I ordered an FPGA development board from China last month that unfortunately didn’t make it out of the country before tariffs/end of de minimis set in. So it’s now sitting in a consolidation warehouse overseas while I figure out what to do with it. Paying almost double its value in taxes alone just kills its viability as a hobby, and sourcing it overseas is the only way to get hands on hardware without shelling out $2,000+.
There’s a whole cottage industry over there where they harvest semiconductors from junk/e-waste and turn them in to usable products again. I assume that’s where the actual FPGA chip came from.
I had to delay learning PCB design during Covid because I couldn't source any parts.
Now prototypes will cost at least 2x, if not more.
These tariffs are essentially shooting US technology development in the foot. Chinese engineers will have the greatest access in the world to manufacturing and components, while engineers in the US who don't already have a large company to bankroll them will just find something else to do.
I had some projects in the pipeline that I might not bother with now. It's simply not worth the money. US PCB fabs are probably even worse, they still get a lot made overseas, but now they also hate you because they exist to do large orders for the DoD, not joe schmo democratizing hardware.
I think what you're referring to is insidious and not getting anywhere near enough attention.
There's constant clamoring about increasing STEM engagement and then they go and kill off accessibility of tech.
Tech access is important all the way up and down the cost spectrum. The way people — kids as well as adults — get interested in this stuff is by having things to play with and use. You have an idea and want to work on a prototype? Now it's more expensive. Want to build something with your kid to get them interested in hardware? More expensive.
> junk/e-waste and turn them in to usable products again.
Could you expend on this? In my understanding (armchair-youtube-expert), seminconductor "recycling" is basically burning the device and to scrap the metallic parts then using as usual cyanide+boiling chloride (or mercury) to extract gold. Then throw away everything else.
The less industrial method involves human dissection of such devices (with pre and post burning) to extract Silver/Cooper
What’s the definition of loophole? How is shipping small packages without taxing them a loophole if that’s the exact thing the exemption was introduced for? Is driving an electric car and getting a tax credit a loophole too?
I think loophole is probably appropriate. The spirit of the law was of course low value goods are not worth the burden. The increase to 800 in 2016 was probably a little much but who would have guessed whole business models would run off of this ruling. The spirit is for small shipments, not entire business models running off of it.
The argument was that grandma would be shipping you nice cookies and it'd be annoying if you had to pay tarriff on receive foodstuff.
Temu is not grandma so that's where the loophole comment comes from. It wasn't meant to be used large-scale commercially where you ship 100 small packages instead of 1 large package to avoid the tarrif.
Essentially the reason why this is a loophole, is because Chinese companies like Shein and Temu have structured their entire businesses around shipping directly from China and marketing directly to the United States so that a company like Amazon would need to pay tariffs on all it’s goods, because it imports into the US directly and Shein and Temu would have to pay no tariffs.
It makes no sense for the United States to charge 145% tariffs to normal American companies, and then allow a loophole so that large Chinese e-commerce giants essentially benefit by structuring their business to not operate in the United States. The purpose of the tariff’s is to increase American employment not decrease it.
A loophole to minimize administrative burden makes no sense when applied to companies selling tens of billions of dollars into the US every year.
It was a loophole. The country taxes imports of X, the intent is for those who sell X in the US to pay the tax.
Standard retailers using distribution have to pay it. But if you put the warehouses outside the US and ship direct you don’t. That’s not how the law was supposed to work.
De minimus is a legal term that means something. It means so small as to not matter. When retailers figured out how to use this approach to send hundreds of billions of dollars of goods without the intended tax, they were exploiting a loophole.
It being closed should have happened ages ago it’s just confusing now because it’s in the midst of a lot of other tariff activity that makes a lot less sense.
We start talking about carve-outs and credits as loopholes when the use begins to violate the spirit. No one has figured out how to capture the electric car tax credit without meeting the spirit, so it’s not a loophole yet.
As an example if you ship a $3196 product in four packages, each valued at $799, you are following the letter of the law but not the spirit.
It’s a “loophole” because the system didn’t anticipate that consumers could basically place all their orders directly from suppliers halfway across the world, and that shipping would become inefficient that individual goods could be delivered for pennies.
The exemption existed for stuff like samples, initial batches, one-off items, etc. not so the entire industry could run off these exemptions.
