| Here's the bill my German company would have to bill for shipping 1 2€ wine opener to 1 EU customer from Asia: 2€ goods (obviously) + 0.12€ duty HS 76151010 aluminum-based kitchen household items + 0.38€ import VAT + 12.50€ processing fee => price of 14.94€ and I make 0 profit The problem in my opinion is not that Temu is paying too low an import tax rate, the problem is that Temu is for many parcels completely circumventing the customs system, thereby incurring costs but not paying their fare share. Now I could try to import a 1m^3 box with 1000 wine openers, in which case the economics get better: 2000€ goods (obviously) + 120€ duty + 38€ VAT + 45€ processing fee => imported price of 2.20€ each But now I need to warehouse those 1000 items in Germany and re-package them into local parcels for each customer +2€ packaging material +4€ postage for local parcel => now I can sell at 8.20€ and if I have 0 returns, 0 warranty cases and 0 issues, I'll barely break even. Calculating in that I might have to deal with 10% returns, I need to charge 9€ per piece. And here's the kicker: If Temu would legally pay customs and deal with warranty and returns accoring to German law, they, too, would arrive at a similar price. => The Temu price only works because they deliberately break the law. |
> But now I need to warehouse those 1000 items in Germany and re-package them into local parcels for each customer
Yes, it would be infeasible to ship such a low value good. Even on Temu I have to order a minimum of 29€. If you account for that, you should be able to see how a 10€ markup by esselunga/carrefour on imported price of 2.2€ is outrageous and reeks of lack of competition.
> Calculating in that I might have to deal with 10% returns, I need to charge 9€ per piece. And here's the kicker: If Temu would legally pay customs and deal with warranty and returns accoring to German law, they, too, would arrive at a similar price.
Temu now pays customs since the 150€ customs exemption has been gone for years now, and more importantly also the same VAT as your domestic retailer! So the 2€ price for the wine-opener I gave you includes customs and VAT.
For example my order of a few months ago of 38€ included a VAT of 6,09€
I hope you can see my point now that all this outrage against Temu/Shein is based on trumpian style misinformation about VAT and customs and a general "chinese bad, temu bad, we good" attitude which I personally find defeatist and embarrassing.
If we were to spend a fraction of this outrage on how bad our logistics and supply chains are for domestic producers(specially in DE: I used to work in retail dealing with EDI systems of EDEKA/REWE and domestic suppliers) we would be doing some thing productive.
Not to mention things like regulating/fining anti-competitive behaviour by GS1 and others.