Good. Deminimis is what allows low effort arbitrage of sales straight from foreign countries to the detriment of any local business engaged in anything beyond drop shipping with maybe a few extra steps. We really don't need subsidized trinkets going from ali express to landfills faster than greased lightning.

Sure, tell me more how it is awesome that I can't order $100 of dollars of small bulk electronic components for my hobby work direct from Huaqiangbei and get them here in a week. There is no US manufacturer replacement. Instead I have to turn to an import/export middleman also sourcing from Huaqiangbei but at 4x cost. In the eloquent words of our dear leader: SAD!

It's not clear that adding bureaucracy to help local businesses at the expense of the consumer is a net win

This is just a subsidy for American warehouses like amazon, who just act as middle men, making cheap crap slightly less cheap crap.

What happens to a profitable local business when the its cost of a cheap foreign raw material goes up? Sourcing locally might not be the answer, especially if the cost of a local acquisition goes up to be just below china+tariff.

That's not the whole picture. Everything on eBay, Shopify, Etsy, that weird online shop that sells that weird thing you're into from London or Prague, whatever, all of it is now going to cost more money for everyone in America if it originates outside of the US.

Yes, the majority by volume is from China, and from large trash sites that rightly aren't sustainable...

... but the second order effects on small businesses and consumers who enjoy buying from them.

What's the moral valence differentiating a "local business" from a local drop-shipper? What really *is* a business selling imported goods—if not a drop-shipper with a storefront?

Bold to hold contempt for free-market capitalism, when it's made your society so staggeringly wealthy, your concern of the day is literally worrying about landfills filling up with surplus wealth. Find some perspective.

Yes! This administration, once again, adds more government control into the lives of every day Americans by restricting free trade. A win for the United Socialist States of America! I do hope it continues to take an equity stake in local companies too. We really are becoming Great!

I want to weigh in here because I see comments focusing on how these products are useless trash. I think that's missing the point.

This wealthy engineer mindset is too literal. The AI-generated photos and fake reviews aren't bugs. They're features. They let the poor American with $100 of disposable income pretend they found a way to get an Apple Watch for $11. Just for a few days, they get to believe it might be real. When it arrives and it's crap, they knew it would be. But they got to play the fantasy.

TEMU's tagline is "Shop like a billionaire." I want you to really think about that. Marketers test hundreds of combinations to find what resonates. TEMU probably has thousands of marketers. They've tested millions of possible hooks. Millions. And this is what won.

"Shop like a billionaire" is the message that brought new people in the door above all others. Now what about churn? That's not the tagline's job. Don't let your knowledge of what exactly TEMU does and how it functions conceal from you this signal of what many (not all!!) people want.

However I believe they're not scamming people. They're delivering exactly what they're selling, which is the experience of feeling like you could have nice things.

Twenty years ago you could go to a matinee movie for a dollar. Two hours of escapism for a dollar. That product doesn't exist anymore. Theaters decided to serve a different customer base. They went upmarket. But people still want cheap escapism. Now it's $1-3 on TEMU to get that same escape. You browse, you dream, you wait for the package. It's entertainment.

TEMU is making things people want.