I try to a avoid Temu, but they have some good traits, too, like quick and convinient shipping.
Seems fine
The EU began enforcing a small parcel tax directly against Temu last May [0] and France has been strongly lobbying against Shein and Temu [1]. The EU has also made Chinese overproduction a critical topic of discussion for EU-China relations [2][3], and barring Temu and Shein is backed by both unions and industrial groups within Europe [4].
All of this is linking to the EU's strategy of playing hardball against Chinese support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine [5][6], as well as pushing back against the Chinese perception that the EU is a has-been [7] as well as conducting an active info-war against a European state [8].
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c373...
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/b1fdbad1-2793-4975-a10b-74bb928d3...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/eu-law...
[3] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20260326IP...
[4] - https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2025/09/15/les-indus...
[5] - https://www.bruegel.org/podcast/how-war-ukraine-reshaping-eu...
[6] - https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2025-01-...
[7] - https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/_t2515/57/f8/c21257a743416/page.ht...
[8] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
Ah of course, I do want the state regulating what I can and cannot buy when it comes to junk. Only approved goods should be allowed.
If you don't build nor buy European, you become a vassal of either the US or China.
TEMO will more than likely just pass the cost of this onto EU consumers.
I take it you don't?
Good. I want to know my AIEONUS phone charger isn't going to burn my house down and I'm more than happy pay a premium for that knowledge.
The best way to fight Temu would be to maintain a society where young people are not so desperate that the only comfort they can afford is to order the cheapest crap online.
Competition, innovation, etc. Progress, you know.
† If you lived in the German Democratic Republic (aka "East Germany") in 1950 you could literally just walk to West Germany, by 1961 all other borders are closed and fenced and in Berlin the Wall is up and people who try to escape are being executed routinely. This didn't happen instantly over night, but it took about a decade to go from routine to "Vast majority of people who attempt it are killed".
Enforcement on individually shipped imports is hard regardless of where you are. Traditionally enforcement is through spot checks of bulk imports, and leaning hard on the importer who has a clear nexus.
There's something unpleasantly snobbish with the way business is done here, a spirit of "if you have to ask the price, our business is not for you". For example, in Instagram, "Local offerings" pop up all the time in the feed. The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed. The ones that show actual prices tend to be shell companies with no employees, no doubt a thin wrapper around an importer from Asia.
Don't get me wrong. I think companies should be held to higher standards: i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system.
Edit: Reply to Scroll_Swe as I am rate-limited to posting new comments. The chargers in budget stores are identical to Temu chargers are are frequently recalled.
The line should be drawn by parents.
The paternalism really has gone too far,
and people are (incorrectly and dangerously) expecting to be protected now.
That is not a good reason to fudge certifications and sell dangerous goods. I sympathise with your use case, but the solution is not "let’s just import whatever, as long as it’s cheap".
I can buy 3 from the local store or a BAG OF ONE HUNDRED from Aliexpress.
Not a hard decision tbh.
I cannot speak for the specific part of Europe that you are in, but in the professional Photography community, it is common practice to not list prices and instead have a "contact us" option. The reason isn't a, "Look at us, we're so exclusive and fancy!" Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off or think they are a master negotiator and can essentially get the work done for free. All of the professionals I've spoken to are happy to work with customers to find a package at an affordable price for them, or at least recommend other professionals in whatever price range they have in mind. The issue is that its exceptionally hard to convey that in a sincere, real way because if someone only sees a price of say $10 000 or whatever, they are naturally going to assume that you cannot possibly get anything for $100-$1 000.
In truth though, many are glad to try and accommodate and get people something that they will be happy with. Perhaps it ends up being 1 or 2 photos instead of an album of photos or whatever, or perhaps the photoshoot is a little bit more "low budget" than a standard one, but there is still lots of opportunity to get the client something they will be happy with. People tend to get wrapped up in the bottom line though, and just assume that they can't afford to capture a happy memory because of the cost - that's something that photographers really want to avoid because (aside from scaring off paying customers! :) ) it means less photos existing, or making it feel impossibly hard to ever show an interest in photography, which is very sad for people who live and breath it.
Yet somehow other businesses manage to convey tiered pricing without scaring customers.
Imagine trying to book a hotel room but were told to contact them because they have a range of rooms from single bed to honeymoon suite. "We couldn't possibly list all the packages, it would confuse you!"
Or try to buy a car, but the dealer refused to list a base price because "we have so many options it's meaningless".
Withholding guideline or indicative pricing is a deliberate obfuscation designed to increase friction and reduce choice.
There are some that are genuinely dangerous and bad for society, but there are tons of goods that are "the same thing but half the price because it lasts a quarter the time" that have genuine utility.
Harbor Freight has basically made a drop-shipping business out of it. I often have tools that I need but will probably use 4 times in my life, and the Harbor Freight stuff is crap but will probably work 4 times.