I'm in Europe. My wife buys a lot of stuff directly from China via their internal/domestic marketplaces 1688.com and TaoBao.com. (Better prices, better service, just use a translator app and ship to a freight forwarder.) Currently, those domestic/internal marketplaces are being flooded with cheap stuff. Like $5 jackets of very decent quality. Now's the best-ever time to be a Chinese consumer. (Or one with a freight forwarder and o3 handling translation, as long as you're not in the USA.)
I don't know how hard the manufacturers themselves are complaining, but to some extent you have to imagine that they anticipated this and are looking to recalibrate production and reroute goods.
International trade is always a bit delayed due to the volume of stocked goods, and those en route on container ships. The effects will become visible soon though.
Without US demand, Aliexpress is shipping from PRC to CAN in like 7-10 days, which is faster than Amazon without prime. I haven't had to freight forward from Taobao for a bit, I imagine the same.
> how hard the manufacturers themselves are complaining
China is facing an economic situation similar to the COVID lockdowns. The export economy is collapsing, and factories are engaged in "suicidal price wars" just to get a little bit of money from their stock.
Do you mean that because those aren't going to the US, the excess stock is being listed on Chinese marketplaces (and at low prices due to being excess)? Were goods sold in China much more expensive previously?
How does it hurt the US for consumers to be able to buy cheap goods from China that would cost a lot more if made here? Cheap clothes are not a national security issue.
The US should be self-reliant on things like electronics, software, industrial equipment, but for many classes of items there is no benefit in pushing up prices for US consumers.
I'm generally in favor of more diversification, but I really don't think tariffs are the way to go about it. Especially not general tariffs with no conditions for their reduction or removal.
There are other ways to diversify sourcing and encourage internal production.
There's nothing rational about these tariffs in stated aims or implementation.
If your desired goal is to reduce our dependence on Chinese imports you should actually be completely against what this administration is doing. The doubled cost of importing equipment to build new factories, the unpredictability of policies changing by the month discouraging investment, the locking up of our economy (consumer and industrial) from everything we currently rely on doubling in price. All of these are things that will destroy domestic industry, and at this point it should be painfully clear that there is no plan for actually constructively growing our economy. Yet meanwhile killing the constructive attempts by the Biden administration (eg CHIPS), because you can't have the other team be successful at helping the country!
Then let's look at some of the second order effects. A container of cargo going to a US (eg Amazon) warehouse has to pay tariffs up front, whereas a direct-from-China purchase can pay the tariffs at the border with cash-in-hand. So that gives a leg up to Chinese vendors and marketplaces.
Think about Chinese companies building out factories in other countries. The tariff tax enthusiast response is to imagine we'll respond by raising tariffs on those countries as well like some game of wack-a-mole. But the reality is that trend will be spreading Chinese investment and influence even further throughout the world, and any post-facto attempt at punishment will just push that country fully into the Chinese sphere of influence!
When examined, every single action by this administration seems to be much closer to supporting the desires of our adversaries rather than helping our own situation. It's hard to know exactly whether these people are directly working for foreign interests, just following the winds of social media campaigns working hard to promote edgy feel-smart but society-killing memes, or somewhere in the middle with a wink-wink. But regardless, we need to pull up hard from this societal embrace of team-sport ignorance if we want to have any future that isn't being a hollowed out backwater.
Just read an article about how overseas shippers have been flooding warehouses up here in Canada stockpiling cheap goods destinated for the US market, hoping for the tariffs to get dropped soon:
Article notes that if the tariffs don't get dropped shortly, the cost of warehousing will exceed the tariff cost, and the goods will get dumped into the Canadian market. (Win? Maybe?)
Then we have companies that set up their distributor model to be North American wide, screwing Canadian consumers (adding in tariff overhead for them and taking it as profit) because they still route their goods through the US: https://petapixel.com/2025/04/30/leica-raises-prices-in-cana...
Up to $800 is not "small parcels" in my book. We used to have the similar (but lower value limit) exemptions in (some) EU countries but those have been abolished several years ago, as well as discounted shipping rates for China as it was finally upgraded away from "developing nation" status.
From what I’ve read in other articles that stated it more-clearly than this one, US de minimus is suspended for only China and Hong Kong (for now…), right?
US had a de minimis (<$800) tariff exemption for goods originating from all countries, but that has now been removed for China and Hong Kong, so all goods from those countries, regardless of price, will now incur a US import tax (tariff) at whatever rate Trump is currently imposing (125% for China?).
Basically cheap cloths from Shein/Temu, cheap electronics on eBay, etc all just doubled in price.
