Most important part of these tariffs:
“The trade rule allows packages to be shipped from foreign countries directly to consumers or businesses without paying tariffs, as long as the shipments do not exceed $800 per recipient per day. The new proposal would strip that exemption from a wide array of products and most likely have a significant impact on large importers of Chinese goods such as Shein and Temu, two online marketplaces that have become popular with American shoppers.”
This trade rule being taken advantage of by Aliexpress, Temu, and Shein is the sole reason why significant amounts of Americans could still afford to buy a lot of consumer goods despite having their real wages crash year after year. This would genuinely trigger another cost of living crisis
Haha so that’s why there’s so much anti-Temu/Shein propaganda in the US. It seems to have worked too.
There’s videos on how evil Temu and Shein are with working conditions that I’ve seen on Yotube but never watched. I think it’s also a thing on TikTok. Every comment section is filled with people shaming any influence that promoters one of the two as a sponsor.
Americans also say “Temu-___” of something to imply low quality, bootleg products in their slang.
I’ve seen some of those sorts of videos. The work was…regular factory work. Not exactly sweatshop conditions, just workers putting clothes on coathangers for an entire shift. Dull and mindnumbing, but most of them seemed to have headphones in or were watching videos on their phone.
I think a lot of this stuff is due to westerners being so used to their “service economy” ideas, they can’t even imagine what actual work looks like.
If you can stomach it the SNL Shein skit
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Shein makes absolute shite, it’s completely run of the mill fast fashion. Cheap, synthetic, and above all else, completely tasteless.
People with consumption addictions buy Shein garbage to use for one night out, and repeat that week after week. I would not believe such behaviour existed had I not witnessed myself.
Fuck knows where and how they do their labour but I would assume it’s poverty wages in tough conditions somewhere in the process.
Have you actually bought Shein clothes? They’re much better quality than H&M and oftentimes every other “cheap” chain where a T-shirt is 20+ dollars and a hoodie is 50+
Their production is the same as Western companies or even better (since a lot of textile moved out from China to south Asia and SEA) except they sell direct to westerners so they cut out all the middlemen markups
I would never buy Shein but I’ve felt the fabrics and it feels like ASOS. H + M is shite too. It’s all shite. Not to mention the air miles and water usage. With the amount of clothes in the world there is practically no reason to not buy secondhand clothes most of the time.
