‘I can't order 100 pieces of junk for $15?': How Trump's tariff will hit fast-fashion devotees

The Guardian

04-02-2025

Vivi Armacost loves Temu. She uses the Chinese online marketplace to buy crafting supplies for her purse-making hobby. 'You can get purse detailing and hardware for cents and pennies,' said Armacost, who is 24 and lives in New York. She says it seems like 'basically everything' in her apartment comes from Temu.
Donald Trump's 10% tariff on China-made goods sold to the US, which went into effect early on Tuesday morning, might change her shopping habits.
The tariff closes off a trade loophole that allowed fast-fashion companies like Temu and Shein to ship packages under $800 into the US duty free; this loophole, called 'de minimus' has been criticized by both political parties in recent years. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Shein and Temu are now likely to raise prices, as is Amazon's Haul, a new e-commerce app that imports products from China-based sellers.
Shoppers are concerned the tariff will get in the way of their retail therapy.
'Trying to get that last Temu order in before Trump puts another tariff on China,' Armacost, who works in consulting and also makes comedy videos on TikTok, captioned a post on Monday that shows her frantically typing on a computer, hacker movie-style. It was mostly a joke, but she has friends who made one final Temu run. 'My friend Piper got a ton of apartment stuff during a last-minute tariff haul,' she said.
Temu – which surpassed Amazon as the most-downloaded shopping app in 2023 – and Shein are beloved by both the overly trendy and the obsessively thrifty. While Shein is known primarily for clothing, Temu also sells makeup, home goods and decor. These products are cheap – just over $4 for a pair of women's sneakers on Temu, or $1.45 for bracelet on Temu – but of dubious quality. Inevitably, many end up in landfills.
'A lot of the stuff comes actually way smaller than you expect,' Armacost said. 'I bought a desk lamp, except it can fit in my hands.'
In the months before Trump took office, shoppers urged each other to stock up on Temu and Shein, in case the new administration followed through on its promise to tax US trade partners. 'Kinda feeling emo bc this may be the last good Black Friday for a while because of the tariffs,' one TikTok user wrote in a clip. 'Better collect your 'vintage Shein' because they will probably go for $100 next year.''
Two days after the election, the fashion writer Amy Odell warned readers of price hikes in a post to her BackRow Substack titled: 'Trump Won. So Shop Now.' Susan Scafidi, a lawyer and founder of Fordham's Fashion Law Institute, told Odell: 'Everything's going to be more expensive, which is a little crazy when you realize that a lot of the Trump appeal was with regard to the economy.'
Could the tariff kill fast fashion, an industry defined by wasteful over-consumption, as we know it? No, says Margaret Bishop, a textile and apparel specialist and professor at New York's Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. 'If anything, I think these tariffs will strengthen fast fashion's hold on customers,' she said. 'If everything costs more, particularly food, transportation and housing, they're going to have to cut back somewhere.
'Americans have a real hunger for new fashion, so they will trade down to be able to continue to buy things. If a $1 pack of T-shirts at Temu becomes $2 a pack, that's still cheaper than spending $20 for a couple of T-shirts that are better made,' she continued.
Sheng Lu, an associate professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, agreed that tariffs won't 'fundamentally shift' Americans' love of a good, if sketchy, deal. While small businesses will bear most of the pain from tariffs – due to supply chain snarls or the fact that Americans won't be able to spend as much – larger corporations such as Shein and Temu tend to absorb costs.
'These companies are resourceful,' Lu said. 'My more immediate concern is that small and medium-sized enterprises won't survive, or will face significant challenges.'
In 2023, a US congressional report alleged that there was an 'extremely high risk' that Temu used forced labor in its supply chain, and that both Shein and Temu evaded US human rights reviews. (Shein denied these claims at the time, while Temu did not comment on the report.) A recent report from the Swiss advocacy group Public Eye found that some Shein workers endure 75-hour work weeks. (Shein told the BBC it was 'working hard' to address the issues raised in the report.)
The fast-fashion industry is also synonymous with high carbon emissions and pollution.
Lu fears that tariffs will exacerbate these issues. 'If they have to pay more on tariff duties but at the same time make their prices competitive, that's not good news for workers or the environmental impact, because companies will have more incentive to cut corners,' he said.
Armacost knows that these e-commerce giants represent the worst of Americans' desire for excess. 'But also, at the same time, spending does stimulate the economy,' she said. 'In response to the idea that it's a good thing if people stop ordering so much random stuff, I say: 'What's the point of living in a country if I can't order 100 pieces of junk for $15?''