Less than a year ago, executives from FedEx and UPS were talking about how they were handling a flood of packages from China to American consumers. “Explosive” is how Carol Tomé, UPS’s chief executive, in July described the volume of shipments from e-commerce companies selling Chinese goods in the United States. And FedEx’s chief customer…
Liu Miao has sold clothing on Amazon to wholesale buyers in the United States for the past five years. That trade has come to an abrupt stop. Mr. Liu owns a small factory in Guangzhou, long the center of China’s highly competitive garment industry. He and other factory managers, already dealing with tight profit margins,…
The expansion of the loophole for tariff-free shipments of goods nearly a decade ago gave rise to Temu, Shein and other low-cost online retailers offering items straight from Chinese factories at unfathomable discounts. It also unleashed something else — a cascade of billions of dollars of digital advertising that provided a windfall for Meta, Alphabet…
When Congress raised the threshold for imported goods to enter the United States tax-free to $800 from $200 nearly a decade ago, it threw open the door to the American consumer market. Chinese companies rushed in. First on platforms like eBay and Amazon, and then on apps like Shein and Temu, exporters funneled the products…
President Trump’s 100th day in office started with what seemed to be a fresh and fast-escalating spat between the White House and Amazon. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, came out swinging in her press briefing on Tuesday morning, accusing Amazon of being “hostile and political” after a report — disputed by the company…
A loophole that has allowed American shoppers to buy lots of cheap goods from mainland China and Hong Kong without paying tariffs and filling customs forms is closing on Friday. Prices have already gone up. Orders for many imported goods from retailers like Shein and Temu could dwindle as consumers balk at the higher prices…
Fast-fashion giants like Shein and Temu have been doing booming business in the United States in recent years, in part because of a tariff exemption that’s helped to keep prices low on packages shipped from China. Now, President Trump has ordered the loophole closed as part of new tariffs, starting with packages from China and…
President Trump’s executive orders on Saturday imposing broad tariffs on the country’s three largest trading partners also scrapped a shipping workaround for low-cost products, a move that is poised to alter how many online purchases are taxed. The provision, known as the de minimis exception, has been used by many e-commerce companies to send goods…