President Trump's rates could remodel one of the most booming sectors of retail trade: fast fashion.
Strong taxes in imports of the largest commercial partners of the United States have been avoided at least temporarily by Mexico and Canada, but not China, which had an additional 10% rate imposed on their products this week. Trump's aggressive movement, which triggered a measured response from China, caused immediate concerns about a possible commercial war and higher costs for consumers.
In Trump's Gambito, a decision to close a commercial escape of decades was included that had allowed the lower cost articles to avoid existing tariffs. That could change the panorama of online purchases, particularly for Chinese electronic commerce companies behind very successful sites, such as Shein and Temu, which have attracted US buyers with garbage prices.
Sometimes called ultraramada fashion, brands instantly respond to trends, attracting customers with almost impossible low prices: an attire of two -piece women in TEMU is sold for $ 3.19 and a package of seven supports in Shein sells for $ 12.69 , For example. They often send directly from manufacturer to consumer, cutting intermediaries and giving them an advantage over other retail giants such as Walmart and Target.
But that advantage could now be reduced.
“You need a little of its competitive advantage,” said Neil Saunders, a retail globaldata retail analyst, who has studied fast fashion. Not only companies will now have to pay taxes on these items, he said, but their plots will be subject to greater scrutiny of customs agents, which could cause shipping delays.
“Or they have to receive a blow to their margins,” said Saunders, “or have to put prices for the consumer, and since their entire commercial model is low price, it could reduce sales.”
The impact was immediate. The United States postal service announced Tuesday that it would stop accepting China and Hong Kong packages. But for Wednesday morning, the agency had resumed operations, saying in a statement that officials and USPS customs agents were working to implement “an efficient collection mechanism for the new tariffs of China” while They tried to minimize delivery interruptions.
Shein and Temu, whose representatives did not respond to the requests for comments, had anticipated Trump's decision and worked in recent months to diversify their supply chains, including the expansion of networks in the United States.
Date from the 1930s, the lagoon called the Minimis, Latin for something so small that it is insignificant, the exemption allowed shipments valued below a certain threshold to avoid customs tasks. That threshold, which began at $ 1, was collected through the years at $ 800.
Customs and border protection of the US report of the Congress Research Service. The value of these packages totaled more than $ 54 billion.
The lagoon became the “main road” for China online purchases to the US market, according to the report, and financial implications were huge: low -value packages exports from China shot at $ 66 billion in 2023 , a drastic increase of $ 5.3 billion in 2018.
“Many low -priced products from China that depend on De Minimis may not be available in the market,” said Sheng Lu, a professor and graduate director of Fashion and Clothing Studies at the University of Delaware, who said that the change will probably translate in price walks for US consumers.
The closure of the escape, Lu added, could also devastate the hundreds of thousands of small electronic commerce companies in the United States that often depend almost exclusively on China's supply, while the largest companies often have more supply bases diversified However, Lu emphasized that many details of the change are still clear, including the way in which customs agents will apply such order given the short warning and the large volume of products.
The president's decision has been praised in recent days by drug abuse prevention groups that He sent him a letter Last month, saying that the escape was being used to flood the US market with fentanil and the precursor chemicals necessary to make the drug.
“The only way to cut this main artery for the flow of fentanyl and other illicit and harmful products in our country,” says the letter, “is to end the complete notion of breaking shipments in smaller values packages, an importer You can avoid inspection, tariffs and taxes. “
Despite the growing international concerns about unbridled waste, labor abuses and carbon emissions, the world of Fast fashion He has continued to draw its exponential growth.
The trend forged by European retail giants, such as Zara and H&M, has been increasingly dominated in recent years by Shein, now based in Singapore, whose objective income For the year it exceeds $ 50 billion. And more recently, Temuwhose parent company transferred its headquarters from China to Ireland, quickly went from an unknown relative to the most unloaded application in the US.
Saunders, the retail expert who studies fast fashion, said that by closing the escape he will affect companies, he does not expect them to return them. Since the items that sell are cheap, he said, will rise to add between 10 or 20 cents per dollar.
“They won't disappear,” he said. “It won't make them super expensive, it just makes them a little more expensive.”
Bloomberg contributed to this report.
