[derbOac]

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.

[infecto]

Disagree. The way de minimis was being exploited created a market distortion that unfairly favored foreign companies. I get that there are niche cases where it causes real pain, and that sucks but calling it insidious feels like overkill.

I support free trade, and in an ideal world we’d have no tariffs at all. But enforcement around imports is hard. You still need some mechanism to regulate goods entering the country, and duty taxes are a practical tool for that. When a U.S. retailer imports goods from China, they pay duties. When Temu ships a nearly identical product directly to U.S. consumers under de minimis, no one pays anything. That’s not a level playing field.

[hshdhdhj4444]

So your concern appears to be that the current system doesn’t allow a U.S. retail middle man to take their cut?

I didn’t realize there was so much sympathy for non value providing middle men in the U.S.

I do actually agree with the de-minimus issue and that the system needed to be redone, but not because I think more Americans should be spending their lives being middle men leeching money off the American user, but because the de-minimus exemption was distorting the markets leading to highly inefficient individual packages instead of bulk packages being shipped.

But the problem isn’t the elimination of de-minimus. If that had been eliminated a year ago, a $1000 import from AliExpress would see a $100-$200 additional cost which while not ideal would have been reasonable.

The problem is the raising of tariffs to extremely high levels that mean that the $1000 goods now carry a $1100-$1500 duty on top.

[infecto]

You're misrepresenting my point.

This isn’t about protecting "middlemen" for the sake of it, it's about applying consistent rules across different channels of commerce. If a domestic retailer has to pay duties to bring in inventory from abroad, but a foreign seller can ship the same item directly to a U.S. consumer with no duty via de minimis, that's a structural arbitrage opportunity, and yes, that does distort the market.

Whether the intermediary adds value or not is a fair debate, but the real issue is the system favoring one pathway over another based on a technicality, not merit. If you want to argue for a globalized market with no tariffs or friction, I’m sympathetic to that. But that’s not what we have, and pretending that eliminating de minimis while raising punitive tariffs are the same problem is a conflation.

I’m with you on criticizing high tariffs — retaliatory or otherwise, especially when they become a blunt weapon. But de minimis wasn't a free-market policy, it was an exploit. Fixing it doesn’t mean embracing protectionism, it means closing a loophole that had gotten too large to ignore.

[derbOac]

I guess my reactions are:

1. I guess I think mechanisms for regulating goods entering the country should be based on specific articulated harms, and targeted through law enforcement or tariffs with a specific harm reduction goal. It's a bit absurd to me that China is being hit with a giant tariff based solely on source of product, and things like tainted Indian generic drugs continue to be an ongoing issue with actual medical harms.

2. I'm not sure why US consumers should be paying a middleman. If you can buy a product direct from the source, why not? The gains from a middleman should be intrinsic to what the middleman can bring, like savings through bulk purchases or shipping. Maybe more directly, I think tariffs should be eliminated completely, not just de minimis (except for those targeting a specific aim, with articulated goals and endpoint conditions).

3. These discussions have gotten so bizarre to me at some level because the US constitution specifically empowers Congress, not the president, with tariff powers. I don't think they should be allowed to shift those powers to another branch. Grievances about tariffs established by an executive were one of the reasons for the establishment of the US as a separate country to begin with, and just because Congress screwed up one time with tariffs doesn't mean they should be able to abdicate their responsibilities. I think having tariff powers reside with a large distributed body increases the burden of establishing a tariff probably. But this is an entirely different issue from the focus of the article.

[infecto]

You’re conflating tariffs with duty taxes collected on imports, and that’s a big part of why this conversation gets muddled.

I don’t support broad tariffs either — I’d love a world of free trade. But duty taxes aren't the same thing. They're not necessarily protectionist; they exist to fund the enforcement of customs and import regulations. If we agree that there are things we should regulate at the border, plants, animals, counterfeit goods, etc. then you need a mechanism to fund that enforcement. Duty taxes are that mechanism.

De minimis creates a loophole where foreign companies can flood the market with small direct-to-consumer shipments, bypassing both duties and most scrutiny. A U.S. importer pays duties and follows import regs. Temu doesn’t. That’s not about "harm reduction", it's about uneven enforcement and subsidized noncompliance.

I'm all for optimizing enforcement of small package imports and making compliance easier for individuals and small businesses. But we can’t pretend that zero enforcement cost is viable at scale, or that eliminating duties across the board is somehow neutral in its effects.

If you're arguing for removing all import duties and funding border enforcement from general taxes, fine but say that. Otherwise, it feels like folks just want all the upside of globalization with none of the costs or responsibilities.

[macintux]

When did “level playing field” become more important than other considerations?

[infecto]

It’s not that a level playing field is more important than every other consideration, it’s that you can’t have a functional or fair market without one.

If one group has to follow the rules and bear the costs, while another gets a free pass because of a legal loophole, you're not fostering innovation or accessibility, you're just subsidizing arbitrage. That’s not sustainable, and it warps both pricing and incentives.

I’m all for lowering costs and increasing access to STEM tools. But if the policy that does that relies on systematically undercutting domestic importers and eroding trade enforcement, then we should be honest about the tradeoffs. Let’s push for smarter, broader reforms (like targeted STEM subsidies or tariff carve-outs for educational goods) instead of defending a workaround that happened to benefit us temporarily.

[rjsw]

I was making hobby PCBs 50 years ago, it didn't require importing parts from China.