It may have seemed that gathering at the U.S. negotiating table with China would have made American customs policy with rollercoaster control to a somewhat slower carousel. For the time being, the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Scott Bessent and Beijing-representing Deputy Finance Minister Liao Min are trying to get along.
However, talks, as the erstwhile said, are stuck at a dead end and will most likely require the presence of leaders of countries for whom the movement of goods has long become geopolitical. However, China's own scripts do not should be the worst if customs are not sanctioned. About this in our pages wrote Janis Warufakis.
For now, economists seem to agree that decisions taken in Washington are the most detrimental to the United States itself, to the popularity of their leaders and to the standard of surviving of society, dissatisfied with already felt or upcoming price increases.
Americans are not only increasingly afraid of spending and restrictions on consumer freedom, but besides – for what indicated Agata the Drive “They have a problem with awareness of changes”. It's hard to blame.
Trump's administration first abolished a policy allowing duty-free imports of Chinese goods worth little than $800 to the US. Then the president announced fresh import tariffs, whose amount changed successively from 25 to 30, 104, 145 and then again to 30 percent. Trump now threatens to return to the highest rates, despite the complaints of its residents and the hard consequence of Chinese, besides expanding customs duties on goods from America.
Trump, however, is arrogant of himself. For example, he claims that the increase in toy prices produced by an American company in cooperation with China is not a problem, due to the fact that American children can have "two dolls alternatively of 30". Is he a advocate for reducing consumption? Nothing like that. Trump is more afraid with maintaining the economical hegemony of the US and his fellow billionaires like Jeff Bezos.
Trade clashes make Chinese e-commerce tycoons. It's mostly about Amazon Temu and Shein trying to declass. Both companies valued at tens of billions of dollars (notabene Shein as a clothing retailer ultra fast fashion In this respect, it was overtaken by western networking stations, specified as H&M and those belonging to Inditex, that its business model was based on tempting wealthy economies with suspiciously low prices of goods purchased straight from Chinese producers.
Behind these, of course, are: the exploitation of inexpensive labour, the generation of a immense carbon footprint and mountains of raging polyester garbage (or simply textile briquette), the creation of the purchasing-holism-powered microtrends due to—it so happens that besides Chinese – Tick-Tok, and besides the violation of consumer rights.
To customers in Europe and America, by the power of a two-dollar package from China, it didn't truly bother you. The strategy that allowed this – neither did it. It was only Trump's imposition of duties that made Shein and Temu begin to do their best to snort as much as possible, selling more than it could handle logistics and postal infrastructure. The packages are behind, they don't arrive in time or at all, the chance for easy earnings is trying to sniff out dishonest sellers, the employees of companies are expected to sleep in warehouses due to the fact that they have so much work to do. Superlow prices must yet be raised and free shipping abolished.
Further reports of economical media indicate that the profits of both platforms fly around the neck. The maker of shit-modes is delaying the publication of financial reports, but from Bloomberg you can find outthat on the basis of credit and debit card data in the US, there is simply a 23 percent drop in sales in Shein just after the company decided to rise its prices in consequence to US fresh duties.
In turn, net turnover of PDD Holdings, which belongs to Temu, decreased by 47% in the first 4th of 2025. Experts, cited among others by Reuters, as guilty of this situation, the U.S. customs are indicating that the clay legs of the Chinese kolos are being dropped.
Olives to the fire that can digest purchasing platforms are being added to Europe, specifically supervised by the European Commission's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, which accuses Shein and Temu of violating EU law.
There are six manipulative marketing practices that mislead customers. These are false rebates, pressures on consumers, deficiency of information or disinformation on the rights of customers, e.g. return of goods, misleading product labels, greenwashing and concealing data, preventing contact in case of questions or complaints.
The EC called for platforms to halt these practices and threatens with financial penalties for breaking the law. For Temu and Shein, whose full logic of existence lies in manipulating and circumventing regulations, the payment of penalties may be insurmountable if Trump does not at the same time give up. So possibly we're witnessing the collapse of the giants that we could think yesterday that nothing would halt them, due to the fact that further investigations revealing the scale of anti-humane abuse seemed to go unnoticed.
I'd like to say thank you, Mr. Trump. But it's known that turbocapitalism hates vacuum, so there's no way to imagine that Chinese-made consumer habits won't satisfy anyone.
