I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China. It's going to halt all our R&D for at least 6 months while we onboard domestic contractor alternatives --- which will also just generally be shit. Not to mention the American contractors WONT BE ABLE TO SHIP IN THE FUCKING ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS FROM CHINA THEY NEED FOR THE PROTOTYPES.
Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by this.
Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way from China is slow.
Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever the new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts in 3-5 days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your suppliers will just need to start filing the export paperwork correctly.
These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS.
Your Chinese suppliers can still ship by any of the normal commercial express shipping carriers as long as they understand how to file export paperwork or have an agent who can do it for them. Previously this usually added 1-2 days to the transit time over shipping undeclared "samples". Last year DHL moved to a paperless system and that extra 1-2 days delay is probably going away anyway. They may have even done it because they saw this coming. People have been grumbling about the de-minimis stuff for a while now.
In my european experience, DHL is anything but fast when customs are involved. And I doubt they have the manpower to handle it for the new US rules.
> These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS.
Again in my european experience, the likes of Temu have solved the problem. You just order and a courier shows up with the taxes already handled. You paid Temu for them when you ordered and they paid the taxes for you at the point of entry to the EU.
Unfortunately they probably don't have a similar setup in the US, but they're likely to solve it much faster than DHL.
And of course prices will increase. Will that make them less competitive? Time will tell.
not sure about other carriers but that doesn’t sound good
That probably will work for like a week, considering how fast and reckless the administration moves.
As a software engineer who works closely with electrical and firmware engineers I know what you are saying is completely true.
The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap? How can JLCCNC take ~$120 worth of raw material, CNC machine it into our specified part, anodize the part, and send it to Denmark for ~$120? Like what is going on?
Remember how Apple couldn't just pick up and move the production of iPhones to India or Vietnam? You need all the ancillary industries around the production to be there, along with being competitive and commoditized as well.
When a supplier has something go wrong a line of manufacturing doesn't go down. You go down the street to the same guy selling the same thing and have them pick up the slack. If you want a 1uF ceramic cap come hell or high water there's going to be a dozen people selling them all quoting a price a little above cost. When Apple moved production to India and Vietnam? When you hear Apple talking about a few billion in investment in Indonesia? This is what they're helping set up and what takes a decade to do.
Anyone can buy automation equipment but there's nowhere in the US you can do what JLCPCB/PCBWay do with PCB and electronics assembling because we literally don't manufacture all the ancillary stuff required in the US, little alone manufacture it all in the same place. If the SMT components are manufactured domestically say for military purposes it's going to be spread out all over the US because politicians pork barrel contracts for their districts and states.
You could setup next to a Mouser distribution hub but Mouser is a middleman and they have you over a barrel. What do middlemen do in that situation? They raise prices just enough to the point where it's uneconomical to leave.
You metaphorically need to invent the universe to make it work in the US.
This is also why GDP is extremely misleading. PPP is supposed to account for these differences but often is often wrong by a rather wide margin for many critical industries.
[1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/bottled-w...
It’s not really a secret. They have cheap labor. Very lax environmental standards (big deal for PCB manufacturing). They have a high density of manufacturing and production. One factory can get their materials and machines from other factories nearby. Their government manipulates exchange rates.
People are also quick to forget US companies that serve these same markets. OSH Park was doing cheap PCB panel share before JLCPCB was a common name. Boards manufactured right in the United States. They don’t have the volume of JLCPCB but they’ve been doing cheap boards for hobbyists for a long time: https://docs.oshpark.com/services/
Because allowing countries to maximize their comparative advantages is great for economic growth. It doesn’t make sense for every nation on earth to have their own copy of every industrial sector. We don’t need all nations to manufacture their own jet engines, oil tankers, t-shirts, and Tylenol. Trade is good.
The idea that China is a major security threat is basically brand new. Half of century of economic policy can’t be reversed in 5 years.
Of course we've asked ourselves that, we know the answers too! Manufacturing costs are so low, and the cost of shipping is so low.
I recently made contact with a manufacturer at a trade fair in Europe.