Copy that over a bunch of verticals and it starts to make sense. Clothing for a costume I'll wear maybe twice, niche cooking gadgets for very specific things, tools to do a one-time repair on a car, a flash drive to turn over photos to family members, yada yada.
Europe has historically had pretty strict consumer protection laws, and ever since the end of the Cold War these consumer protection laws have been slowly chipped away. When I was a kid for example companies were not allowed to target children in their marketing material. When American media became predominant in the continent, instead of enforcing our own consumer protection laws against American advertisers, regulators just ignored it and allowed it to proliferate, effectively making ads targeting children legal in the continent. Regulators have been showing the exact same inaction towards Chinese retailers breaking our own laws as they did towards American advertisers three decades ago. I foresee that consumer safety laws getting the same fate as the ban on ads targeting children.
https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/amazon-is-wrong-to-use-...
Small businesses that do the work of curating a niche item, doing QA work that's absent on the shipments from china, and then offering much stronger aftermarket support/replacement/repair? That is often worth a (substantial) premium over wondering if the item showing up in a month is going to work as intended.
Aka like Amazon but with much smaller margins.
The savings would come from the fact sea freight is so much cheaper than air freight.
I downvote comments like this, since they make the comment useless. No-one can vouch for or argue against the comment when it's some "part" of a continent of over 40 countries.
The clothes are all 100% plastic polyester shit with extra chemicals. If you have proof of otherwise, show me.
Yes I make enough to buy good clothes. If I REALLY need cheap clothes H&M basics are always there.
Same with anything else, IT and tech parts I shop in Sweden.
What else?
Like, what is so needed now that you did not need before but you need to buy plastic China crap from Temu now?
> Under the DSA, designated Very Large Online Platforms are required to diligently assess systemic risks linked to their services and adopt corresponding mitigation measures.
Temus comments about this being for their 2024 store are probably accurate. I honestly wish they were more dodgy tbh.
Otherwise why fine out of the blue when this had been going for years.
And what about western countries violate those laws, lobbied or deliberately turning a blind eye.
Can European companies demand equal treatment? Wait, no, I know the answer to that.
We also have laws making the store selling the thing that burnt down your house liable for what they sold, which make them think twice about selling a random off-brand fire-starter with unknown manufacturer. This worked great until Temu, Amazon, and Alibaba entered the market claiming to be "marketplaces" connecting "importers to suppliers" while clearly behaving like a store.
The core issue is that, if the producer cannot be sued, the seller cannot be sued, then there is no reason to follow any safety what-so-ever. So fine the distributor until they put some quality control or standards on the producers they give market to, may solve the issue.
The US has this issue as well, though more focus on individuals suing for each case rather than broad-spectrum compliance regulation. The outcome is the same; with nobody to sue, there is no reason to make things safe for human use.
This is also part of the EU's larger tariffs against China [3].
[0] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1361926.shtml
[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362200.shtml
[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362161.shtml
[3] - https://www.ft.com/content/e28fe696-ac30-4543-a105-febc82789...
Ahah, China going Adam Smith on the EU.
Peacefully, so far. Let's hope they don't go "opium war" on free trade.
The average EU salary is €39,808. It's equivalent to a €636 fine. Though this is based on income, not net profit so it's actually more impactful to the average person than to Temu.
… which found that a high percentage of chargers purchased through Temu failed basic electrical safety tests. It also found that a high proportion of baby toys posed safety risks, containing chemicals above legal limits or featuring small detachable parts that presented suffocation hazards…
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/plutonium-nuclear...
bigclivedotcom takes apart some of the Temu stuff on YouTube and some of the electronics is atrocious.
So Temu should be sued if a house burns down from a generic-brand e-bike that they imported and took money for.
If you sell something on your site, or allow users to post something on your site, you should have some liability for the consequences.
But this is an internet store.
> Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments.
So they're just threatening a fine at this stage? It's not clear to me
An exemple what how in the old microsoft case they ended up puttin a daily fine for non compliance until microsoft balked back and fixed it (after they tried to act tough and pretended to ignore them).
The end goal ultimately is to get it fixed.
But the EU got some headlines and people believed they came down with an iron first so that's really the most important thing here
In my world finest are served when they're actually paid, not threatened
But I guess if Temu was running government infrastructure they would be off the hook too.
In Australia, the product selection is often limited, and a lot of local stores are just reselling Chinese-made products with huge markups anyway. At that point, you may as well order directly from China and save money.
It also saves 10% GST.
For now.
Your local companies hate the competition, and will be lobbying hard to remove de minimis exemptions on imports.
https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/internat...
> If you are a non-resident business and you sell goods into Australia with a customs value of A$1,000 or less, GST applies and you will have to collect this from your customer and send the GST to us.
