EU to impose €2 tax on low-cost items in blow to Temu and Shein

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.
- It's per-package. As long as you order multiple at once, you're good.
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.

No paywall, same topic: https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/eu-proposes-e2-package-fee-to-tackle-flood-of-chinese-low-cost-goods/

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.

Trump bottled this.
Well done EU.

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.

Keep in mind: If you order a device directly from China, you become the importer of that device. This includes liability, e.g. for damage caused by a faulty product.
- That's what business insurance is for.
  Its cost per-item is well below the price markup.

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...
No, people shouldnt buy these things locally, they should just stop buying tons of bullshit they dont need from china.

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
- Moving China to the correct country price group will solve the issue. EU don't have to pay for them.

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.

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?
- 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.