I was wanting a sample of their product, they had one at their stand - I had it in my hands - but due to time constraints we didn't have time to seal the deal on the day and I had to leave town.
So they ended up taking the item all the way back to Asia, and then a week or so later air-freighted it all the way back to Europe. Shipping cost was approx USD55, they shipped it out on a Friday, it was delivered on the Monday.
Because the West has to actually follow environmental and safety regulations. As opposed to write them down on paper and wipe your ass with it when the West isn't looking.
Evidence: I watched a tour video from one of these Chinese PCB houses and some of the workers were wearing surgical masks.
Not for COVID mind you, for presiding over open vats of boiling poison that would need a chemical respirator in any responsible country.
Due to underdeveloped economies, developing countries cannot avoid economic dependence on developed countries, especially in areas such as high technology, equipment, and precision instruments. However, this dependence varies depending on the development stage of each country. For example, African nations primarily require food to sustain basic living conditions.
Regardless of their specific needs, this situation has resulted in a unique exchange mechanism: developing countries must offer their best products in exchange for goods from developed countries. As a result, people in developing countries are unable to enjoy the finest products produced in their own countries, and sometimes not even second-tier products, as these are reserved for foreign consumers.
The U.S. market features products from various countries and regions, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Jamaica, and Mexico. The world's finest products flow into the U.S. market in exchange for U.S. dollars. As everyone competes to obtain dollars, competition intensifies, leading to high product quality and low prices. This has created unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. market. This outcome is a result of market mechanisms and the benefits that the U.S. has gained from the global status of the dollar, established by the Bretton Woods Conference after World War II.
However, the massive influx of foreign products into the U.S. has also impacted its domestic industries, causing factory closures and rising unemployment. This issue cannot be ignored, which is why the forces of free trade and protectionism in the U.S. have been in constant conflict.
— Wang Huning, America Against America
as long as the US still export USD to exchange products, this situation will not change
> how these Chinese firms are so cheap?
believe me, we don't want this, we have no choice, just like all other 3rd countries, cheap products, cheap minerals, cheap men and women, all running to the US to be exchanged for dollars
I've tried to get PCBs fab'd stateside and I think its multidimensional. I didn't NEED to get them made stateside, but I wanted to try. The price for a board for a run of ~150 fairly simple PCBs was 2-3x what the chinese fabs offered. On top of that, American fabs are typically for ITAR/defense contract work. They'll snub their nose at small orders, give you the runaround, etc.
When working with Chinese fabs, the main downside is the time difference. JLC and PCBWay have both been great to work with, offer a good price, especially for a hobbyist(which is important if you want more hardware R&D).
We have our own PCB shops but they are like double or quadruple the price of Chinese shops because of labor costs and a lack of investment capital to introduce automation.
> Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so cheap?
As said, extremely low labor costs plus ecosystem efficiencies. When the shop making capacitors by the container load is one block away there's barely any handling effort or stockpiling required, whereas domestic Western shops have to keep much more stockpiles.
The lack of manufacturing in the US can be linked to the lack of investment from the low savings rate as the flipside of high consumption, and a strong dollar (relative to surplus countries like China) that both boosts imports, driving consumption even higher than lowering savings rate, and weak export competiveness.
That lack of savings manifests as the Current Account Deficit, and normally the dollar should weaken due to it, strengthening exports and naturally rebalancing the trade. Unfortunately, because the rest of the world does the opposite in having an abnormally high level of savings, they push all their capital into the USA. This overall appreciates the dollar, and is good for the finance industry, but persistently doing this for 40 years has basically destroyed US manufacturing.
This is the long con of Reagan in the 80s: extracting value and diverting profits from households to shareholders will only get you a few decades before the last well-trained, well-funded workforce ages out and no one’s left to prop up the scam. In SimCity terms, the US is collapsing from High-Density Industrial to Medium-Density Industrial because all the schools had their funding cut for 50 years while the city budget has Commercial taxes set to 0%. The solutions are similarly apparent to any SimCity player, but deeply unpalatable for the real-world beneficiaries — the 0.1% — that are now accustomed to their diverted income. Ironically, one of the best ways to learn more about the grifter’s mindset is to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; not because she proposed a workable solution or because it’s a good or bad novel, but because her portrayal of the grifter sociopathy is dead-on accurate for what we now see happening. Or, watch the TV show Leverage; the villains are often a stellar model of the same.