Unless I’m missing something obvious, enforcing regulatory compliance from the army of hustlers that is their vendor market would be expensive or impossible.
It's good to know that someone's actually checking this stuff. Self-reported compliance like CE always makes me wonder if I'm a mug for trying to comply honestly with the rules when it would be easy not to.
They tested play sand for asbestos, and four of these positive tested play sands were ordered on Temu. The play sand is for kids!
https://www.test.de/Deko-Spiel-und-Bastelsand-Asbest-Alarm-i...
Are you US-american? (Walmart is a good hint that you are.) There's some widespread misconceptions/prejudice there, e.g. the Kinder egg thing. The EU has no problem with selling those.
The US seems burdensome because some US Entrepreneur already tried not caring and something happened. A good comparison is China cars which don't pass US standards for import. It's also a reason US Makes can't iterate as quickly as they aren't allowed to do the same things that China Makes can to iterate fast.
Whether or not it needs to stay that way is really the only question. I think most reasonably intelligent people read things like suffocation warnings and go, "well obviously don't do that." But the regs are written for the people who aren't that bright who will do it anyway.
But it will eventually get better because in addition to DSA there are other steps; the importers have to declare a responsible person in the EU, the packages will get more expensive etc.
As a general principle, the EU commission handles all international trade and member states are not allowed to impose tariffs or rules on what has been imported into other member states.
I say general principle because in many cases pre-existing legislation was allowed to continue, however anything new and any changes went through the EU commission (meaning the executive branch has full control, not parliament as generally was the case, even against the wishes of both the EU parliament and member state parliaments)
So no, the EU commission was stopping member states from doing this. So yes, it is very much the EU's fault it took so long.
Oh and, look up the history of the EU commission. If you think the EU commission will help anyone against big business, well, look up their history until you find "European Coal and Steel Community" and look up some of the scandals they were accused of. And yes, they're better than they were in 1951, but that's coming from a pretty damn bad start.
If they don't fix it, it'll eventually continue to the "20% of worldwide revenue" kind of fine everyone on HN was so afraid of when the GDPR was introduced. But that's not what it starts with.
I find this incredibly, incredibly hard to believe.
GDPR has been a farce in terms of enforcement.
From my perspective (as a non-resident EU citizen), it seems the EU is addicted to cheap products from PRoC which do not comply with a variety of EU regulations, because actually enforcing compliance would drive up consumer prices, which is politically unacceptable. This also seems like the reason of the lackadaisical enforcement of regulations.
Essentially, allowing in PRoC products, then complaining is an easy way to keep prices low while continuing to introduce regulations which are expensive to comply with.
Put another way: why does the EU manufacture a declining share of its consumer products, at a time when automation makes mass-production less labor dependent than ever for many industries.
So what else are you going to do? Paperwork up front for every single product?
That's basically how drugs won the war on drugs, yes.
Generally speaking, international direct-to-consumer e-commerce is a problem for trying to enforce these kinds of rules. The whole model of checks at the border works well for massive bulk shipments, which not only are few enough in number that customs have a chance of doing a proper job on them, but there's also a commercial importer taking a large financial risk on the shipment and therefore 1) having an incentive to ensure they import something safe to begin with, 2) they can be practically fined/sued by authorities if they screw up. But when you have myriad tiny operations selling direct to consumers, the consumer is the importer, and there's no local representative for the manufacturer that you can actually sue. It's effectively a quite lawless area. Being able to do direct imports is an important freedom, and this kind of laxity is inevitable, but it's understandable the EU wants to do something about the flood of poor-quality goods that are terrible for fair competition, the environment, and health and safety.
In the old days, when an importer purchased Chinese goods in bulk and resold them, import checks were commonplace.... AND the importer was legally responsible for paying import duties and selling goods to the public that were legal and met safety standards.
Now that any individual can order direct from China (with cheap subsidised postage!), the floodgates of untaxed and dangerous shite are open.
One solution is to address the subsidised postage that makes this state of affairs possible.
In my country the government is pushing those companies to have local warehouses. So if items are bulk imported by the marketplace, in theory it should be easier to inspect.
Or is the intention of the law to allow for an unlimited number of supposedly illegal goods to circulate freely within the EU, just fined appropriately?
The policemen controlling imports don't have the competency to check for faults, so we get this situation where specialists regularly sample the products, and heavy fines are issued to the importer.
Now I gladly pay Home Depot or friends to maintain stock for me so my house isn’t filled with bags of shit I’ll never practically use.
America is not China, but how close is it getting?
[0] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/01/30/china-traf...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russians-...
> A major source of this latest wave of the so-called "China shock" narrative is the claim that the EU's trade deficit with China reached 360 billion euros in 2025.
These are the same people whose collective knickers are getting in a twist over Trump, mind you.
