Comment on U.S. is cracking down on Shein and Temu by closing a loophole that makes their cheap goods exempt from tariffs

TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• tardigrada@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Just one example:

  Report finds shein, temu fueled by slave labor in [China’s] Xinjiang – [archived]

  The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has released a report stating that leading fast fashion brands, Shein and Temu, are powered by “slave labor.” The author of the report, Adam Savit, who is also the director of AFPI’s China Policy Initiative, said that Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are subjected to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, benefitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

  This is just one of many similar reports. I think we should take into asking when buying cheap whether there are others who who pay the price, especially in.countries like China where there is no supply chain transparency.

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  • sonori@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    This predisposes that much more expensive one sold locally is not also the same model and manufactured in the same factory. When so much of what is sold at Amazon or Walmart originates from Alibaba or bulk orders from said factory, the only difference in the exploitation is if Bezos gets a cut on top.

    Functionally, I think you’ll have a lot more luck pushing for and requiring supply chain transparency from the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, or directly using national economic and political pressure, than focusing on increasing the cost on the small market of people going direct to the source.

    Admittedly though this is less true as it has become more widely known that Temu and the like have the same product selection as Amazon, and indeed that seems to be the actual reason this legislation has been proposed.

    Nevertheless I can’t see the US government taking slightly more of a cut having much of an effect when most of the products which heavily involve Uyghur labor are meant for internal use or export to the third world. You would need to propose serious practical consequences for the leadership of the CCP and follow though on those consequences to force external end to a political project that’s popular domestically like this, or at least a very closely and precisely targeted BDS campaign, and not just continuing business as usual but with higher taxes.

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    • Quill7513@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      My thing is that there’s a minimum price for fairness, and then there’s products that present themselves as being marked up for fairness that don’t actually benefit the people a fair price should benefit. Your best bet is to do some research into what the minimum fair price something is, and then look for something that price from a local economy.

      Unfortunately, this is next to impossible. The systems in place favor us never knowing where anything comes from, and the research tools we used to be able to use to find fair prices (internet search) have been broken for this purpose for nearly 10 years (not just AI bullshit, but all those SEO pay to play bullshit listicles that even infect real human driven testing processes like The Wirecutter and Gear Lab). I think there’s even an argument to be made that AI is an intentional device to steer us into a digital dark age where finding real trustworthy information is nearly impossible.

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      • sonori@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Ya, I agree people should be getting a fair wage, I just don’t see how a tax on products sold more directly helps with that in this case. People will just shrug, say it’s still cheaper than the same model on Amazon, and buy it all the same. A company is always going to try and pay the lowest price they can while pocketing the rest, and the best you can typically do is help the workers bargain for more.

        I mean things like BDS can work, but they have to be targeted very carefully and specifically to get a board of directors to take a specific action, and the wider the net you cast the more dilute it gets and the more likely companies will call it the cost of doing busines.

        US condemnation of the system would probably also have a bit stronger effect if it wasn’t using the same system of minority prison labor farmed out to various companies and saying it’s perfectly ethical fine so long as the people you arrested on thin pretext for race get a few dollars an hour that they then spend right back at the prison.

        Put another way, if the EU put the same import tax on products and companies that made things in Mississippi on us because of the general prevalence of undocumented black prison labor in the region, do you think that the we would suddenly change things?

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  • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Buddy if I buy Panther Marten lures off Ali Express or from Dicks they come from the same factory in the same packaging at the same quality, but one costs $1.12 and the other $7.99.

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    • tardigrada@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      This is why we need supply chain transparency and this game is over, buddy, and among the weakest points in this context is China.

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      • sonori@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I mean the transparency available in the US still hasn’t resulted in an end the same system of minority prison labor here at home.

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  • Midnitte@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Also terrible for the environment

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