I thought I had outsmarted Donald Trump’s tariffs, but I was wrong. Well, at least sort of.
On August 29, the US government officially ended an 87-year-old rule that allowed Americans to import small packages tariff-free. Known as the de minimis exemption, the policy had allowed shipments under a certain value threshold—$800 in recent years—to clear customs without paying any duties. Policymakers have been debating changing de minimis for years, but when it finally happened, the move still sent shock waves through the global ecommerce and shipping industries.
Twelve days before the new rule went into effect, I placed an order on Etsy for a set of custom wooden slats to cover my living room cabinet doors for a more polished look. This is my second time shopping from the same indie seller, so I knew they were based in Ukraine. But I was hoping that I made my purchase early enough to beat the de minimis deadline and save on tariffs. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.
It’s now September, and my package still hasn’t arrived. Denys, the shop owner, explains that my order got caught in a bureaucratic vortex after it was shipped in the days leading up to the end of de minimis, when customs agencies had not yet established clear new procedures for tracking small packages and applying tariffs to them. “Based on what we see, customs may take another week or two to fully adapt,” Denys said on Tuesday.
The total value of the order was less than $40, far below the old de minimis threshold, but thanks to processing disruptions and delays, my package is now subject to Trump’s country-specific tariffs. They’re just 10 percent for goods from Ukraine, and Denys says he’s willing to cover the added costs himself because he wants international customers to remain happy “with Ukrainian brands in general.”
While I personally won’t have to pay more for this specific purchase, the experience underscores a deeper point about the whole de minimis mess: While headlines largely focus on how Trump’s new tariff regime is affecting giants like Amazon, Walmart, Shein, or Temu, those who are feeling the squeeze the most are small foreign business owners like Denys.
Unexpected Winners
In fact, the Chinese ecommerce giants may already have an advantage in this new environment. Since May, Chinese packages have no longer qualified for the de minimis exemption. That means Shein and Temu have had a few months to adjust to the new rules before the Trump administration expanded them to the rest of the world. And it turns out, the elimination of de minimis hasn’t stopped their overall growth: The Chinese publication LatePost reported that global sales for Shein and Temu are higher this year compared to 2024.
Seema Shah, vice president of research and insights at Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, says that Temu and Shein slashed their US advertising spending by 87 percent and 27 percent, respectively, in the second quarter of 2025 (when the new tariffs went into effect) compared to the first quarter of the year. Paid marketing has been especially important for Temu and Shein because they face higher user churn rates than their American competitors. But if they doubted their US business could stay profitable in face of the new trade policies, why would they spend money trying to acquire more users here? “Business-wise, that makes sense. There’s no point in spending money when you're in the news in a negative way,” Shah says.
But Shein and Temu didn’t stop marketing altogether. Instead, both companies chose to shift their ad budgets abroad to regions where the geopolitical risks were perceived to be lower and growth opportunities more abundant. Shein spent 22 percent of its overall advertising spend in the US market during the second quarter, compared to 39 percent in the first three months of 2025, according to Sensor Tower. Temu’s US spend, meanwhile, went from 47 percent to merely 9 percent. As a result, Shein and Temu’s sales in countries other than the US, such as the UK, have surged to record highs.
But the dip didn’t last long. After hitting rock bottom in June, both companies began ramping back up their US ad spending in July, Shah’s data shows. In August, Shein spent more on marketing in the US than it did in August 2024.
The figures reflect the fact that the Chinese platforms had figured out a new playbook: continue shipping products despite the tariffs, pass some costs to consumers, and stay competitive by focusing on building independent supply chains and warehouse networks that can help keep shipping costs down.
App store charts suggest that the new strategy is working. After a brief slide in popularity earlier this year, Shein and Temu were now once again ranking within the top 5 apps in the shopping category of the US Apple App Store and Google Play store as of Wednesday.
Temu and Shein did not immediately reply to requests for comment from WIRED.
Behind the Curve
The big Chinese platforms had been preparing for the end of de minimis for more than a year and were able to quickly recalibrate their logistics strategies when the tariffs finally went into effect. The same cannot be said for independent shops.
Denys, the Ukrainian Etsy shop owner, says he’s anticipating needing to raise the price of his products to stay afloat. “If the new tariffs remain, prices will inevitably increase by at least that 10 percent in the future,” he says.
He has recently begun working with a local Ukrainian shipping company called NovaPost, which stepped in to help sellers navigate customs procedures and pledged to shoulder part of the fee increases for local companies. The situation in Ukraine is far less chaotic than in other parts of the world, where many postal companies have completely halted sending packages to the US because of ongoing confusion over the details of Trump’s trade policies.
I think we all benefit from being able to shop from small vendors around the world. Over the past few years, I’ve purchased a 3D-printed topographic map from Canada, art prints from Germany, and Denys’ woodwork from Ukraine. I didn’t set out to shop from foreign brands, but modern global ecommerce platforms gave me access to a wider range of products, which were often sold at lower prices than the goods in nearby retail stores. Short of learning carpentry myself, Denys’ Etsy shop in Ukraine is probably the best option for getting affordable customized woodwork to my home in New York City.
But with the end of de minimis, many Americans might choose to cut back on buying artisanal goods and other nonessential items from abroad. If that happens, small sellers will be the ones hit the hardest. “This mostly affects impulse buying and then things we don’t need,” Juozas Kaziukėnas, an ecommerce platform analyst, told my colleague Boone Ashworth. “It's not affecting the price of milk, for example.”
I’m still waiting for my wooden slats, which Denys says should finally clear customs soon. I’m hoping that businesses like his are able to survive in this new ecosystem. Otherwise, I might have no choice but to take up carpentry, but who knows how much I would have to pay in tariffs on my new woodworking tools?
This is an edition of Zeyi Yang and Louise Matsakis’ Made in China newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
