2024-0204 [South China Morning Post]: Why China hopes the US won’t touch a century-old trade rule affecting imports under US$800
South China Morning Post interviewed Professor Tsay regarding Chinese e-commerce giants Shein and Temu, whose parcels have surpassed a quarter of a trillion dollars in value annually amid a bi-partisan push to tighten the "de minimis" exemption that shields small-value imports from tariffs and monitoring.
Full PDF: [Shein, Temu, De Minimis]
From the article:
Andy Tsay of Santa Clara University believed the election year would make it tough to predict if any laws would be passed, even if such an outcome were widely desired.
“The thing about US customers, if you asked them directly, they would say, ‘yes, we’re opposed to forced labour, yes, we want to be tough on China’,” Tsay said.
“But they also want cheap stuff, especially as inflation has been a big problem in the US in the past two years.”
“When politicians make decisions on whether something helps them get re-elected, they have to figure out the differences between what US customers say they want and what they actually want,” he added.