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Shein, Temu, Amazon Haul Set for Price Hikes as US Shuts Trade Loophole

Shein and Temu app icons are seen in this illustration taken August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Shein and Temu app icons are seen in this illustration taken August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Shein, Temu, Amazon Haul Set for Price Hikes as US Shuts Trade Loophole

Shein and Temu app icons are seen in this illustration taken August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Shein and Temu app icons are seen in this illustration taken August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Shein, Temu and Amazon Haul prices are likely to rise for American shoppers, analysts and industry experts said, after US President Donald Trump this week shut a trade loophole that has been used to ship low-value packages duty-free from China.

Fast-fashion retailer Shein and online dollar-store Temu, both of which sell products ranging from toys to smartphones, have grown rapidly in the US thanks in part to the "de minimis" exemption enabling them to keep prices low.

Temu and Shein together likely accounted for more than 30% of all packages shipped to the United States each day under the de minimis provision, the US congressional committee on China said in a June 2023 report.

Trump's halt to Section 321 de minimis is part of his implementation of an additional 10% tariff on China and 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which were paused for a month. Nearly half of all packages shipped under de minimis come from China, according to the same committee report.

"For companies like Temu and Shein this is obviously a very big deal because de minimis was one of the levers they used to be able to offer these low prices as well as ensure speed of products entering the country once they were shipped," said Juozas Kaziukenas, CEO of e-commerce data firm Marketplace Pulse, Reuters reported.

Temu did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Shein did not immediately reply to a request for comment. It has previously said it supports reform of the de minimis provision.

"It's probably about 5 points of margin difference, using de minimis or not, and e-commerce businesses usually have a 10% or 15% margin, so this is a very significant impact," said Aaron Rubin, CEO of warehouse management software firm ShipHero.

ShipHero's clients include logistics firms and small and mid-sized online retailers, which also benefit from the loophole, and have less financial capacity to absorb the hit.

Amazon set up Amazon Haul in November. This allows shoppers to purchase $5 handbags and $10 sweaters from China-based sellers, although they face longer shipping times.

While Trump's crackdown on de minimis is likely to bruise Amazon Haul, said CFRA analyst Arun Sundaram, it is a new, and very small part of Amazon's overall e-commerce business.

And shoppers in the US can buy products similar to those found on Haul, including $2 pencil sharpeners and $10 pyjama sets, on Amazon's main e-commerce site at more expensive prices.

"If removal of the de minimis exemption disproportionately hurts companies like Temu and Shein, that should be a positive for Amazon," said Sundaram. Amazon, which reports results on Thursday, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Eliminating de minimis gives Amazon the chance to compete on quality, price and shipping speeds on similar items to the ones Shein and Temu sell, said Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson.

ADAPTING

Both Temu, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, and Singapore-headquartered Shein, which plans to list in London this year, have taken measures such as sourcing more products from outside China, opening US warehouses and bringing more US sellers on board, to mitigate the impact.

"So the lifting of de minimis will not impact 100% of the products they sell in the US," said Kaziukenas, adding: "It will have an impact, but it's not going to be the end of the reign of Shein and Temu".

Both companies have brought more US and European sellers onto their platform and established warehouses in the US.

The vast majority of Shein's products are still made in China, but it has started to diversify its supply chain, adding suppliers in Brazil and Turkey.

The cancellation of de minimis may add a few cents to the price of each product sold by Shein and Temu in the United States, said Sheng Lu, professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

But ultimately the change could cause more pain for small and medium-sized online retailers who source from China, which have fewer resources to absorb the increased costs and adapt their supply chain.

"My studies consistently show that, unlike large companies, which have built an extensive sourcing network worldwide, small and medium-sized companies are more dependent on sourcing from China," said Lu.

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Technology

Google Unveils $6.4 Bn Investment in Germany

The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)
The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)
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Google Unveils $6.4 Bn Investment in Germany

The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)
The Google logo is displayed during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 11, 2025. (Reuters)

Google unveiled Tuesday its biggest-ever investment in Germany, pledging 5.5 billion euros ($6.4 billion) for a new data center and other projects, as Europe seeks to catch up in the AI race.

"We are driving growth in Germany," Chancellor Friedrich Merz said as the investments, to be made by 2029, were announced.

"Our country is and will remain one of the most attractive places for investment in the world," he said.

Google's plans include a new data center and expansion of an existing center in the western state of Hesse, providing computing power for artificial intelligence.

It also plans to expand its offices in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich, and outlined various projects aimed at reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

These included buying renewable wind and solar energy and a "heat recovery project" that would see excess heat produced by a data center re-used by local residents.

The plans will support around 9,000 jobs a year in Germany, Google said.

The investments are a boost for Germany, whose economy is struggling, as well as for Europe it seeks to catch up with AI leaders the United States and China.

Technology

AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats

AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats
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AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats

AI Agents Open Door to New Hacking Threats

Cybersecurity experts are warning that artificial intelligence agents, widely considered the next frontier in the generative AI revolution, could wind up getting hijacked and doing the dirty work for hackers.

AI agents are programs that use artificial intelligence chatbots to do the work humans do online, like buy a plane ticket or add events to a calendar.

But the ability to order around AI agents with plain language makes it possible for even the technically non-proficient to do mischief, AFP said.

"We're entering an era where cybersecurity is no longer about protecting users from bad actors with a highly technical skillset," AI startup Perplexity said in a blog post.

"For the first time in decades, we're seeing new and novel attack vectors that can come from anywhere."

These so-called injection attacks are not new in the hacker world, but previously required cleverly written and concealed computer code to cause damage.

