The age of cheap Chinese stuff is ending in the USA? [includes politics, but shouldn't]

Status
Not open for further replies.
I feel it should be open but people including myself should restrain a bit more from going to much into the fray...

The topic on it's own seems quite impactfull, it would be a shame if we couldn't discuss it at all without you guys needing to lock it.
 
marvin78 said:
The topic on it's own seems quite impactfull,
Click to expand...
The topic is Chinese goods and services and related tariffs that may or may not affect them. And on the last page it was a critique of American democracy. So yeah, off topic


marvin78 said:
people including myself should restrain a bit more from going to much into the fray...
Click to expand...
Then restrain yourself. Locking threads sucks, we don't like doing it.
 
I don't know if pausing it will help :(

I wanted to talk about the impact of tariffs and what to do about them. Many people want to talk about the election and anything attached to it ( a thing you can't do anything about ), instead of tariffs.

I think I fall for this bait finally after being worn down trying to keep the thread on topic.
I give you full authority to make a judgement call since you have a better view from the outside than me.
 
As of today, I can still buy a TSDZ2B from Pswpower for the same price of $260 that I paid two years ago. That's from the US warehouse, but I figure they would jack the prices up by 10%. Not yet.

Meanwhile, J bought a DMO2 in November, shipped from China at $319 with a $75 shipping charge for a total of $391. It's still $319 today. There was a tariff already in place least year, I didn't pay it, because I'm under the $800 personal exemption. Tariffs don't apply here,

Accordingly, I still expect all this nickel and dime stuff I "import" from China via aliexpress and Temu to stay the same.
 
neptronix said:
((big agree))
Click to expand...
Even you reacted and took part in the 'off topic' discussions ;)

I said..

marvin78 said:
people including myself
Click to expand...

..for a reason. Mainly because I wanted to emphasize the topic is impactful enough to warrant a thread and it should be up to everyone individual participating to keep their heads on straight so I put myself out there so no one other feels I'm trying to divert or place blame.

I would almost ask that instead of the thread to get locked, nothing would be done to the thread just those who are deemed ( most ) disruptive and their content which is deemed to be the cause of these disruptions. Even if that, here we go again, might include myself.
 
docw009 said:
Meanwhile, J bought a DMO2 in November, shipped from China at $319 with a $75 shipping charge for a total of $391. It's still $319 today. There was a tariff already in place least year, I didn't pay it, because I'm under the $800 personal exemption. Tariffs don't apply here,
Click to expand...

I thought a big part was that they were looking at removing the sub 800 exemption? Most ebike stuff will be sub 800, and if not you can always place multiple smaller orders.

I noticed some strange things happening to pswpower website the past days, when I went through Ali I couldn't find my products but the direct website had the normal inventory. I attributed it to Chinese new year. Suffice to say that for EU, prices are stable so far.
 
Last edited:
Looks like AliExpress prices have gone up about 20% on most small items. They may still be creeping up . I think you have about 6 months to get what you want before the billionaires end this lupehole have us all eating bugs to survive.
 
Now that you mentioned that..

L-twoo A7 groupset 58,99 now, 50,27 when I ordered on Dec 21st.
Pswpower bought Tsdz2b was 239 when bought... same add, same options, now shows 327,78 ... and 'out of stock' for all items for pswpower's Ali page. And a lot of previous orders, if I would try to repeat them, they now list 'this item is no longer available' 'this item can not be send to your address'.

But pswpower.com will sell me one for about 250 ( with vlcd6 because xh18 isn't even an option ), shipped from Germany. Probably had more local inventory then France's warehouse.
 
Wonder if it's because they realized that inspecting so many low value packages was a cost negative move..
..that's probably how we got 'de minimis' in the first place.

Imagine the economics:
Average hourly rate for a customs and border patrol agent in the USA is $36/hour
.. whose job is inspecting a large volume of inexpensive packages which you can collect a small percentage of revenue on.
.. no way to automate it because each item is a case by case basis.
.. at a 10% tariff, the government probably loses money.

Why bother consulting with the departments and looking at the numbers when you can just make knee-jerk decisions and just roll them back if they don't work.

