fine with that. I dislike current Republicans far more than I dislike current Democrats, but I wouldn't trust either side to not do really wonky things at this point in time.
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You missed the wealthy have been and will be avoiding tariffs by buying outside the US. You don't really expect a bezos sized boat to have to pay a tariff.
Not so simple... (Score:2)
Keep in mind that my Ali Express packages came by the US Post Office. They have no capability to collect tariffs, so will no longer be doing international shipments.
See:
[1]https://www.varusteleka.com/en... [varusteleka.com]
Also, keep in mind that it isn't just the tariffs. The cost and contents of the package have to be declared. Someone has to do that paperwork. It won't be just the 15% tariff that you have to pay. There are other costs.
[1] https://www.varusteleka.com/en/articles/ordering-to-the-us-what-you-should-know/729
stop calling it a loophole (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop calling things loopholes that aren't loopholes. The de minimis exception is explicit law, designed with the express purpose of protecting small retailers. Getting rid of de minimis only helps Amazon and Walmart and the Billionaire class, while hurting small retailers and the working class.
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Modern definition of "loophole": when something works in a way that I don't like.
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> Modern definition of "loophole": when something works in a way that I don't like.
I thought that was "weaponize"
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Amazon has flooded DC with lobbyists trying to get De Minimus repealed. Analysts estimate ending De Minimus will increase Amazon sales by $22-25B. It is also generates instant profit for Amazon since Amazon charges a blanket 15% finder fee. It the a vendors pays $100 in tariffs Amazon adds their 15% right on top of that taking an addition $15 for doing absolutely nothing. Analyst estimate for that markup effect is an increase in $1.5B/yr in Amazon profits.
In the larger picture most economist are predicting
When "de minimis" isn't. (Score:2)
> packages valued under $800 ... The de minimis threshold, raised from $200 in 2016 ...
I don't know about getting rid of this completely, as it seems silly to tariff the types of things for which this was intended, but Google says "de minimis" means "of minimal things" and a $200 value limit seems closer to more appropriate than $800.
Arguing against this exception... what's to keep sellers from splitting up expensive things into multiple packages valued at under the limit? Guessing there's some sort of language prohibiting that in the statute, but how would that be detected/enforced?
Re:When "de minimis" isn't. (Score:4, Informative)
We had this exact problem in EU, and our de minimis was way lower than that in US.
We ended up eliminating it before you did. For exact same reason. What happened is that PRC sellers now ship wholesale to ports they already own (Piraus is big for this), fake low value on the whole container (and since receiving port is Chinese-owned, locals don't look too closely at what's in the actual container in terms of value) and then ship to large scale storage across EU. Then sales are officially made "from EU", so they're de facto exempt on tariffs even without de minimis.
There's now a crackdown on this. Port of Piraeus is in fact singled out by authorities for this last I checked, and there's now additional scrutiny on containers coming from PRC there to prevent this specific circumvention technique.
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Fast forward 10 years and _de minimis_ will be reinstated, as the gov't discovers that it costs $25 to collect a $0.75 import duty on a $25 purchase from overseas.
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It was raised to 200 in 1993, so I don't think a crazy increase for a 20+ year time period. I think AUS is around 650 exemption.
Not a loophole (Score:4, Informative)
This was intentionally put in the regulations to avoid the excessive paperwork and delay for small purchases. It was originally $200 then raised to $800.
Trump has to raise revenue to pay for his tax cuts for the rich so he came up with this solution which raises taxes on average folks (about $2400/year by some estimates).
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> This was intentionally put in the regulations to avoid the excessive paperwork and delay for small purchases. It was originally $200 then raised to $800. Trump has to raise revenue to pay for his tax cuts for the rich so he came up with this solution which raises taxes on average folks (about $2400/year by some estimates).
Yea, I've given up trying to explain tariffs are a hidden tax to some of my MAGA friends, they're convinced the exporting countries pay it and it is free money to the US. They also think this will stop the flow of drugs into the US because now they can't mail them to end users; and that their are Americans lining up for jobs now done by immigrants, except of course them and their kids. The sad part is they are not dumb, just fully bought into what Trump sold.
