Amazon may have walked back plans to display import costs at the digital checkout to consumers — but Chinese company Temu is going the opposite way.
Since President Donald Trump whacked China with import tariffs up to 145%, Temu has begun making the added import tax visible to all customers at checkout — where the cost of shipping, sales tax, and import charges are added to the subtotal, NYNext has learned.
The inflammatory move — Amazon’s similar plan was dropped after swift political blowback — is likely the doing of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, designed to undermine the US and Trump, according to sources.
“There is very little separation between private companies and the state in China. That is one thing that makes them such a formidable competitor: No space between Chinese government and Chinese enterprise,” former senior intelligence officer and CEO of XK Group Business Intelligence Kevin Hulbert told me.
“Clearly we [as the world’s largest economy] are in the biggest competition ever with the Chinese economy and on an occasion like this where they can paint the US in a bad light and this will reflect badly on the president, they will take that opportunity 10 times out of 10.”
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Temu, a rapidly growing Chinese e-commerce platform, operates under strict regulations from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), raising concerns about its motivations.
Temu, launched in 2022 by PDD Holdings (parent company of China’s Pinduoduo), has flooded the US with ultra-low-priced goods shipped directly from Chinese manufacturers. Prices are low, the number of knockoffs, dupes and straight up fakes of varying quality peddled on the site are high.
Temu — which didn’t respond to a request for comment — is able to offer its goods so cheaply by exploiting the US “de minimis” rule, which allows shipments valued at under $800 enter the country duty-free. Until recently this allowed Temu to undercut American retailers, including Amazon.
As of midnight Friday, that exemption — which Trump labeled a “big scam” earlier this week — will be eliminated on all goods posted from mainland China.
But now Trump’s trade war with China is in full swing, it’s unclear if the company will be able to continue operating and offer products at a price people will want to buy them.
“This calls into question their biz model,” Hulbert adds.
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