DIY fixing cars/tractors/lawnmover just became much more expensive. Chinese carburetors were cheaper on Amazon than a first party rebuild/gasket set at your traditional part suppliers.
> After a series of rises to the threshold, it allowed retailers to ship packages worth less than $800 to US customers without having to pay duties or taxes.
> The European Union has also proposed plans to scrap duty-free exemptions for parcels worth less than €150 (£127.50; $169.35).
Does the threshold apply the package entering the border (a container) or the package for the foreseen destination (the cardboard in your mailbox)?
Domestic production can’t keep up with demand for things like clothes and PCBs.
Weddings are about to get interesting. May regress (“regress”, arguably this is totally fine) to the 1980s and earlier where having special complex color-coordinated dresses for all your bridesmaids was something only the upper-middle and higher could afford. Lots of perfect Disney wedding dreams about to get a ton more expensive.
[edit] it could keep up, of course, especially with depressed demand from higher prices, but it’ll take quite a while to ramp that up, and there won’t be a lot of takers for that investment while de minimus remains in place for other markets that could take over that manufacturing cheaper than the US—India, Vietnam, Indonesia, DR, et c.
On what timeline? Does the current environment even encourage companies making huge investments into the U.S. (and no, the pinky promises that we hear about aren't investments) since it'll just change in four years?
There is no central industrial policy being proposed or passed via Congress, just a mad king imposing tariffs on a whim.
[+] [-] invokestatic|10 months ago|reply
There’s a whole cottage industry over there where they harvest semiconductors from junk/e-waste and turn them in to usable products again. I assume that’s where the actual FPGA chip came from.
[+] [-] MSFT_Edging|10 months ago|reply
Now prototypes will cost at least 2x, if not more.
These tariffs are essentially shooting US technology development in the foot. Chinese engineers will have the greatest access in the world to manufacturing and components, while engineers in the US who don't already have a large company to bankroll them will just find something else to do.
I had some projects in the pipeline that I might not bother with now. It's simply not worth the money. US PCB fabs are probably even worse, they still get a lot made overseas, but now they also hate you because they exist to do large orders for the DoD, not joe schmo democratizing hardware.
[+] [-] derbOac|10 months ago|reply
There's constant clamoring about increasing STEM engagement and then they go and kill off accessibility of tech.
Tech access is important all the way up and down the cost spectrum. The way people — kids as well as adults — get interested in this stuff is by having things to play with and use. You have an idea and want to work on a prototype? Now it's more expensive. Want to build something with your kid to get them interested in hardware? More expensive.
[+] [-] aziaziazi|10 months ago|reply
Could you expend on this? In my understanding (armchair-youtube-expert), seminconductor "recycling" is basically burning the device and to scrap the metallic parts then using as usual cyanide+boiling chloride (or mercury) to extract gold. Then throw away everything else.
The less industrial method involves human dissection of such devices (with pre and post burning) to extract Silver/Cooper
[+] [-] echoangle|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] infecto|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lesuorac|10 months ago|reply
Temu is not grandma so that's where the loophole comment comes from. It wasn't meant to be used large-scale commercially where you ship 100 small packages instead of 1 large package to avoid the tarrif.
[+] [-] daft_pink|10 months ago|reply
It makes no sense for the United States to charge 145% tariffs to normal American companies, and then allow a loophole so that large Chinese e-commerce giants essentially benefit by structuring their business to not operate in the United States. The purpose of the tariff’s is to increase American employment not decrease it.
A loophole to minimize administrative burden makes no sense when applied to companies selling tens of billions of dollars into the US every year.
[+] [-] CPLX|10 months ago|reply
Standard retailers using distribution have to pay it. But if you put the warehouses outside the US and ship direct you don’t. That’s not how the law was supposed to work.
De minimus is a legal term that means something. It means so small as to not matter. When retailers figured out how to use this approach to send hundreds of billions of dollars of goods without the intended tax, they were exploiting a loophole.
It being closed should have happened ages ago it’s just confusing now because it’s in the midst of a lot of other tariff activity that makes a lot less sense.
[+] [-] ip26|10 months ago|reply
As an example if you ship a $3196 product in four packages, each valued at $799, you are following the letter of the law but not the spirit.
[+] [-] hshdhdhj4444|10 months ago|reply
The exemption existed for stuff like samples, initial batches, one-off items, etc. not so the entire industry could run off these exemptions.
