Discount Chinese retail app Temu appears to be passing on nearly all of US President Donald Trump’s new import taxes to American consumers, more than doubling the cost of some products in a move that may add to concern about the inflationary impact of tariffs.
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Previously exempted from any levies under the so-called de minimis rule, parcels priced up to US$800 from China now face an ad-valorem tax of 120 per cent of a product’s value, or a per postal item fee of at least US$100 starting May 2. PDD Holdings-owned Temu is requiring customers to pay those levies on top of the original cost of the goods.
A look at 14 shipped-from-China items on Temu’s bestsellers list showed taxes exceeded the value of the product. A US$19.49 power strip, for instance, attracted US$27.56 in import charges as of Monday, or 1.41 times the price of the product.
However, there are no import surcharges on items that are already available in US warehouses, keeping the prices of such goods generally stable.
Among the top 80 items on Temu’s recommended bestsellers, 66 items are marked to be shipped from local warehouses, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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