Re:Not a loophole (Score:4, Insightful)
They are dumb.
It already ended (Score:2)
As far as I am concerned, it already ended. The end came when Amazon started charging sales tax.
The "old" economy (Score:2)
Can anyone from the MAGA camp explain what exactly was wrong with the economy from one year ago?
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If you listened to the MAGA echosphere, they think it was the worst economy in history, based on no facts or statistics, just made up out of thin air.
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And now with loyalists in places like the BLS, the "facts" will back that up.
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Negative balance of trade.
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So almost exactly the same Trump wants the FED doing?
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That 'reckless monetary expansion' was used to expand Chinese industry and military. Only traitorous SJW/wokers or sociopath business globalists would think that's a good idea. These heinous groups infest both political parties ; patriotic American citizens should "discipline" these defectors from republican ideals and enlightenment culture.
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Hihihi, "honest money like Bitcoin".
Man you are funny.
Or deranged.
The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending???? (Score:2)
"The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending for citizens of the USA. The rest of the world is doing just fine, thanks!" FTFY.
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Indeed. In fact it's about to get even better for the rest of the world. The production capacity in Asia isn't going away any time soon. Suppliers can try to slash their prices by a third to compensate for the tariffs going into the USA or they can cut them by 10%-15% and sell a load more to Europe, the Middle East and Australasia. The later outcome seems a lot more likely. Thanks!
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Just putting this out there, but Peter Zeihan predicts that cheap global shipping itself will falter because the US will quit the job of guaranteeing its safety. Of course, future predictions usually don't come true. But in the few years since he wrote "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning" about the end of the US-lead world order (and thus globalization), it seems like we are speed running the path he described.
And the end of the end of an Age ends in 3.5 years (Score:2)
Probably less.
The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending (Score:1)
Excellent! Let's start bringing more local brick and mortar stores back. I stopped 99% of my on-line shopping many years ago when everything became a chinesium junk flea market infested with fake and/or garbage quality products.
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Instead, you will get even LESS brick and mortar as people stop buying altogether. If they can't afford it with tariffs, they absolutely can't afford it local either. Especially once more businesses close, being unable to sell stuff. Brick and Mortar aren't coming back, mall are dying for a reason. You want brick and mortar back? First, slash all American wages by 50%. Then, demands all commercial property gets slashed 50% in value. And then, on top of that, let cities know their workers will also have the
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Where do you think all the cheap shit on QVC comes from?
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It's amazing people still use QVC and other shopping channels. I mean, what the hell for??
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Parasocial relationships.
Loneliness can really screw with your brain. Especially if you're not a nerd or an introvert.
Homeware (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether it's plates or cups or some new drapes or even just something you need to fix something around the house they're going to buy lots of stuff because all of us do.
But honestly I just said that to get your attention.
Read what I wrote. Again. Slowly this time.
Everything is going up in october. Food, medicine, gasoline, everything.
Those old people could probably sustain the hit from the specific costs involved in this article if that was the only thing going on.
As usual the right wing
Re: Homeware (Score:2)
> The USA is a total food export country we do not import any bulk food stuffs
Really? Orange, orange juice, bananas, beef⦠the list goes on. The country I was born in exports all of these to the USA.
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Beef in particular looks rough for this year. Already >5/lb for ground beef. Cattle herds were already smaller due to drought. Ranchers had been cutting to avoid having to pay to feed the herd since grazing was limited from drought. I forget where Brazil fits into the tariff rate swiss cheese numbers, but from what I understand they are already diverting their cattle to other countries. Beef is going to get pricier. The refrain from wendys will come back, Where's the beef?
Re: Homeware (Score:3)
Don't forget coffee.
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What the fuck do you think is used to grow those American food items? Tariffed items, that’s what. From fuel pumps to irrigation lines to medicines to packing trays to tractor parts, and on and on, everything is either imported or has components that are imported. You are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Re: (Score:3)
but how many dolls does an 11-year-old baby girl need?
At least two (Score:2)
One to play with and one to distract Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein with so they can escape the Lolita Express.