They range in size from small shops to things with huge floor space.
One thing I've found is that they seem to sell very low quality stuff: e.g. on aliexpress you can buy a flashlight which is built out of metal, has usb-c charging, for $10, whereas in the physical shop, you get the plastic one that takes AA batteries for $2. So they're not a replacement for AliExpress, Temu & co.
Just image having a mandatory political party inside every American corporation which the board has no control over.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/01/...
Can your family? How about your neibhbors? Does anyone you know have this ability?
There is no common sense to be had here. There are people with more specialized information that I have that look into this. There are laws to address this - and I'm pretty sure these laws were written with the blood of folks killed by faulty products.
It's not all of it. Some things are seriously worse quality. But really a ton of the "better quality" is just better marketing.
There was a time where society didn't buy clothes to only wear once or twice but would instead rent them for those occasions.
Forehead hit hood, but I caught myself so it was a "gentle" reminder instead of a concussion. I should have splurged that time I broke a socket tightening an axle bolt. 150 ft-lbs + 180 degrees is a fair bit of torque.
Anything that unpredictably dumps large amounts of kinetic energy on failure is one of those.
I had a buddy that bought the tool for getting car suspension springs on from Harbor Freight, and I definitely wouldn't roll those dice.
There were several such cases in my country before we joined EU, most high profile one was against Optimus SA (predecessor to CD Projekt), where they just took people's money, without cause as they courts later found. Never again.
So the middle ground is, Temu can choose to play hardball all the way to ECJ, but if they are wrong (they are and they know it), the cost will be substantial (200 M€ + interest + daily fines + interest). So I think they'll enter talks, pay 200 M€ and pinky promise to delist offending items.
I wanted to make clear that press release is not a valid substitute for a court order. And it's OK to publish one before the final instance issues it's verdict.
Not to mention, new parents are often some of the most sleep deprived. The burden should be on the manufacturer to make these safe. And it's not even that hard: just use one of the clasps on the battery compartment that requires a coin or key to open rather than just your fingernails.
1) they are NOT laws. Despite what's published everywhere you get zero legal rights from the GPDR. A legal right is some right you have, and if someone violates that right you can ask a court to intervene. With the GPDR, there is no such right. No court will help you under the GPDR.
The executives of member state governments (and ~40 "international organizations", most famously Interpol) have the right to enforce GPDR. You can only complain to these new, totally separate from any other enforcement mechanism (ie. they're not police) organizations. And they, of course, generally don't listen.
If you go check the complaints lists are full of people complaining that their medical files were leaked by hospitals (because private doctors are in revolt to the GPDR) to various other government organizations, with very large consequences. For instance medical files being used to decide on insurance status, immigration status, unemployment/long term illness status, and family law status. There is no reaction to this, even when it does violate the GPDR. And my next paragraph is why it generally doesn't.
Second, the executives of member state governments have the right NOT to enforce GPDR. Specifically, the executive has the right to grant exceptions to the GPDR to any organization they want (including transitively: allowing a government contractor not only violate the GPDR themselves but to allow anyone else they use to violate the GPDR. For example, this is the reason Google, Amazon and Microsoft have essentially all medical files of everyone in the EU, and Palantir has some 20%)
These exceptions are made transitively AND after-the-fact. Neither of which is legal, but the only one who can complain is the government itself.
2) It means there is no point for individuals to file GPDR complaints. Normally there is "1831", which is a legal principle which refers to a particular law. Essentially that if you damage someone else by violating the law, you are responsible for that damage (ie. you can be made to pay for them). This applies to essentially every EU law. But not GPDR (and also not to other famous EU laws like DMA)
To illustrate the common problem: you go to the hospital, because you took drugs. Maybe you're scared it'll have serious consequences, whatever. Now you go to your insurance ... and they will no longer cover your treatment for heart arythmia. "It's your own fault, because you did drugs". Now what happened is that the hospital updated your medical file, and sent it to the government. Medical insurance is national, so they have access to medical files. Of course, it is a VERY serious GPDR violation that the information leaked, and with any other law this would mean that a judge will convict the hospital to pay for what you lost, say in this case, they would be forced to pay, WITHOUT the insurance covering it, your heart treatment.
Not with the GPDR. Even if you get the government to go after it, and you get them convicted, you get nothing. Nor is the insurance forced to change their decision.
This is how most new EU law works. The crucial difference is that for essentially all these laws, the EU commission holds all the cards. They then use their position of power to negotiate and come to an understanding with all these organizations. That's how they work, how they've always worked.
And it's one more reason I'm very opposed to the EU. Europeans will THOROUGLY regret giving the commission this power, that's a certainty in my mind.