It's an optimized market, isn't it? Didn't it naturally go this far?
No affiliation except that I like to look at naked PCBs.
Move. Like the rest of us had to when all the tech was in the USA.
For all the supposed panic and importance of this process, the poster didn’t do even a google search of this issue
Oops. But at least big shareholders made a lot of money, and GDP is up!!
(I don't think most people realize how easy it is for China to f*k with the US for this very reason. Yeah, they'd also be shooting themselves in the foot, but they're a country that might be willing to do that if they had to, because they don't have elections to worry about.)
People demand cheap shit, and riot over expensive stuff. Hell Trump is arguably in power because people couldn't handle prices increasing since 2020 (despite wages increasing too).
Any raise in cost will disappear and be absorbed as profit in supply chain shrouds of smoke and mirrors, permanently. Unless it legitimately costs slightly more money or causes any inconvenience to companies and we hear about it on the news.
The problem is that your important R&D purchases are competing against the lipstick order of the neighbors wife (or his own) or that cute little cat toy.
IDK who's to blame for if R&D then starts having problems, but it might be R&D department itself if they are happy to compete with lipsticks, in terms of shipping.
This is also disrupting the nascent technology industries in the Caribbean and the Latin-American diaspora. For us specifically, it will increase our logistics costs by multiples and lead times by weeks.
I expect this will result in substantial schedule misses and cost overruns.
There are shops in the USA that can do that work.
And it's a small price to pay for the freedom of Ross Ulbricht and the January 6th patriots.
Those aren’t affected.
Had you read the article you would realize this only affects parcels sent through the mail.
Edit: if you don't agree with something I've said, please comment and explain why. I really don't see how this is controversial.
You could literally just outsource your prototyping to me (I'm in Europe, EE with embedded programming skills and good connections to local 8--day turn-around PCBA production) and I'll ship them from Europe to US (using 1 day shipping if needed).
Ok, sorry for spamming, but my point is: there are ways?
And while waiting 15 years for that to become possible, just move that US based R&D to countries not ran by idiots.
I blame myself for not immigrating earlier. I had a chance to move overseas for a least a year and I didn't.
- overcoming environmental regulations
- a more disjointed government that changes hands every 4 or 8 years
- competition from, well, China
- US dollar making exports very challenging because of strength relative to yuan
etc
it would take, honestly, more like 30-50 years and/or a true forcing function like a world war (heaven forbid)
If none of your R&D is in the US, you don't have to worry so much about them throwing a fit.
Amazon won't have to compete against the much cheaper Temu, Aliexpress, Shein(?) etc.
This country is so painfully stupid. Now I have to pay 2x as much for inferior products, if not the same exact stuff imported by an American company.
This alone is probably going to cost me about 1000$ to 2000$ per year. We literally don't make much most of this stuff in the US. For example I just ordered a guitar bag, 15$ direct from China. The same exact bag, made in the same exact factory is going to be 40$ on Amazon.
That's assuming this resolves before resellers run out of stock.
If I had any idea this stupid policy change was happening so soon I probably would of brought more stuff.
The next 4 years are going to be very expensive, the price of everything is going to skyrocket.
Not said often enough is that we DONT WANT to make much of this stuff in the US.
People seriously don’t get how remarkable it is that the U.S. is able to get other countries to send them actual usable stuff in return for pieces of paper that the U.S. prints. And how much richer this makes Americans.
I don’t believe the U.S. should be fully free market. Clearly it went too far away from industrialization to the point that the U.S. was reliant on China for critical stuff and has lost the capacity to scale if it needs to. The CHIPS act was the first tiny step towards changing this.
But these actions and the industries targeted needed to be strategic and not random.
Not all of the country is stupid, a lot of us didn't vote for the idiot who is causing all this lunacy. Unfortunately, not enough of us.
Do you have examples of this? It hasn't been the case for me. Usually the prices are similar and I tend to find that Amazon is slightly cheaper.
