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EU introduces β¬3 customs charge on small parcels to curb cheap Chinese imports
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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No, thatβs a very naive and uninformed viewpoint. The EU is being flooding with 100s of millions of packages with value-free SHEIN and temu stuff, the delivery services even do not know how to handle it anymore. It is a tremendous danger for local industry, it is very bad for the environment. Do some online research, you will be impressed with the impact of these cheap products literally flooding into the European Union.
Aren't those same cheap products coming in through corporations that sell it under some brand at triple the cost?
The "local" industries have already been decimated by the big conglomerates which imported the same cheap Chinese stuff and sold it as a hilarious profit.
It's not the same stuff, though. A lot of these products do not fulfill any product safety law. There have been lots tests of random products sold on these platforms, showing that many are unsafe and/or dangerous (just google). A business sourcing from China has to ensure that sold products are safe and fulfill legal requirements. And yes, for this "service" they charge higher prices, and sometimes even unjustifiedly.
So basically they are flooding eu with like small pox blankets in the form of consumer products with like lead or whatever in them. While getting paid for it
Right in the article they cite the analysis has numbers on a few groups of products like protrction equipment, makeup, and whether they pass EU standards. 60%-something do not. That also means 30%-something pass EU standards. That's a lot of quality cheap product. Of course as a consumer you can't tell whether you're getting something from the 35% pile or the 65% one. But that doesn't detract from the point of a lot of the cheap stuff in the category is the same stuff when it comes to EU standards.
Here's an anecdote - years ago I really wanted a magnetic USB cable. Being skeptical of AliExpress stuff, especially electrical, I found a North American brans called Volta. Bought a cable. Cost me CAD $20 or $30. Some time after, I was browsing AliExpress for some specialty ebike parts that aren't imported in Canada, I took a look at the magnetic cables they got. After a few pages of results I found a suspiciously similar cable to the Volta sold by the manufacturer itself. $3-4 for a set with a few magnetic tips. Ordered one. Once it came, I meticulously compared it to the Volta. It was identical in every way. It even failed in the same weak spot after a couple of years of use as the Volta. So yeah, while not everything is the same, not everything is not the same either.
Side note - the AliExpress prices are not the low prices available in other cheaper Chinese domestic retailers. Stuff on AliExpress already has significant markups. Volta did not pay $3-4 for that cable. They prolly paid $0.50-1 if even that much. They made exorbitant profit.
USB cables are actually a great example of where finding a brand with a good name does matter. Lots of cheap cables donβt properly follow the spec and then people end up frying their steam deck or other hardware.
Itβs not so bad for data transfer but a real issue when youβre using them for supplying more power for computers or other expensive devices.
Sure, go and buy the stuff if you want. Personally, I do not have the competence to know which products contain harmful chemicals, for instance. I am not questioning that a lot of products are badly made quality wise. I'm just saying that any European retailer / producer is legally responsible to ensure the product is safe and not harmful. And testing costs money, believe it or not. (Yes they carry out tests. I have worked for a large retailer)
Wouldn't it be nice to have cheap, pocket mass spectrometers. π
Not sure what safety small plastic stuff or disposable fashion products need to pass to merit the extra prices
For clothing, some have been found to have significant amounts of heavy metals in their dyes. That said, as the article itself says - more than a third passes EU standards.
But a bike wrench? A torque meter? A portable oscilliscope? No issues there. Some of those things are simply prohibitively expensive from EU/NA brands and are still made in China. I had to diagnose a signaling issue on an ebike I built. Were it not for Hantek and AliExpress, I'd simply given up and unable to solve it.
Were it not for cheap Chinese tools I wouldn't have been able to develop the skills to build ebikes at all. I've now built 5 so far. I could easily turn this into a (co-op) business if get shitcanned from my job.
Exactly my point.
And to clarify, I understand what the other posters are saying (against my argument) but I am just done with all the protections for corporate profit
I personally don't buy much clothes or care about fashion but, like your example, I am very frequently buying tools or small repair parts that the corporations either refuse to provide (to force you to buy a brand new whatever) or make ridiculously expensive
Exactly on the same page. Paying these exorbitant markups is usually not even flowing to local labour. The distribution centres are staffed at close to minimum wage. The margins go to the top where they contribute to rising wealth inequality which makes us poorer year after year. Fuck that.
E: Also Frigidaire sold me a plastic drawer rail for my fridge, shitty injection molded part from a worn mold, a part they've been making for decades, no more than cents to make, for CAD $60.
E2: If we're gonna solve this for real by abandoning free trade as we know it, nationalizing the oligarchy's wealth and reinvesting that in protected domestic industries that make most of what we need, paying wages that afford to buy that product, then I'll be happy to be denied access to AliExpress and I'd be able to buy a CSA-certified Maple Electronics scope made in Windsor, ON. A few bucks on de-minimims - prolly won't do it. Besides, it's a regressive tax hitting the poorest most.
Avid Amoeba for Prime Minister!