TL;DR I didn’t make it in time. Fuck you Trump!
Edit: For those asking, this was https://www.irvwpc.com/ Please support them if you can.
TL;DR I didn’t make it in time. Fuck you Trump!
Edit: For those asking, this was https://www.irvwpc.com/ Please support them if you can.
“Additionally, the $800 exemption for low-value goods has been removed.”
I didn’t even know such a thing existed, it’s not something reported on the news.
So every product will be hit with the tariff raising prices, and not just expensive products getting the tariffs. Yikes!
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This is what allowed Temu and Alibaba and Wish and the like to happen (their business model was to send every single product as a single package worth under 800$, leading to enormous shipping times and waste etc., but they don’t have to pay import taxes).
This definitely improved over time. I don’t order much from Aliexpress, but the last two items I ordered arrived in just over a week - a similar time frame as ordering from a US store that doesn’t do fast shipping. A few days in China, then on a plane, then a few days in the USA.
I’ve seen a similar thing happen overtime for Aliexpress shipping to Europe - it used to take 2 months to were I am (Portugal), now it takes a bit over a week.
I think they set-up some kind of consolidated shipping operation so that the sellers on their site can ship things via Aliexpress’ own system, which is way faster (and invariably involves air-shipping via The Netherlands) and often is listed as Free Shipping.
I’ve bought once or twice from sellers there that don’t use it and those packages still take 2 months to get here.
I mention this because it makes sense that Aliexpress has set up a similar system for the US given that it’s a market which is almost as big as the EU.
They also have warehouses in the EU which means that as a customer you don’t have to deal with duties and import VAT at all.
damn!
And it’s not even this government’s first big unambiguous fuck you to the common people.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/05/g-s1-46670/de-minimis-trade-china-temu-shein-trump
Why does this article describe it as a “loophole”? It’s not a loophole; it was intentionally written into law.