This is a temporary hold while they figure out what’s going on.
They’re not announcing that shipments from China are over for the year.
they sponsored 2025, they collect the benefits, and peons pay.
Reverse image search usually finds the original.
Which reminds me of a rule: price up, demand down
"Good for <US tech company>. Guess they won't have to compete."
The one-two punch is:
1) A massive devaluation of housing, stocks and other similar items. The reason for this is we need to introduce local, more affordable merchandises, which can only be brought by cheaper lands, cheaper labor -- but no one is going to work $6 an hour (about 45 Yuan per hour, more or less on par with the better paid Chinese manufacturers I think) unless, unless housing and renting costs a fraction, like, 20%. That's why I said we are going to get seriously hurt. This is basically a wealth transfer from the richer to the poorer.
2) Educate a whole generation that labor is honorable, so that engineers, scientists, technicians and such get more respect (I mean real respect, not the superficial one nowadays) than lawyers and bankers. It's a social change that takes at least one generation, perhaps two. Maybe I didn't put it right, but by saying getting more respect I'm basically saying getting an equal pay and equal say.
But I'm seeing is that US is taking another darker road.
I get how cheap housing can contribute to domestic manufacturing, but cheaper stocks? How does lower NVDA prices help domestic manufacturing? Is it just there to hose the rich?
It is very hard to devalue assets and jobs that are valuable in fact.
And people who do real work with their hands around physical objects? What task can a scientist do if you need to build a factory and get lines humming? Scientists are great at optimizing complex processes, but what if there is no process yet?
Hardware is a money pit endeavor with low margins and high overhead. Software is a money printer with high margins and low overhead.
Why not educate the masses to have successfull careers like most of HN, maybe working remote for a foreign company, and taking the salary back home to the US?
What does canada have anything to do with anything. When was canada a manufacturing power? Why do canadians love to interject themselves into topics that don't involve them?
> 1) A massive devaluation of housing, stocks and other similar items.
You want wealth destruction? Most of americans' wealth is tied to home equity and 401k.
> That's why I said we are going to get seriously hurt.
Who is we? Are you even american?
> 2) Educate a whole generation that labor is honorable, so that engineers, scientists, technicians and such get more respect (I mean real respect, not the superficial one nowadays) than lawyers and bankers.
What are you talking about? You think lawyers and bankers get more respect than engineers and scientists?
> But I'm seeing is that US is taking another darker road.
What road is that?
I think it is this but I don't have access. https://www.upu.int/en/Postal-Solutions/Programmes-Services/...
And I found this article which is probably relevant(2019). https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/upu-postal-rate-change/...
update with an actual current article: https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/trump-tariff-de-minimis...
I live in NZ, manufacture open source hardware in China and ship from there. I ship all over the world, some countries charge import duty, some don't, but as an exporter I NEVER have to pay anyone's tariffs - Americans are going to learn who pays tariffs because now you personally will get the bill and have to deal with the annoyance of having to pay it.
Note: NZ charges import duty (which here is essentially our sales tax), they have deals with places like AliExpress/Digikey/etc to pay it at source (ie it shows up in your cart as you check out)
https://www.theverge.com/news/605483/shein-temu-amazon-trump...
The other possible reasons are to impose tariffs on shipments below the low value threshold, to disrupt the Chinese economy which is currently weak, to discourage consumption of Chinese products, or to use as a negotiation tool in the current push to reset foreign policies.
Folks, this is why you don't engage in brinksmanship at this scale. It gets out of hand really quickly. I await the coming economic crisis (I mean, the stock market was already primed for a correction) with resigned exasperation.
---
edit: there's why and there's why. Drugs is the answer you sell
It may affect ebay purchases of electronic parts from Shenzhen though. Particulary if the vendors use the Chinese post office.
I also ordered a Keychron keyboard last weekend and it's being shipped from Shenzhen via DHL.
A huge percentage of the nation's R&D efforts (for DOMESTIC MANUFACTURING) is going to be completely and utterly fucked if they can't rush-deliver niche items from China. This is a disaster.
