What Trump’s Order Means for Temu and Shein

If you’re planning on buying your significant other a Valentine’s Day gift on Temu, Shein or Amazon’s low-cost rival to those services, Haul, make sure you have a backup plan so you don’t wind up in the doghouse. A (perhaps unintended) consequence of a Trump administration executive order issued over the weekend means packages from the e-commerce sites for cheap goods will almost certainly start piling up at American airports. 

Starting tonight at midnight, the Trump administration is effectively closing a loophole that has allowed Temu and the like to import individual packages worth less than $800 without paying import duties or tariffs. The new executive order bars companies from using the loophole—known in the industry as “de minimis”—for importing Chinese goods to the U.S. This will force Temu, Shein and Amazon Haul to pay tariffs on broad swaths of Chinese items including apparel and electronics already in place—tariffs companies had been avoiding, as my colleagues and I have reported—as well as Trump’s new 10% tariff on China-made products.