Specifically what the commission does is to give companies exceptions to these rules. For example, Teresa Ribera, as well as Ursula Von Der Leyen, personally (and without any parliament approval) have the right to extend Apple's exemption to the DMA (and thus Apple's 30% cut to all transactions involving an iPhone in the EU). Both were born rich (Ursula Von Der Leyen is a member of a noble family that has been very wealthy for at least 400 years. Notably, her family's wealth survived WW2 in Germany ...) How is such enormous power in the hands of individuals used? Well, look up how and why a communist served for 8 years as the chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
1) we all know it would only take a single one
2) they didn't do this for 20 years
In all seriousness. Does ANYONE believe that the EU commission/parliament did not know about this (despite millions of complaints) and only now discovered the problem? Is that seriously your point?
Or is it somewhat more believable that they did this with the express purpose of destroying local industry and the change is happening now because we have "Mercosur" causing the same issue, but moving from China to South America.
https://cemarkingassociation.co.uk/latest-news/ce-marking-an...
https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-c...
https://starfishmedical.com/resource/conformite-europeenne-m...
HOWEVER, there are a lot of fake CE marks printed by dodgy companies who make the same shitty products that gets imported via Temu. They are already in the business of selling contraband and dangerous factory seconds, no need for conspiracies to give a legitimate twist to their contraband business.
There’s zero demand for products that are hiding safety issues that nobody was seeking out (e.g., toys with lead paint, batteries that explode)
Demand for illegal things isn’t in a vacuum. It’s hard to enact prohibition on alcohol or cannabis (extremely easy to produce) versus prohibiting something more complicated to make, difficult to smuggle, or less desirable to buy.
If my government bans Crocs am I going to go through the engineering effort to make them myself? Plus, if I go outside the cops will see my illegal Crocs very quickly. I have plenty of alternatives to Crocs and most of them are better. Most likely, I won’t even think about the ban.
We have a good example with incandescent light bulbs. I don’t know anyone who has attempted to violate the ban on home incandescent light bulbs.
The whole “everything should be legal anyway because there will always be a black market” philosophy is not a universal truth and we need to stop assuming that it makes sense.
Funny, because I remember that when this ban was first introduced in my country there actually was a black market for incandescent light bulbs. Some stores would keep selling them as “special purpose” or “vibration-resistant”. It only ended when LED bulbs appeared on the market, because they are strictly superior product (not like fluorescent ones EU tried to promote earlier)
Let's do more of that.
Though after enough appeals, Amazon found a court willing to annul the verdict and force the regulator who issued the fine to reexamine: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/win-amazon-luxembou...
No it wasn't. I wrote 'prosecuting', that is a term from criminal law, and that still is in the agenda of the member states. If Temu is breaking law, which it probably is when they were fined for selling "illegal products", then the states should have acted, but they didn't.
> If you think the EU commission will help anyone against big business
The difference is the seat of the said business.
Both of your arguments are "but it's this slightly different part of government that's responsible: see it was X, not Y".
Ok fine, you're right but that doesn't refute what I said. Obviously people look at the effect of what government does as a whole. The net effect of what the entire government did was letting a LOT of companies get away with a lot of crimes, to the point of bankrupting a great deal of European businesses.
your argument is besides the topic of foreign companies violating the law and the member states doing nothing about it.
How does that not add any value?
Temu is free to take the same responsibility, but they don't.
Temu is just deliberately ignoring any rules.
https://themorningnews.com/news/2025/10/13/temu-doubles-eu-p...
1. It's not, and
2. Who cares if somebody gets fired for PR purposes? Especially with a severance that will make sure that their great-grandchildren will never have to work and your great-grandchildren will be paying them rent?
Everybody doing tens of billions of $ of business shrugs off a $200M fine. They might even get a bonus and a plaque for coming up with a scam that lasted so long before it blew up.
Again, that's not how it works, although I know people have this romanticized view of big companies casually shrugging off 200M fines like nothing.
>>They might even get a bonus and a plaque for coming up with a scam that lasted so long before it blew up.
Again, cool idea for a book, but doesn't happen in reality. No one gets a pat on the back and a bonus for being fined 200M.
There’s a reason the likes of Aldi and Lidl have limited product choice.
I'd sooner give Argos the money, they aren't that much more expensive (if at all) for the common set of things they sell and I can walk and pick it up same day.
They broke the first rule of e-commerce - "Don't make the customer think".
argos are great. I ordered something from them for next day delivery and I had it 20 minutes later. The nearest Argos to me is about 15 minutes away so they must have been sitting waiting for orders.
Whether they're dangerous I don't know, I've not tried them.
1.1 These Terms are between you and Whaleco Technology Limited, an Irish company.
> Is the EU customs peeps just going to start inspecting every single package from China looking for items from Temu?
They might, why not. It would be unwise to pick a fight like this for any company.
Or maybe getting google and apple to make the app not available in the EU.
The old system of spot inspections worked because most import volume was from known, repeat importers.