And it's not just R&D! If you have a big factory here in the USA but you need a rare part/tool/electrical component to fix the factory - often the OEM you buy it from will ship it from their China warehouse and it'll arrive in 1-4 days.
As a person who works in domestic manufacturing, this seems really, really bad for domestic manufacturing.
I'm guessing Aliexpress choice fills up entire shipping containers shipping them to contractors on the ports. Once inside the US it's simply a matter of relabeling packages with a USPS sticker.
If Wal-Mart, e.g., can no longer import containers from China, well, Wal-mart would be fucked long faster than Aliexpress.
Look closer at that shipping label, you'll probably see another one underneath it that is the original one. Just after clearing customs, packages are moved to this consolidation warehouse which is where your "LA Origin" label comes from. If you initiate a return, it's likely that you'll also ship your item back to another LA location.
It's the package/logistics equivalent of a reverse proxy or mux/de-mux step.
Restored already. It's all about chaos.
But yes, it's a "throw a bunch of shit against the wall and see what sticks" chaos strategy.
- never hear about the rollback, and thus think the problem has been fixed
- believe that the rollback is caused by "enemies" instead of incompetence, thus focusing on perceived attacks
I guess if they stopped using electric cars, they might like the post office again.
These ePackets are then bundled up into big sacks that are basically not inspected at all at US international mail facilities due to the de minimis exemption, which was just rolled back. The special status granted to ePackets meant that the volume shipped grew far beyond the processing capacity for normal packages at US IMFs. This pause (and subsequent unpause) from USPS on packages from China is because they don’t know how they’re going to handle that volume if it isn’t given special status.
Source: I worked on a project adjacent to this a couple of years ago. Close enough to pick up the basics but this isn’t quite what I was working on, so take my comment with a grain of salt.
USPS don't -- they simply forward from HongKongPost or ChinaPost. If the local post office in HK or CN does not cooperation, they can't do anything.
>"In our view, the USPS would require some time to sort out how to execute the new taxes before allowing Chinese packages to arrive in the U.S. again," said Chelsey Tam, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar.
> The Trump administration this week imposed a 10% tariff on all goods from China and banned all low-value, e-commerce parcels from receiving duty-free benefits under the de minimis entry program. The administration said the emergency order is part of its strategy to stop the illegal shipment of fentanyl and precursor chemicals into the United States."
Lol said out of their mouth while he was pardoning the head of the Silk Road underground/darkweb drug distribution organization to pump his crypto.
Is this all improvised or was there a big list of stuff to do ahead of time?
If the latter, does anyone have a copy of that list?
Alternatively, is anyone keeping track of what's already been done so far?
EDIT: you downvoted me for giving the other poster a primary source document from the original publisher, with no commentary? What are you mad about?
Trumps’s actual agenda, though slightly old generally aligns with his actions
- Stop Communist China’s abuse of the so-called de minimis exemption, which allows it to evade the tariffs for products valued at less than $800.
- Reinvigorate and expand the DHS crackdown on the CCP’s use of e-sellers (including third-party sellers) and the shippers and operators of major warehouses such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba to flood U.S. markets with counterfeit and pirated goods.
- Strategically expand tariffs to all Chinese products and increase tariff rates to levels that will block out “Made in China” products, and execute this strategy in a manner and at a pace that will not expose the U.S. to lack of access to essential products like key pharmaceuticals.
- Systematically reduce and eventually eliminate any U.S. dependence on Communist Chinese supply chains that may be used to threaten national security such as medicines, silicon chips, rare earth minerals, computer motherboards, flatscreen displays, and military components.
- Significantly reduce or eliminate the issuance of visas to Chinese students or researchers to prevent espionage and information harvesting.
- Prohibit the use of Communist Chinese–made drones in American airspace.
- Provide significant financial and tax incentives to American companies that are seeking to onshore production from Communist China to U.S. soil.
- Prohibit Communist Chinese state-owned enterprises from bidding on U.S. government procurement contracts (for example, contracts for subway and other transportation systems).
- Ban all Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, which pose significant national security risks and expose American consumers to data and identity theft.
