The last six months for my fellow Temu victims have been a roller coaster of emotions. Denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance … I’ve been through it all since April when President Trump announced big plans to close a shipping loophole.
But now, I bring good news on my ongoing journey of buying cheap plastic garbage for low, low prices: I was able to get a new Temu order in — with no big extra fees. The sweet, sweet smell of bargains and microplastics was once again filling my nostrils, and my heart is full.
To explain how we got here, I have to back up a little, back to this spring when Trump imposed big tariffs on goods imported from China, along with the end of the de minimis exemption. De minimis was the law that allowed packages valued under $800 to ship directly from overseas to customers in the US without any duty tax — and it was the backbone of Chinese e-commerce platforms like Temu and Shein.
By avoiding the tariffs the sellers would have to pay if they shipped giant pallets of product to US warehouses (like Amazon’s model), they were able to sell at rock-bottom prices.
But there was a bunch of confusion and flip-flopping about when the exemption would end, and what would happen to Temu and Shein — especially as the US continued to negotiate a trade deal with China.
Katie Notopoulos’s Temu Tales:
In May, the new rules went into effect. I was able to sneak in a last order under the wire
To work around this, Temu and Shein both did something smart: They changed their app so that US customers would only see products that shipped from local US warehouses (over the last year or more, both platforms had been building up local supplies for faster shipping). This meant that those products wouldn’t be subject to unpleasant extra fees tacked on.
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Some online shoppers weren’t so lucky. Business Insider’s Emily Stewart spoke with people who got hit with a massive duty fee after their e-commerce (not from Temu but other international shippers) orders arrived. One woman she spoke to got a $600 duty bill from FedEx after receiving two dresses worth $400 total — one of which she planned on returning.
So in late August, I saw the news that Temu was resuming direct shipping from China, following a sort of truce between Beijing and Washington. Would I get hit with a big, nasty fee later on?
My latest Temu order
Only one way to find out. It just so happened I needed some toys for an upcoming kid’s birthday, so I placed an order for a small remote control car, a pair of those velcro paddles and a tennis ball, and a weird water balloon thing. Seemed great!
After a week or two, my package arrived. Was the stuff itself great? Well, the water balloon thing was a total bust — it seemed to function differently than advertised (it was impossible to fill it with water? It was just a weird ball; I threw it out). And the remote-control car broke after some rough play. The velcro catch set? Well, that’s a winner.
But I waited, riddled with anxiety over not just whether I was contributing to an overconsumption and environmental crisis — but if the postman would show up at my door with a big bill.
A month later, I can say I’m officially in the clear, marked SAFE from tariffs.
Well, sort of.
When the tariffs went into effect, prices definitely went up, too. A research report noted this summer that prices had gone up on average by around 30% on Shein, which was right about what you’d expect.
Hey, you can’t win ’em all (unless you’re willing to cut down on excessive and unnecessary consumption, which maybe we all should).
