Shein Gets Hit with a One-Two Punch from Trump and the EU
With his executive order, Trump nixed the de minimis tax rule that had let the companies ship their unsettlingly cheap products for so long.

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Look elsewhere for those ultracheap charging cables that start fraying 14 seconds into your first use. And don’t forget to stock up on those bargain T-shirts sporting occasionally misaligned prints and made from who knows what.
President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs on China came with a detail that means extra pain for China-founded fast-fashion giants Shein and Temu. With his executive order, Trump nixed the de minimis rule that had let the companies ship their unsettlingly cheap products for so long. On top of that, Bloomberg reported Monday that the EU is opening a formal probe into whether Shein has broken consumer law.
Working All Angles
Shein and Temu rode to prominence on the back of de minimis, which in the US, exempts direct shipments of items worth less than $800 from import duties. That enabled Shein’s and Temu’s business models of direct-shipping to consumers, an unbelievably individualistic approach to mass logistics and one that significantly disrupted the air freight business with the sheer volume of packages.
The writing has been on the wall for de minimis for a while now: President Biden said he planned to close the loophole in September last year, and that policy dovetailed with Trump’s hawkishness on Chinese imports. Both Shein and Temu have already started to establish more traditional logistics networks, but Europe taking a closer look at what exactly the e-commerce kings are selling could be another existential problem:
- The Financial Times reported on Saturday that the EU is planning to make e-commerce companies including Shein, Temu, and Amazon liable for dangerous or illegal products sold on their platforms. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) identified Amazon as a distributor last year, holding the company responsible for products that fail to meet federal consumer safety standards.
- The EU’s planned change to e-commerce liability is motivated partly by China hawkishness, and has been spurred by the surge in parcels imported under de minimis exemptions. Per the FT, Europe saw its volume of low-value imports quadruple from 2022 to 2024, and 90% of those imports came from China.
Silver Lining: Shein may be getting pummeled by the US and the EU, but this week did bring a smidgen of good news. The company relaunched in India after a five-year ban, having reached a licensing deal with local merchant Reliance Retail. Shein’s re-entry onto the subcontinent comes with lots of other conditions, including keeping Indian users’ data on Indian soil. As a reminder, five years ago, India also banned TikTok, as well as a host of other popular Chinese apps, so even the most stringent of China hawks can be won over.