Opinion: Biden’s War on Temu is a political war on your wallet

By Thomas L. Knapp

On Sept. 13, the Biden administration announced a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” to “protect American consumers, workers, and businesses by addressing the significant increased abuse of the de minimis exemption.”

That’s a pretty bland way of saying that Biden and friends are opening up a new front in the U.S. government’s war on your ability to find and purchase the things you want at a price you find attractive.

The current targets of opportunity in that war: Chinese e-commerce outfits like Temu and Shein, which use the “de minimis exemption” to ship goods directly to American consumers at low prices.

Under the de minimis exemption, items worth less than $800 aren’t subject to the tariffs Donald Trump and Joe Biden have increasingly leaned on over the last few years as a way of rewarding American business donors and organized labor supporters at your expense.

How things used to work: A U.S. importer would order, say, $10,000 worth of, say, motorcycle helmets. They’d arrive in a big shipping container and if the tariff was 10 percent, the importer’s cost (passed on to retail customers, of course) now became $11,000 — and the customers’ cost came to that higher price plus the wholesalers’ and retailers’ markups.

How it works now: You find a motorcycle helmet you like online, priced with no tariff and fewer “middleman” markups. You click. You pay. It arrives. It’s not as quick as going to a local shop or ordering from Amazon, but it’s usually MUCH cheaper.

American customers love paying less for what they want or need.

American producers, wholesalers, and labor unions hate that you’re able to pay less for something you want or need ... because they’re not getting their cut.

Domestic retailers, meanwhile, are increasingly eyeing the whole thing as a new supply chain streamlining opportunity. With so much commerce taking place online now, why not just drop-ship individual items directly from China to consumers instead of paying tariffs on bulk purchases that then require additional shipping and take up expensive shelf space until they’re bought with the assistance of paid store staff?

Biden’s hoping Big Business and Big Labor will notice he’s ripping you off for their benefit and support Democrats in November. He’s also hoping voters won’t notice their lighter wallets.

Don’t buy Biden’s malarkey about “national security,” fentanyl, and “protecting” you from “abuse.” This is about paying political allies off with your hard-earned money, and that’s all it’s about.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism