how does Temu respond to tariff threats?

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The Trump administration’s latest tariff threats have elevated uncertainty over the enterprise mannequin of Temu and different giant ecommerce teams. The White Home reversed its preliminary closure in 2025 of a loophole that allowed low-value parcels shipped from China to enter the US with minimal fuss and no import taxes. However the chance of a everlasting transfer lingers.

Opinion is split over the ensuing risk to the enterprise. The FT’s Lex Column argued: “Chinese language on-line retailer doesn’t want a tax quirk to be an enormous risk to bricks-and-mortar retailers.”

Nevertheless, for the Economist, “Many American shoppers have been keen to miss the customarily shoddy high quality of merchandise from Shein and Temu as a result of they’re so low-cost. This may change when tariffs and different customs charges are added, which in some circumstances will double the costs for shoppers.”

Which evaluation is extra compelling? Temu is owned by PDD Holdings, a Chinese language firm. Temu operates an internet B2C platform that went dwell within the US in September 2022. Worldwide growth has been speedy: by 2024, it was working in nearly 80 international locations. Annual revenues had been estimated at $50bn, a three-fold improve over 2023.

Most descriptions of Temu’s enterprise mannequin emphasise its capability to leverage decrease labour prices in China to make hundreds of thousands of family merchandise accessible to clients overseas. Temu sells merchandise made by firms that don’t have internationally recognised manufacturers. Whereas reviews range, Temu has been discovered to have costs as much as 80 per cent decrease than rival ecommerce platforms and nonetheless provides free delivery and returns.

The expansion slowdown in Chinese language consumption has compelled the nation’s producers to look to different markets for his or her current capability, promoting nearer to marginal prices. Temu has been effectively positioned to capitalise on this case.

Throughout 2024, effectively earlier than President Trump’s most up-to-date transfer, Temu would have picked up on indicators from officers in Washington and Brussels that low price imports could be topic to more durable import regimes. Adversarial coverage strikes are usually not confined to Western economies. Indonesia was an early mover, imposing restrictions on overseas ecommerce platforms in September 2023.

But coverage adjustments take time to be promulgated and rolled out. Typically mooted commerce coverage adjustments don’t occur in any respect and, even when they do, restrictive measures may be reversed after a backlash from these clients which have been harmed. Tens of hundreds of thousands of Individuals and Europeans use Temu’s app.

Sensible concerns intrude as effectively. For the time being, US customs officers merely don’t have the capability to course of the extra paperwork. These concerns are factored in as firms assess their publicity to additional protectionism. Temu took them into consideration in a sequence of swift responses:

• A world gross sales diversification push to scale back dependence on the US market to lower than half world revenues

• The sourcing of merchandise bought within the US market from non-Chinese language places

• Providing to promote on its platform the merchandise of different firms, which retain duty for delivery their merchandise to the US

• Establishing warehouses within the US and delivery full containers from China, forgoing customized responsibility exemptions

These strikes spotlight the varied levels of freedom accessible to ecommerce platforms that function internationally. Commerce tensions and commerce wars are typically bilateral or confined to a small variety of international locations. With greater than 200 customs territories around the globe, Temu has many choices for reconfiguring its industrial footprint and its operations. 

However are the strikes outlined above sufficient to make sure that the corporate continues to thrive? And what prices — specific and hidden — are concerned? Since competitors is at all times relative, consideration must be given to the relative strengths of different ecommerce platforms, to bricks-and-mortar retailers and to firms reaching clients via an omnichannel technique, which gives a seamless expertise throughout web sites, apps, social media and different channels.

Since ecommerce enterprise fashions have a “winner takes all of it” strategy, might Temu have already grown so massive that it may possibly take protectionism in its stride?

Carlos Cordon is Professor of Technique and Provide Chain Administration at IMD. Simon J. Evenett is Professor of Geopolitics & Technique at IMD and Co-Chair of the World Financial Discussion board’s International Futures Council on Commerce & Funding.