I’m quite amazed at the amount of hate in this thread. They were using a tax loophole to do fiscal optimization and anti competitive practice, now they won’t be able to. All this ultra liberalism is really ridiculous.
I was wondering how they were going to protect intermediaries from the growth of desintermediation platforms were consumers buy things from the factories or just the next link on the chain down from that.
Because intermediaries are the ones making lots of money importing the same stuff as people are now buying direct, putting a label on it, and selling it locally for at least 3x the price and their business model is threatened by consumers buying directly from the places were all the factories are.
Mind you, I’m all for less stuff being made in China and more in Europe, I just don’t think the Commission is doing this for that reason, since historically they tend to do what’s best for “business” and a lot of “business” in Europe is just being a brand for junk made in China or some other non-European country with cheap labour.
This is the best news all year.
Any low cost item, though?
What about my 20ct LEDs? Or the 2.50 ESP32?
That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to accept if it slows down people buying stuff mindlessly. Your 20ct LEDs delivery is being subsidised by European post services. Now it won’t.
Absolutely! I also love access to small, cheap electronic bits for my projects, and at the same time I’m all for protecting our postal services. A 2€ per package surcharge doesn’t practically change anything on the economy side. Temu already expects a minimum purchase of something like 20€.
My small concern with this is how it will be applied/processed by the carriers. I hope it doesn’t end up like the customs/VAT on larger packages, where they charge 10-20€ for customs clearance. But now that I write it down, for me, even that isn’t a complete blocking factor. I’d probably spend more time comparing the value of ordering direct vs from a local reseller, which is exactly the goal.
It’s per-package. As long as you order multiple at once, you’re good.
How is „per package“ defined? Per shipper? Per order? Per seller? How about one shipment that includes items for multiple people that are split in a local warehouse and resend?
I’d assume it’s per physical package entering the EU. The chinese sellers have been sending many small packages to go below tax limits, so they’ll probably have to change strategy.
I guess that depends on the country. In Germany it is the opposite, because the limit is 0€, so they send them in big „packages“ (actually one container at a time) and distribute it in their own distribution center from inside the country.
All of my recent Aliexpress purchases have come from the Netherlands, I assume there’s some big distribution center there
No it just mean more taxes, instead of increasing the EU production.
Hooray, things are going to be more expensive!
Did you care to read the article? There’s a real cost involved in handling these packages that is not being paid by customers nor by companies, but by the post services. I’m all for moving these costs to the people actually doing the buying. Bulk purchases are jot affected by this so things in general are not getting more expensive with this, but only individual deliveries.
I did not, actually, because it’s behind a paywall. I’ve linked and read another one in the comments but it fails to mention about post offices and says the money is going to customs.
Trump bottled this.
Well done EU.Lol. “Hey, so people are buying cheaper overseas goods, what should we do to sway them to buy local stuff? Create local factories to produce these things within the union? Lower VAT on locally produced goods? Naaah, let’s add another tax on top of existing ones.” Fucking parasites.
Well its pretty hard to compete with local factories if they can produce it with significantly lower costs due to terrible worker conditions and child labor
Yeah, it’s the VAT preventing the EU from producing this so cheaply…
Taxing to death is not the answer. Even Trump with its ‘liberation day’ knows what’s needed is to re-localize the actual production and that taxing importation to death is only a mean to that end. Save in the EU, I suppose…
It’s so tiring.
Other than small electronic components this tax will affect landfill junk and garbage, will it not?
Hard to say. It mostly depends how much people are willing to purchase those useless goods and, then, how many people are willing to provide them an easy way to purchase those at the cheapest cost. If it’s not China, it could be some other place. Think fashion if you want to understand how I consider the issue: it’s a huge business with little sense to it when you think about it. Most people own way too much clothes already, more then what they would need in their lifetime but it’s still not enough and they keep on buying more following trends and fashions, spending good money on something they don’t need and they happily completely disregard the many environmental issues as well as the human ones (modern day slavery, child labor and so on). Because it’s what they like and what they want an,d because it’s so easy to buy a new pair of jeans or a skirt.
Most people are lazy and they like simplicity above anything else. Simplicity helps them stay lazy. They like that even above saving money or protecting their fundamentals rights as citizens (or to keeping breathable the air and the water they need to stay alive), they like it more than getting a better (but more demanding) education, and so on. We’re lazy everywhere, most of us at least. And I mean everywhere, including here when commenting: I got two comments, including yours, to my message while a majority of people silently downvoted it. The thing is their clicking of a button won’t help anyone (certainly not me) understand why my comment may or may not have deserved to be downvoted but writing and explaining their point of view, or their reasoning, instead of simply clicking that button is already too much work for them.
So, yeah I may be wrong that’s a sure thing but I don’t think a tax will change much in the amount of waste we create. Alas, it will be produced (and purchased) from some other place, end of the story.
trump wants relocation of manufacturing but how many Americans or Europeans want to work in a factory making 20 cent trinkets all day?
most countries try to move up the value chain
trump wants relocation of manufacturing but how many Americans or Europeans want to work in a factory making 20 cent trinkets all day?
None, true that.
The thing is that most of those ‘MAGA’ or ‘MEUGA’ jobs will be automatized/robotized and even less people will be happy about not having a job at all than having a poorly paid one. But it’s coming whether we want it or not. The only unknown is how fast?
This oligarchy only knows to rise taxes. One more time that will take a part of those taxes for their own privileges
Taking issue with a tax on cheap Chinese goods is an interesting hill to die on
