In the meantime Chinese companies built warehouses in Europe, which are importing the cheap goods en grosse.
They probably weren’t, at least for the things being described here, as the article is talking about de minimis.
The de minimis exception basically let low-value packages through without paying import tariffs.
There’s some reason to do that — it’d be more expensive to process the (many) low-value packages.
However, this also meant that if someone imported something in small, low-value amounts, they didn’t have to pay import tariffs, whereas people doing bulk imports did.
This was a major reason for use of the explosion of Chinese online retailers in the West, like Temu. They’d sell something that was shipped directly from China, which meant that they didn’t need to pay import tariffs on it. Traditional importers would import a large batch and would need to pay import tariffs, and then distribute the large batch from within the country in question, which penalized traditional retail.
They probably weren’t, at least for the things being described here, as the article is talking about de minimis.
The de minimis exception basically let low-value packages through without paying import tariffs.
There’s some reason to do that — it’d be more expensive to process the (many) low-value packages.
However, this also meant that if someone imported something in small, low-value amounts, they didn’t have to pay import tariffs, whereas people doing bulk imports did.
This was a major reason for use of the explosion of Chinese online retailers in the West, like Temu. They’d sell something that was shipped directly from China, which meant that they didn’t need to pay import tariffs on it. Traditional importers would import a large batch and would need to pay import tariffs, and then distribute the large batch from within the country in question, which penalized traditional retail.
ooo, i like you. de minimis is my favorite legal term