Trump tariffs take aim at trade loophole used by Chinese online retailers like Temu and Shein
Shein and Temu icons are seen displayed on a phone screen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on August 27, 2024.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico target a trade provision that helped fuel the explosive growth of budget online retailers, including Temu and Shein.
Trump on Saturday signed executive orders imposing tariffs on the country’s top three trading partners. Goods imported from Canada and Mexico will be slapped with a 25% tariff, while goods from China will be charged a 10% tax. Energy resources from Canada will have a lower 10% tariff. The duties are expected to take effect on Tuesday.
The orders against China, Canada and Mexico all halt a trade exemption, known as “de minimis,” which allows exporters to ship packages worth less than $800 into the U.S. duty free.
The de minimis provision has existed since the 1930s, but its use has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. The Biden administration took steps last September to curb the “overuse and abuse” of de minimis, arguing it has helped Chinese e-commerce companies undercut competitors with lower prices. Officials have also argued that de minimis shipments are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising product safety concerns.
The U.S. processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. That’s up from 139 million a year in 2015, the CBP said.
The loophole has enabled low-cost e-commerce companies like PDD Holdings-owned Temu, Shein, and Alibaba‘s AliExpress, which all have links to China, to offer a virtual smorgasbord of cheap apparel, household items and electronics, such as $15 smartwatches and $3 shoes.
Shein and Temu have gone on a digital marketing blitz over the last few years in an attempt to lure more deal-hungry shoppers. Temu in 2024 vaulted to the top of Apple’s list of the most downloaded free apps in the U.S. for the second year in a row, while Shein came in at number 12.
Representatives from Temu, Shein and Alibaba didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Temu has previously denied that its growth is dependent upon de minimis.
Shein previously told CNBC that import compliance is a “top priority.” Shein’s executive chairman, Donald Tang, has also said he supports efforts to reform de minimis, saying it needs a “complete makeover.”
Their popularity in the U.S. prompted Amazon to launch its own bargain outlet, called Haul, last year that allows third-party sellers to ship goods to consumers directly from China. Amazon reportedly relies on the de minimis trade rule to import items sold on Haul to bypass tariffs, The Information reported, citing people familiar with the program. An Amazon spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to CNBC for a request for comment.
Amazon, eBay and Etsy could stand to benefit from the Trump administration’s clampdown on the de minimis loophole. The companies operate online marketplaces that let third-party sellers market wares directly to consumers, competing directly with Temu and Shein.
Amazon has long connected Chinese manufacturers to American shoppers through its sprawling third-party marketplace. The marketplace is a key component of Amazon’s retail strategy, accounting for about 60% of products sold on the site. Amazon also generates fees by providing fulfillment, shipping, account support and advertising services to sellers.
China-based merchants have made up a sizable contingent of Amazon’s marketplace for many years, though the company acknowledged for the first time in 2023 that they account for a “significant portion.” By some estimates, they outnumber American sellers on the platform, according to data from Marketplace Pulse.
Temu and Shein have also expanded their strategies as the de minimis loophole came under threat. Last year, Temu began onboarding Chinese sellers to its site that have inventory at U.S. warehouses, allowing it to ship packages faster to American shoppers, according to The Information. Shein has also opened distribution centers and a supply chain hub in the U.S.
WATCH: Amazon Haul takes on Temu to bring shoppers cheap goods from China
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introduces new products as he delivers the keynote address at the GTC AI Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
At the end of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s unscripted two-hour keynote on Tuesday, his message was clear: Get the fastest chips that the company makes.
Speaking at Nvidia’s GTC conference, Huang said that questions clients have about the cost and return on investment the company’s graphics processors, or GPUs, will go away with faster chips that can be digitally sliced and used to serve artificial intelligence to millions of people at the same time.
“Over the next 10 years, because we could see improving performance so dramatically, speed is the best cost-reduction system,” Huang said in a meeting with journalists shortly after his GTC keynote.
The company dedicated 10 minutes during Huang’s speech to explain the economics of faster chips for cloud providers, complete with Huang doing envelope math out loud on each chip’s cost-per-token, a measure of how much it costs to create one unit of AI output.
Huang told reporters that he presented the math because that’s what’s on the mind of hyperscale cloud and AI companies.
The company’s Blackwell Ultra systems, coming out this year, could provide data centers 50 times more revenue than its Hopper systems because it’s so much faster at serving AI to multiple users, Nvidia says.
Investors worry about whether the four major cloud providers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle — could slow down their torrid pace of capital expenditures centered around pricey AI chips. Nvidia doesn’t reveal prices for its AI chips, but analysts say Blackwell can cost $40,000 per GPU.
Already, the four largest cloud providers have bought 3.6 million Blackwell GPUs, under Nvidia’s new convention that counts each Blackwell as 2 GPUs. That’s up from 1.3 million Hopper GPUs, Blackwell’s predecessor, Nvidia said Tuesday.
The company decided to announce its roadmap for 2027’s Rubin Next and 2028’s Feynman AI chips, Huang said, because cloud customers are already planning expensive data centers and want to know the broad strokes of Nvidia’s plans.
“We know right now, as we speak, in a couple of years, several hundred billion dollars of AI infrastructure” will be built, Huang said. “You’ve got the budget approved. You got the power approved. You got the land.”
Huang dismissed the notion that custom chips from cloud providers could challenge Nvidia’s GPUs, arguing they’re not flexible enough for fast-moving AI algorithms. He also expressed doubt that many of the recently announced custom AI chips, known within the industry as ASICs, would make it to market.
“A lot of ASICs get canceled,” Huang said. “The ASIC still has to be better than the best.”
Huang said his is focus on making sure those big projects use the latest and greatest Nvidia systems.
“So the question is, what do you want for several $100 billion?” Huang said.
Microsoft’s Amy Coleman (L) and Kathleen Hogan (R).
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft said Wednesday that company veteran Amy Coleman will become its new executive vice president and chief people officer, succeeding Kathleen Hogan, who has held the position for the past decade.
Hogan will remain an executive vice president but move to a newly established Office of Strategy and Transformation, which is an expansion of the office of the CEO. She will join Microsoft’s group of top executives, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
Coleman is stepping into a major role, given that Microsoft is among the largest employers in the U.S., with 228,000 total employees as of June 2024. She has worked at the company for more than 25 years over two stints, having first joined as a compensation manager in 1996.
Hogan will remain on the senior leadership team.
“Amy has led HR for our corporate functions across the company for the past six years, following various HR roles partnering across engineering, sales, marketing, and business development spanning 25 years,” Nadella wrote in a memo to employees.
“In that time, she has been a trusted advisor to both Kathleen and to me as she orchestrated many cross-company workstreams as we evolved our culture, improved our employee engagement model, established our employee relations team, and drove enterprise crisis response for our people,” he wrote.
Hogan arrived at Microsoft in 2003 after being a development manager at Oracle and a partner at McKinsey. Under Hogan, some of Microsoft’s human resources practices evolved. She has emphasized the importance of employees having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, drawing on concepts from psychologist Carol Dweck.
“We came up with some big symbolic changes to show that we really were serious about driving culture change, from changing the performance-review system to changing our all-hands company meeting, to our monthly Q&A with the employees,” Hogan said in a 2019 interview with Business Insider.
Hogan pushed for managers to evaluate the inclusivity of employees and oversaw changes in the handling of internal sexual harassment cases.
Coleman had been Microsoft’s corporate vice president for human resources and corporate functions for the past four years. In that role, she was responsible for 200 HR workers and led the development of Microsoft’s hybrid work approach, as well as the HR aspect of the company’s Covid response, according to her LinkedIn profile.
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