What would have happened to it when supply of incandescent bulbs dried up as manufacturers stopped making them?
Were there any homebrew incandescent lightbulbs?
You’re actually demonstrating my point here: when you ban or regulate something, there are a lot of things that go into whether a significant amount of people try to circumvent that ban. It’s not an automatic free for all thriving black market.
One reason not to circumvent a regulation is when it results in improvement of the status quo or when better alternatives to the banned item already existed.
We have rules that should prevent companies from selling broken and dangerous crap. Should I not be upset that Temu ignores those rules deliberately and floods the EU with exactly that?
Edit: Reply to lozenge as I am still rate-limited by HN. Some of them get recalled, the vast majority of them are still being sold and could burn your house down.
The main difference with most physical stores is that those will accept responsibility for the stuff they sell, because otherwise regulations would put them out of business.
There’s name brand (Apple, Anker, etc → made in China but made well), then there’s off-brand (cheaper than above but still made decently), then store-brand (Harbor Freight and friends, too; cheaper but still functional, not quite as nice), then dollar-store brand (barely functional but usually still “safe”), then Temu-shit (often not fit for purpose and fake certifications, actually dangerous).
In EU, if you buy Temu, you are the importer and you become responsible for CE marking breaches etc. 0 help for you.
*My bad this USED TO be the case but not anymore apparently
Not sure there is anything one couldn’t find on Amazon the exact same wares, though with the additional margin for a USA bigtech company in the middle.
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/andro...
Edit: I should add that Pinduoduo also ended up being fined over $200 million after a couple fist fight with auditing officials in China [1]. Stay safe, EU folks.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-11/fistfight...
They get stuff that the factories can't sell for any reason and just shove them out the country as cheaply as possible.
I’ve seen some reviewers intentionally break links to bad products.
The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses.
The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their technology or raise costs to exclude new entrants. The rules are often inefficient or poorly conceived with bad cost/benefit ratios. And companies making products that are dangerous but nevertheless comply with the rules will point to their checkbox compliance to dodge liability.
The problem with the first one is that it doesn't work well against companies outside the jurisdiction, because then you can't sue them, and the importer will be a small entity that just files for bankruptcy if you try to sue them. But the second one has the exact same problem. They sell products that don't comply with the rules; if you try to fine them they're outside the jurisdiction and the only thing in the jurisdiction is a fungible importer that will dissolve if you try to go after them.
In that environment the thing that actually works is the third thing. Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones. But this is the thing the second one inhibits, because then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted. And then customers are stuck choosing between the overpriced incumbents and the far cheaper foreign suppliers that may or may not be safe, with many people risking the latter because they have so much lower margins.
Also, how does it get you anything over simple liability for fraud and harm? Why does the honest seller have to write a document if nobody is going to look at it and the dishonest one is going to skip doing it anyway?
Milk was filled with borax and formaldehyde, coffee was cut with sawdust/charred bone/lead, spices were often 100% counterfeit.
The market (heavily) incentivized fraud.
In New York, in one year (1857), 8000 infants died to "swill milk" [0].
The second option (FDA and regulation) wasn't lobbied for, and the Food Bill of 1902 actually failed through heavy (counter)lobbying initially [1], until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 [2] passed.
[0] https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1858/05/13/785...
In less rich countries it is how things work right now.
.. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.
> then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them get prosecuted.
This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything? And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?
How do you get Consumer Reports to publish a fake product review? Can you point to even one instance of that actually happening?
> This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything?
Huawei is a pretty conspicuous example of it actually happening. They were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. Meanwhile there seem to be a huge number of other products from the same country with white labels or rotating unknown brands for some reason even though they probably come out of the same factory.
> And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?
That there is a difference between regulatory compliance and actual safety is obviously the point. All the incumbents need is for the rules to be complicated enough that compliance requires you to be a massive bureaucracy, or that nobody is really complying but selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.
They are not really. If one of the big brand shop is found importing stuff with fake certificate, they’ll experience the same thing. One of the advantage of the stores you mention is that they have a procedure for recalls, and their responsibility is on the line if they sell faulty goods. Good luck getting anything from Temu or AliExpress in the same situation (at least Amazon is very good with this).
I can't name a single executive that was jailed over this period here in France. Yet if the law was applied justly thousands of executives and engineers would rot in jail and the world would arguably be a much better place because it would provide incentives for companies to actually behave and not destroy our planet and livelihoods. So are companies really taking responsibility for the lives they destroy? Not so sure.
Consumer standards are a net benefit to society.
> and people are (incorrectly and dangerously) expecting to be protected now.
The general public hasn’t the faintest idea how to differentiate between a safe product and an unsafe one, and they shouldn’t have to
The problem being that a marketplace platform with millions of small sellers has no reasonable way to do this either.
because people now assume if you can buy it, it’s safe,
because their responsibility has been relieved of them.
but, you’re only going to achieve moving the cheapo builders stateside where they’re easier to enforce on.