[+] [-] A_D_E_P_T|10 months ago|reply
I don't know how hard the manufacturers themselves are complaining, but to some extent you have to imagine that they anticipated this and are looking to recalibrate production and reroute goods.
[+] [-] 9dev|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] folli|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] maxglute|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] zdragnar|10 months ago|reply
China is facing an economic situation similar to the COVID lockdowns. The export economy is collapsing, and factories are engaged in "suicidal price wars" just to get a little bit of money from their stock.
https://www.rfa.org/english/china/2025/04/29/china-us-tariff...
[+] [-] rendaw|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] sarchertech|10 months ago|reply
The externalities for all the cheap stuff we import are too high and the market will never do anything about them.
[+] [-] HarHarVeryFunny|10 months ago|reply
The US should be self-reliant on things like electronics, software, industrial equipment, but for many classes of items there is no benefit in pushing up prices for US consumers.
[+] [-] drumhead|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] derbOac|10 months ago|reply
There are other ways to diversify sourcing and encourage internal production.
There's nothing rational about these tariffs in stated aims or implementation.
[+] [-] mindslight|10 months ago|reply
Then let's look at some of the second order effects. A container of cargo going to a US (eg Amazon) warehouse has to pay tariffs up front, whereas a direct-from-China purchase can pay the tariffs at the border with cash-in-hand. So that gives a leg up to Chinese vendors and marketplaces.
Think about Chinese companies building out factories in other countries. The tariff tax enthusiast response is to imagine we'll respond by raising tariffs on those countries as well like some game of wack-a-mole. But the reality is that trend will be spreading Chinese investment and influence even further throughout the world, and any post-facto attempt at punishment will just push that country fully into the Chinese sphere of influence!
When examined, every single action by this administration seems to be much closer to supporting the desires of our adversaries rather than helping our own situation. It's hard to know exactly whether these people are directly working for foreign interests, just following the winds of social media campaigns working hard to promote edgy feel-smart but society-killing memes, or somewhere in the middle with a wink-wink. But regardless, we need to pull up hard from this societal embrace of team-sport ignorance if we want to have any future that isn't being a hollowed out backwater.
[+] [-] phyzix5761|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|10 months ago|reply
https://archive.is/PjEgL
Article notes that if the tariffs don't get dropped shortly, the cost of warehousing will exceed the tariff cost, and the goods will get dumped into the Canadian market. (Win? Maybe?)
Then we have companies that set up their distributor model to be North American wide, screwing Canadian consumers (adding in tariff overhead for them and taking it as profit) because they still route their goods through the US: https://petapixel.com/2025/04/30/leica-raises-prices-in-cana...
Everything is a mess
[+] [-] rwmj|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] sspiff|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] friendzis|10 months ago|reply
What parent refers to is small parcel exemption to VAT, however every larger retailer adjusted to that and are now declaring VAT on their end.
Personally, I would say this is a net win
[+] [-] alabastervlog|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] HarHarVeryFunny|10 months ago|reply
Basically cheap cloths from Shein/Temu, cheap electronics on eBay, etc all just doubled in price.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] sarchertech|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] aziaziazi|10 months ago|reply
> The European Union has also proposed plans to scrap duty-free exemptions for parcels worth less than €150 (£127.50; $169.35).
Does the threshold apply the package entering the border (a container) or the package for the foreseen destination (the cardboard in your mailbox)?
[+] [-] OutOfHere|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] drumhead|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] alabastervlog|10 months ago|reply
Weddings are about to get interesting. May regress (“regress”, arguably this is totally fine) to the 1980s and earlier where having special complex color-coordinated dresses for all your bridesmaids was something only the upper-middle and higher could afford. Lots of perfect Disney wedding dreams about to get a ton more expensive.
[edit] it could keep up, of course, especially with depressed demand from higher prices, but it’ll take quite a while to ramp that up, and there won’t be a lot of takers for that investment while de minimus remains in place for other markets that could take over that manufacturing cheaper than the US—India, Vietnam, Indonesia, DR, et c.
[+] [-] hypeatei|10 months ago|reply
On what timeline? Does the current environment even encourage companies making huge investments into the U.S. (and no, the pinky promises that we hear about aren't investments) since it'll just change in four years?
There is no central industrial policy being proposed or passed via Congress, just a mad king imposing tariffs on a whim.
[+] [-] glimshe|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] IG_Semmelweiss|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] geenkeuse|10 months ago|reply
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