But as AI tools evolved from just generating text, images or video to being "agents" that can independently scour the internet, the potential for them to be commandeered by prompts slipped in by hackers has grown.

"People need to understand there are specific dangers using AI in the security sense," said software engineer Marti Jorda Roca at NeuralTrust, which specializes in large language model security.

Meta calls this query injection threat a "vulnerability." OpenAI chief information security officer Dane Stuckey has referred to it as "an unresolved security issue."

Both companies are pouring billions of dollars into AI, the use of which is ramping up rapidly along with its capabilities.

AI 'off track'

Query injection can in some cases take place in real time when a user prompt -- "book me a hotel reservation" -- is gerrymandered by a hostile actor into something else -- "wire $100 to this account."

But these nefarious prompts can also be hiding out on the internet as AI agents built into browsers encounter online data of dubious quality or origin, and potentially booby-trapped with hidden commands from hackers.

Eli Smadja of Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point sees query injection as the "number one security problem" for large language models that power AI agents and assistants that are fast emerging from the ChatGPT revolution.

Major rivals in the AI industry have installed defenses and published recommendations to thwart such cyberattacks.

Microsoft has integrated a tool to detect malicious commands based on factors including where instructions for AI agents originate.

OpenAI alerts users when agents doing their bidding visit sensitive websites and blocks proceeding until the software is supervised in real time by the human user.

Some security professionals suggest requiring AI agents to get user approval before performing any important task - like exporting data or accessing bank accounts.

"One huge mistake that I see happening a lot is to give the same AI agent all the power to do everything," Smadja told AFP.

In the eyes of cybersecurity researcher Johann Rehberger, known in the industry as "wunderwuzzi," the biggest challenge is that attacks are rapidly improving.

"They only get better," Rehberger said of hacker tactics.

Part of the challenge, according to the researcher, is striking a balance between security and ease of use since people want the convenience of AI doing things for them without constant checks and monitoring.

Rehberger argues that AI agents are not mature enough to be trusted yet with important missions or data.

"I don't think we are in a position where you can have an agentic AI go off for a long time and safely do a certain task," the researcher said.

"It just goes off track."

Technology

Nvidia and Big Tech Rally to Help Wall Street Recover Much of Last Week's Loss

A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)
A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)
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Nvidia and Big Tech Rally to Help Wall Street Recover Much of Last Week's Loss

A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)
A view of a Nvidia logo at their headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan May 31, 2023. (Reuters)

Big Tech and other superstars of the US stock market are rallying on Monday, as Wall Street recovers much of its loss from last week.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.2% to claw back more than two-thirds of its first weekly loss in the last four. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 183 points, or 0.4%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.9% higher.

Nvidia was by far the strongest force pushing the market upward and rose 4%. It and other winners in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology had been at the center of last week’s drop. Critics say their stock prices shot too high and too fast in the mania around AI, drawing comparisons to the 2000 dot-com bubble that ultimately burst.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for Nvidia and other companies, saw its stock that trades in United States rise 3.1% after saying its revenue climbed nearly 17% in October from a year earlier. While such growth is strong compared with other companies, it’s a slowdown from TSMC’s earlier performance.

Another AI darling, Palantir Technologies, jumped 8% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500.

The gains for tech helped offset losses across much of the rest of the market, as the majority of stocks within the S&P 500 index sank.

Health insurers fell as uncertainty remains about whether Washington will extend expiring health care tax credits, a sticking point in the disagreement on Capitol Hill that's created the longest-ever shutdown for the US government.

That's even though the Senate took the first steps on Sunday to end the shutdown.

President Donald Trump suggested in a social media post over the weekend — with few details — that the subsidies being sent to the “money sucking” insurance companies should instead be sent directly to people so they can buy their own health insurance.

Humana fell 2.6%, and Cigna slipped 0.7%, The AP news reported.

The effects of the government's shutdown have become more apparent following the cancellations of thousands of flights over the weekend. Towers are facing shortages as some air traffic controllers — unpaid for weeks — have stopped showing up for work.

Besides the pain at airports, the US government’s shutdown has also delayed many important reports on the economy. A resumption could upset financial markets if the released logjam shows data that dashes traders’ expectations for coming cuts to interest rates.

The wide expectation is that the Federal Reserve will continue to cut its main interest rate in hopes of shoring up what has been a slowing job market. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can give the economy a boost while also pushing prices for investments upwards.

But the Fed has said it may have to halt its cuts if inflation worsens because lower interest rates can give inflation more fuel.

Without updates from the US government on jobs and the economy, traders have been trawling profit reports from companies for clues about how things are going.

Tyson Foods, which sells chicken and other meat, climbed 2.1% after reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It benefited from increases in prices of 11% to 17% for its beef and pork.

Roughly four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 have also been reporting stronger profits for the summer than analysts expected. Companies usually top analysts’ profit expectations each quarter, but the pressure was high this time around because they needed to justify the big moves upward their stock prices have made since April.

Delivering bigger profits is one of the easier ways they can quiet criticism that their stock prices have become too expensive.

Companies have also been giving generally strong forecasts for upcoming results, according to Bank of America strategist Savita Subramanian. That has analysts' overall expectations for earnings in 2026 nearly all the way back to where they were before Trump shocked the economy and financial markets with his “Liberation Day” announcement of worldwide tariffs.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied across much of Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 3% for one of the bigger gains. Chip company SK Hynix, which is cooperating with Nvidia on artificial intelligence, leaped 4.5%. Its bigger rival, Samsung Electronics, climbed 2.8%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.10% from 4.11% late Friday.