That race to the bottom isn’t going anywhere - if someone can save a grand half-heartedly wrapping their own packs, they’re going to.
And I think that sentiment is significantly more representative of the populace outside of some edge cases around speech and vices. The vast majority of people do not want to have to investigate if their food has too much rat shit in it. They want the rat shit out of the meat or the meat not to be on the shelves.
Makes no sense.
But all of this is still very much off topic in this discussion about the illegality of some imports (because that's a completely different issue than trade barriers and tariffs). And since you seem to claim (hard to tell really since we are veering offtopic all time) that the members states were powerless to act against those imports, I remember that even back in 2014 in our paltry Slovakia I had to personally visit our "Regional Public Health Office" and sign a form that the tea I imported from Yunnansourcing (less than 2kg in total) really is just for my personal consumption, otherwise they wouldn't let me have it or I would have to pay for maximum residue limits testing. And of course that was after I already paid the import duties. So when this much attention was possible in Slovakia for a small amount of tea, why wasn't it possible for any random package from China everywhere else? Because many countries simply decided they don't care although health and security is still their responsibility.
Most packages out of China weren't tested at all in Western Europe. That's why the baby toys with lead paint ... was discovered by diagnosis, not by import checks. In other words: a whole bunch of children had their lives destroyed (lead contamination in children leads to permanent stunted brain growth in tiny doses. In other words, there is NO way medical fix once it happens, it is permanent life altering damage to those children, just like if you cut of an arm, except less visible)
Needless to say, Chinese companies didn't pay for anything ... and if you were caught painting baby toys in lead paint in Europe, we're talking billions in damages.
So there was nothing like those checks in the Netherlands or the UK. Nothing remotely like what you describe.
> it would cost a ton of money
That's why the EU is imposing a €3 fixed customs duty per item (and later another €2 handling fee) effective July 1 (should have been much sooner in my opinion) for small packages (under €150), in addition to the VAT.
When people buy from Alibaba and resell it on Amazon, they're not bothering to issue recalls.
Frequently, the listing uses the exact same photo.
It's especially clear for clothes listings, as there's usually a model.
I’ve seen model photos of clothes that clearly doesn’t exist until after you place the order.
I’ll do whatever reading, and due diligence keeps my family safe.
I’ll abstain from things until I’m sure.
Others might choose the same.
You can't. So... abstain from everything? Make everything yourself - how will you have time with a job? Will you know the food you grow is safe and that your ground isn't polluted with things you can't test for at home? How about the equipment used to make that food - is the metal in that plow made of lead? Is the engine on the tractor safe?
Your due diligence is only possible because other people - usually with specialized education and/or experience - have made laws and standards to keep you safe. You don't have to personally check everything.
Also, due to politization of the topic, part of the data is distorted to help sell the war on drugs, which had a much more destructive effect overall, aside from failing in its main goal.
No need. Just have dozens of companies produce hundreds of new junk products every year. Then there's no way all products can be reviewed, and no way they can be properly reviewed: what's interesting about a review is the failure mode of the products, which you have no idea about when you have 10 new Samsung smartphones coming out every year.
> [Huawei] were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.
Yes, selective enforcement is the problem. Not regulations. Regulations are not strong enough. But they need to be applied evenly. Why is it legal for Apple and Samsung to produce junk, but not Huawei? (rhetorical question, please don't answer) We need proper consumer protection. Any company producing a product should have 10 years or 20 years warranty, and should be legally mandated to produce/sell spare parts for 20+ years (as in, real spare parts, not "replacement motherboard" which costs the entire smartphone).
Suddenly, the junk makers would produce less junk. Maybe there'd only be a new Samsung/iPhone every 5 years, but it would probably be as solid and repairable as older Nokias.
Should consumers have to post a bond to receive a package from abroad?
We’re not disagreeing.
Then we can't drink our water, can't eat anything from our soil, sometimes can't even breathe our air. But we are the only ones facing consequences while the rich fuckers are partying on yachts.
To be clear, i'm not against foreign products. But a french exec deciding to employ quasi-slave labor and destroy the environment on the other side of the world to maximize profits should 100% be jailed. That's already technically a crime.
The incentives in the market has never changed. That's what regulation is for, shifting market incentives/forces to favor consumers/society.
[0] https://www.kptv.com/2026/05/28/woman-sentenced-conspiring-d...
Pollution is an externality. If Alice hires a company to do "Hydro Excavation" and they pollute Bob's water, even if Bob knows all about it and is entirely opposed, he can't prevent it by not patronizing them because he isn't a party to the transaction. So the solution to this has to be to prohibit pollution.