Clearly a student of the pointy haired boss school of management.

1739031360025.png
 
And any price increases on your favorite widgits at aliexpress is just profiteering. Nothing wrong with that.

xlite.jpg
I bought this auto stop/tail lite last Fall for $10.50, and the vendor now lists it for $11.99, bur I found another vendor today selling at $10.59, so I bought a second one. Haven't even mounted the first one.

Also bought some handlebar bags for $7, and a frame bag that fits a water bottle cage for $4. A little LCD voltmeter that fits the handebars for $4. Free shipping for all that junk!
 
docw009 said:
Free shipping for all that junk!
Click to expand...
It's not free, it's paid shipping by the CCP

... and it might actually be transported with a Junk somewhere along the way as well.

In seriousness though, price gouging based on fear/uncertainty is indeed not new, but that doesn't mean I got to like it ;) Even if just for the need to do new searches to find the cheapest options

edit: and it's not like that uncertainty can still result in some nasty changes in availability of affordable 'gadgets'.
 
Last edited:
neptronix said:
Wonder if it's because they realized that inspecting so many low value packages was a cost negative move..
..that's probably how we got 'de minimis' in the first place.

Imagine the economics:
Average hourly rate for a customs and border patrol agent in the USA is $36/hour
.. whose job is inspecting a large volume of inexpensive packages which you can collect a small percentage of revenue on.
.. no way to automate it because each item is a case by case basis.
.. at a 10% tariff, the government probably loses money.

Why bother consulting with the departments and looking at the numbers when you can just make knee-jerk decisions and just roll them back if they don't work.

Clearly a student of the pointy haired boss school of management.

View attachment 365448
Click to expand...
There's a keyboard I want to order from Hong Kong but the vendor won't sell until the whole thing is settled for fear of stuck orders. 🤦🏽
 
marvin78 said:
It's not free, it's paid shipping by the CCP
Click to expand...

Chinese shipping has been subsidized also by the USA until some years ago in addition to all the CCP subsidies.
Those trade deals were made when China had a different head figure who our govt had way better relations with.

Has it been the same case in the EU, where your government also made a lot of deals to subsidize or look the other way to get access to cheap Chinese goods?
 
It's no different as anywhere else in the EU I imagine. Well, depending on proximity to the EU warehouses which seem to primarily focus on Poland, Germany and France.

So I have to wait a few days more for my parcel.

..as to my government and 'making deals'. We're kind of on the bad list of tax evasion countries, though we been 'trying to improve'. It's kind of understandable, we lost a lot of big companies in the past and our 'national treasures' like ASML can get the goverment to change allocation of education funds so they can get personal better suited for them, let alone 'hey we either pay less taxes or we move to some other country'. Which they did threaten if the 'climate' in our country didn't improve.

It really isn't any government, it's the platforms. I only order 'choice' items, and I usually get them within a week. My experience with orders from countries much much closer to me, is much less reliable. And that's just platform agreements with shipment handlers, has to be.

Btw. I mainly said 'It's not free, it's funded by the CCP' because it rymes.
 
So you generally buy not straight from China, but from warehouses that import the stuff, or what?
I imagine being able to transport Chinese goods over land instead of sea changes a lot of things.

I hear a lot of negative things about The Netherlands's government from one of my Dutch programmers and your take doesn't sound much better, hope they get their (expletive) together some day!
 
And it feels everything ordered from an 'choice' item, get's express shipping. As in air parcel.

Another advantage of 'choice' items is free returns.

So yeah I do go out of my way to see if I can find items with that item description. Not always available, but when it is it's a non argument what to choose.
 
neptronix said:
Chinese shipping has been subsidized also by the USA until some years ago in addition to all the CCP subsidies.
Those trade deals were made when China had a different head figure who our govt had way better relations with.
Click to expand...
Most countries had a “agreement” for international postage items where the recieving country agreed to deliver on shore at no charge in order to avoid the chaos of back charging all those delivery costs for millions of individual items.
That was all OK and fairly well ballanced until the internet made international buying much easier and suppliers from places like China became dominant.
Now the trade from suppliers in China etc are a huge imballance and the recieving countries are loosing out on delivery costs.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top