- Prohibit all Communist Chinese investment in high-technology industries.
- Prohibit U.S. pension funds from investing in Communist Chinese stocks.
- Delist any Communist Chinese stocks that do not meet Public Company Accounting Oversight Board standards or, alternatively, close off the Chinese “A shares” stock market to U.S. investment and deregister U.S.-sanctioned Communist Chinese companies.
- Prohibit the use of Hong Kong clearinghouses as transit points for American capital investing in the Chinese mainland.
- Prohibit the inclusion of Chinese sovereign bonds in U.S. investors’ portfolios.
- Sanction any companies, including American companies like Apple, that facilitate Communist China’s use of its Great Firewall surveillance and censorship capabilities.
- Order the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice to contract with U.S.-owned and U.S.-operated artificial intelligence companies that are capable of detecting, identifying, and disrupting both the domestic groups’ and CCP influencers’ social media operations and funding streams using public information as a rapidly available offensive measure.
- Compel the closure of all Confucius Institutes in the U.S., which serve as propaganda arms of the CCP.
- Hold the CCP accountable for the COVID-19 virus, which almost certainly originated as a genetically engineered virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and do so through the establishment of a presidential commission or select congressional committee that would investigate the origins of the virus; its various costs, both economically and in human life; and the possible means of collecting damages from the CCP, which are likely to rise to the trillions of dollars.
The next step seems to be starting this week [2].
[1] https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/customs-4/customs-proc...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/05/eu-to-tight...
>The majority of inbound shipments originating in China come by ocean or air freight, not the mail system.
Account says: 63 Shipped, 42 To Ship
Perhaps it’s now being sent not via USPS?
By the way, can anybody explain what's the significance about this submission?
I hope they can still afford their tiny little circuits and tiny little solder dissolving things with more expensive shipping.
What is a Merchandise Processing Fee? The Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF) is a user fee that the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) charges. It is charged in addition to US Customs duty as an ad valorem tax at a rate of .03464%. It is calculated as a percentage of the value of the shipments shown on the invoice, also known as the Customs appraisement. This user fee carries a minimum and maximum amount depending on the entered value of the shipment. MPF is required on informal (goods valued $2,500.00 USD or less) and formal (goods valued over $2,500.00 USD) entries into the US.
Informal MPF Rates Rate: $2.53 USD
Formal MPF Rates Minimum: $32.71 USD Maximum: $634.62 USD (And under Trump's decree, all mail from China must be labeled as formal goods now, so minimum $32.71 fee applies)
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-02293.pdf
Goods ordered without using this system would be charged the 25% plus a handling fee, which is about $20 here.
However, the EU gave the logistics companies and retailers over a year to get these systems in place. The USA is taking a different approach.
[1] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/lawsuit-ruling-dog-leash-purch...
US law doesn’t apply in China. Nobody is going to take your case because some Aliexpress seller has no reason to even respond to your threats to take them to court.
Amazon isn’t a retailer, they’re a “marketplace” or some other BS the courts buy, so they’re not liable if they sell you stuff that’s negligently dangerous. Good luck tracking down SGVEEESQRTS or whoever built the thing.
If you import from China, American laws apply to you and Chinese laws apply to the seller. If you get scammed or hurt yourself with a dangerous product, you can try two things: sue the Chinese seller in your home country (they won't turn up if the court even cares enough not to dismiss your case) or sue the Chinese seller in China under Chinese law (good luck with that as a foreigner).
You have rights, but your cheap products come at the cost of having to jump through many hoops to enforce them. I don't think many people will follow through on the paperwork required for a Chinese visa just so they can spend months or longer trying to sue a dropshipper in Shenzen, but you could!
As for gross defects and QC: keep in mind that QC on Chinese websites is done to comply with Chinese standards. What's considered carcinogenic or dangerous in one country may be completely fine to sell in another (see: importing American soda to Europe, if it contains any banned food coloring).
Do note that platforms like Craigslist, eBay, and Amazon are often not considered as the business you're doing business with. The same Chinese seller can be active on Aliexpress and Amazon, and you'll still have to go after the Chinese entity if you want your medical bills paid.