Product safety is about information. When Bob knows that a particular brand of milk is adulterated with chalk, he doesn't buy it. Which means that all you need for this is product labeling and liability. If the ingredients list chalk, the customer who doesn't want chalk doesn't buy it. If the ingredients don't list chalk then the seller is not in compliance if the product contains it. If the battery is unsafe then you can both not purchase it because the reviews concluded it was unsafe or sue them if your house burns down. And the compliance process is simple: You list the actual ingredients on the label and have responsibility for damages caused by your product. No massive regulatory bureaucracy with thousands of pages of rules, just liability for fraud and harm.
The problem for all of these is that the perpetrator has to be in your jurisdiction. If companies in China are emitting copious amounts of CO2, regulations in Europe can't do much about it. If those companies are making unsafe products that end up on the world market, you can't sue them in the US because they have no real presence in the US. But complex product regulations don't solve that either, because they too are subject to the same problem; foreign companies drop ship things that don't comply. Nor does putting the liability in the wrong place, because generic transportation or payments intermediaries are in a worse position than the government itself to be the ones evaluating things that come over the border.
Consider it this way: Why doesn't US customs exclude unsafe products from being imported from other countries? Consider what they would have to do to actually accomplish that.
This is regulation, and it's only as good as enforcement. Meaning it requires government inspections and labs. Again, we've already proven this in history.
> sue them if your house burns down
Sure, if you only care about compensation and not prevention. Also I don't think you've considered the practicalities of your example, in that no regular person will 1. determine the battery cause. 2. prove it. 3. bring a successful suit against a corporation.
> Consider it this way: Why doesn't US customs exclude unsafe products from being imported from other countries? Consider what they would have to do to actually accomplish that.
Well... they do seize millions of products yearly. It's generally sub-$800 packages getting through. Your original point of incumbents targetting upstarts and thus forcing "burner" companies is the wrong causality. Burner companies are incentivized to specifically skirt liability and reputation. Regulating the frontend incentivizes self-policing against sub-companies designed to be dissolved.
It's not Walmart you're proposing to unperson here.
Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.
They are not Walmart.
> Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.
If you send money to someone in the PayPal app, are they responsible for what you bought? Not just for giving you a refund; for having liability if your house burns down. If the seller keeps their inventory in a rented space, should you be able to sue their landlord? If FedEx delivers a package to you, are they responsible for the regulatory compliance of what's inside?
Consider what would happen if you did that. Could a normal person buy or sell something or rent space or send packages, if the intermediary had to take on liability for anything you do with it?
We don't know how much higher the drug usage would be if all drugs were legalized.
> or any country where the criminalization is in full force.
That's an extremely general statement which is almost certainly wrong.
Given what we know about the prohibition era and insights about the success in the fight against drug abuse, it's a pretty safe bet.
> That's an extremely general statement which is almost certainly wrong.
Is it? Even the most successful countries, like Japan and Singapore, seem to have low drug usage despite of criminalization, not because of. Even then, the data is murky, because criminalization of usage incentivizes low self-reporting.
Try again.
You can answer the questions the exact same ways the other path uses,
yes,
and often with more rigor/vigor than just “legal minimum”.
You don’t need to check every box of Cheerios to know to avoid Cheerios.
I’ll review - as deeply as possible - the supply chains for my meats, produce, etc.
The more local you go, the more possible this becomes.
You simply cannot have the knowledge to know if everything is safe - no matter what your specialty, there are things you'll have to just trust others for safety. Sure, you might buy a lead test kit that someone else has made, but the only way to know that the test kit works is to monitor your family for lead poisoning unless you have specialized knowledge. And if you have that specialized knowledge, it'll come at the cost of other specialized knowledge. You can't personally know if that bridge you drive on is safe AND know about the metal in your plow AND know if the light bulb you bough is a hazard AND know that your antibiotic matches the label on the box instead of it being that one you are allergic to AND know all the other stuff is safe.
Everything requires trust in products or services unless you have information.
General Mills hasn’t earned that trust.
I specifically addressed why I don’t need to know what metal is in the plow
to review end-products,
and you chose to ignore that point
and just talk some more.
Fedex has (almost) no idea what they're shipping.
These are not even apples and oranges.
You can't trust the company making the lead test kits any more than you can trust General Mills. How would you know the tests are real, especially without a regulating body to verify that stuff?
What if it isn't General Mills and Cheerios? Do you test everything that comes in contact with your food? What is in their plows?
You aren't just testing the Cheerios. You are just choosing to trust one thing instead of another and you simply cannot have time to test all of the Cheerios in addition to the other things in life.
Lead tests, and lead-testing labs, stay around by being accurate, reproducible science.
General Mills stays around by putting out wholesome commercials so you buy their slop.
My family and I could eat a total of 10 food products.
You don’t know my life, don’t project yours.