[…]
The Chinese platforms are taking advantage of a little-known trade rule called de minimis, which allows products worth less than $800 (€764) in the United States or €150 ($157) in the EU to be shipped duty-free with minimal customs checks.
“All these products arrive from China as individual parcels, so it’s impossible for customs authorities to open and check them all,” Agustin Reyna, director general of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), told DW.
The rise of Temu and Shein has Western regulators concerned on many fronts. First, the Chinese platforms are exploiting a loophole that was not designed for large-scale e-commerce. De minimis was created so as not to burden customs agencies with the handling of small gifts and personal items sent across borders.
Second, many of the products for sale on Chinese platforms don’t meet safety or environmental standards. Toy Industries of Europe (TIE), a Brussels-based industry body, tested 19 toys bought from Temu at the end of 2023 and found that none were fully compliant with EU safety rules on toys. All but one was found to pose a real risk to children.
[…]
Brussels also wants to make the likes of Temu and Shein — rather than individual sellers — liable for the sale of dangerous products on their platforms and has suggested that checks could be made before products are shipped from China to ensure compliance.
Christoph Busch says this is necessary because “from a contract law perspective, Temu is currently not the seller, it’s just an intermediary.”
“The seller sits somewhere in China, and the buyer is a consumer in the US or EU,” the director of the European Legal Studies Institute at Germany’s University of Osnabrück, told DW.
Busch also said the Commission wants the platform operator to become the importer, so they would be obliged to pay the customs duty, which would also cut much of the new red tape facing European customs authorities.
Instead of dealing with tens of thousands of individual Chinese sellers, he added, EU customs bodies would need to liaise with just a handful of e-commerce platforms that are frankly making billions from a loophole that should never have existed.
But the same shit is often sold on European (like Polish Allegro) and American (Amazon) platforms. Why is this a problem only when then Chinese do it? The problem is broader, but is often shown us ‘do not buy from Temu or Aliexpress – they are dangerous’ while ignoring the same practices on the Western platforms.
The Western resellers most probably buy in bulk, so ‘de minimis’ rule does not fully explain why the dangerous product are on the market here.
I am all for making the platforms responsible, but why not start here, where enforcing this should be much easier? Or maybe it is not about safety and other regulations, but more about taking down competition?
I think the problem is more with the concept that these companies are “platforms” instead of shops. So the sellers on them are individual businesses. Both the marketplace a d the seller should be held liable.
It’s similar to uber or Deliveroo. They pretend that the real business owner is the minimum wage slave that consents to their contracts.
It’s all a sham and the fact that all these companies can skirt employment, tax, import, safety standards etc is a complete joke and an abdication of responsibility by the authorities that should be protecting people.
Why is this a problem only when then Chinese do it?
No one says it’s only a problem only if the Chinese do it. There’s much evidence, however, that products that are unsafe and often posing a threat to health are those on Chinese platforms.
There is also a strong need for supply chain transparency as Chinese products are often manufactured under slavery-like conditions (for which there is also much evidence).
[Edit typo.]
De minimis is a loophole that’s really easy to close: declare it unapplicable to companies. And if a company is found trying to overwhelm customs with a lot of small individual low-cost items, send them the administrative bill.
Except that this isn’t a loophole but a feature explicitly introduced only a few years back to lower the customs burden and annoyance of small senders, which was highly welcome at the time.
I guess they didn’t expect it to be used commercially at this scale, but I don’t think this is a problem that should be solved at the customs office but rather through regulation of the online platform.
Is it a loop hole, is it a trade rule, we’ll never find out. What’s certain is:
“You are going to have to hire thousands and thousands of more customs officers if you want to scrap the exemption,” Riedenstein warned. “It’s going to cost the US and the EU to punish Beijing for taking advantage of these legal loopholes.”
The future is just one huge contradiction. Buckle up.
Or, just place the onus on the platform to comply or they get cut off.
Oh, lol, I almost thought this was something to worry about. This is GREAT news. Keep it up and maybe we can get them out of our mail entirely!