Don't buy foreign if you want to be able to enforce your local laws. Buying locally is more expensive, but at least you have an address to sue.
In Toronto, most of those items are coming to me by private courier (and this pre-dates the Canada Post strike).
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO24/20230517/115956/HHRG...
USPS is the preferred carrier for illicit drug distribution.
For some Chinese stores, that essentially blocked off all of the EU because they don't want to raise prices to pay tax for EU customers. The lack of taxes or import fees together with enough stickers and stamps that say "GIFT" are the whole reason many shops have western customers in the first place.
Customs takes forever to clear a Chinese packages now, they're not letting themselves get rushed beyond doing their job. Not every package gets checked, but a lot more do, and drop shippers are not very happy.
Changing duties, taxes, and rules is fine. It's how a society adjusts. Changing them instantly is literally the most anti-consumer, anti-business concept ever.
No 30 days? 90 days? Nope, block it all now! That's sheer stupid on a caliber almost unheard of. It sends a signal "Don't do business with the US, the rules change on a whim". Don't do business IN the US, the same!
Set up a company anywhere else, any other nation, else you'll wake up tomorrow and your entire business model is invalidated, without even a day to adjust.
This is how children behave. How over emotional, non-rational people behave.
Unfortunate.
I personally support this, but not immediately. Nutty.
Americans, American businesses, and businesses with American clients would be wise to read through the document to see what they can expect the coming year(s). The current executive branch sure won't give you a heads up, but the plans are out in the open.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5283957/fentanyl-trump-...
It was already written in project 2025 to do this, they're just going down the line.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/business/china-us-usps-de...
5 Feb 2025: https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news/section/4/22675...
> DHL Hong Kong has announced that it will no longer accept individual shipments directed to the United States.
...
> As for UPS Hong Kong, FedEx Hong Kong and SF Express, the companies stated that their headquarters have not informed them to stop accepting parcels from Hong Kong for delivery to the United States.
> However, FedEx Hong Kong's customer service reminded senders that they might need to pay additional duties for the deliveries while the shipping costs remain unchanged.
> UPS mentioned that the company is currently discussing the duties arrangement, but no updates have been announced yet.
News flash: we can't afford to buy American. Why do you think we were shopping there. It's too late to fix it now - we no longer have the money or the ability to make the money to buy American and even if you gave more money to Americans, prices would just increase accordingly.
Also, some of those products were paid for already. Someone owes the purchasers reimbursement for their loss.
Oh come on now, how much more does an iPhone made in the US cost?
Oh. Hmm.
2025-02-06 01:52:00 Shipment information received,ZHUJIANG DELTA AREA - CHINA, PEOPLES REPUBLIC
2025-02-08 23:00:00Processed at FRANKLIN PARK - USA,FRANKLIN PARK - Illinois - USA 2025-02-08 22:51:00Clearance processing complete at FRANKLIN PARK - USA,FRANKLIN PARK - Illinois - USA
What a dumpster fire. Hard to believe ~half the electorate thought electing Trump, Musk, and army brocoll-topped tech-bros was a good idea.
Like, they've played their hand already, do you think everyone's just going to assume everything is fine? Any competent world leader, include "The West" which the US seems to think it owns completely, should now be scrambling to cut the US out as much as possible and they've got good company to go to with all the other countries being bullied. It's practically a matter of pride at this point to cut the US off as much as possible.
Without the needed parts apparently
Suspension of Inbound Parcels from China and Hong Kong INTERNATIONAL SERVICE SUSPENSION NOTICE – effective Feb. 4, 2025
Effective Feb. 4, the Postal Service will temporarily suspend only international package acceptance of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong Posts until further notice. Note the flow of letters and flats from China and Hong Kong will not be impacted.
> Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.
2. A dictator is now in place, with a subverted democratic system underneath (by subverted I mean deceived - enough people have bought into the lies that elections are now democratic in appearance only).
3. The judicial system is now in the way.
4. The judicial system is now going to be attacked.
"Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery."
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
> Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts.
Looks like its changed since posting
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/business/usps-china-de-mi...
What a flustercuck.
JFC
