La Francia prevede una tassa di 2 euro sull’importazione di prodotti fast-fashion che colpirà Shein e Temu mentre l’UE ritarda

The stores that can sonewhat compete with a taxed Shein by price are mostly foreign: Zeeman, Action, Primark, C&A, H&M…

This tax will add costs to French taxpayers without achieving much beneficial for the French state. But it sounds.nice, as it supposedly harms an unpopular megacorp. Its populism.

They could have rather implemented stricter sustainability and product safety rules for imports from outside EU, which would improve quality across the board, hit fast fashion heavily, but without harming the competition and sellers available to the poorest consumers, specifically.

They could also aim to reduce taxes and other levies for the working population, for once, so people are less financially dependent on the availability of fast fashion.

But, nah, too difficult. Singling out the Chinese it is. Other shops, which are glorified resellers of Asian goods, will say thank you and increase their mark-up.

The EU law targetting every small package from outside EU is even dumber. It will hit lots of unwanted targets, too, and will hit lots of intended targets where there is no actual alternative to Asian production (eg most ifnwhat Action sells ar that price point). All the cheap mass-produced crap will remain available, just at Action and such, more expensive than ever. It will only make life of poor people more expensive and get us more far-right and far-left vote. It will also hit non-metropolitan populations which don’t have local nice shops available (eg try to find a metal pot for hot pot in the alps…its Made in China from Amazon or Temu. Try to find a heat sink for Raspberry Pi anywhere…)

Last, Shein and such will simply set up an HQ in EU where they get a good deal, like Malta or Luxembourg, and use the infrastructure set uo by Alibaba and Chinese state-owned companies. We let them build up Liege and Budapest airport, and buy up warehouses all over Europe. Goods coming out from there will be inner-European trade. Yet another strategic failure this populist tax is trying to mask.

Tldr: Regulate what’s available to consumers rather than taxing consumers’ decision-making that selectively.

People need to understand that this tax does not attack cheap trashy goods. It attacks a distribution venue of these goods. All this leads to is changing where people buy that trash, but, as a mere 2 Euro tax is not nearly enough to close the gap to Made in Europe competition, it will not meaningfully change how much trash goods people buy. So it will end up as a subsidy for resellers, paid by poor consumers. It will neither meaningfully help the environment nor European *producers*. Only European (re)sellers.

Watch the China shills come out on this one too.

God forbid your citizens have access to affordable goods, that would be horrible, we must tax them!

Populist, protectionist nonsense.

Excellent, begone with this late stage capitalistic sweatshop crap.