Those rancid fucking ghouls want to kill Chinese online shopping platforms like AliExpress by introducing a 3€ fee per item starting from July next year. Member nations may also impose their own additional fees on top of that. Apparently, the Dutch get to pay an additional 2€ per package while Romanians pay 5€.
This isn't too bad if you buy more expensive individual items. For example, paying 3€ on top of 25€ would suck but it's still less expensive than trying to get the same thing from the EU. However, if you had a 15€ package consisting of 8 smaller items, you'd have to pay an eye-watering 24€ in fees.
It absolutely infuriates me how fucking smug EU politicians and bureaucrats sound while they boast about this new scheme, like cops who had just done major drug bust or foiled some terror plot. The media also talks about people who shop on AE and Temu like they're fucking crackheads or drunk drivers or something while also admitting that the "worst offenders" are pensioners and single parents, aka the poor. Fuck those people amirite
Most of the stuff I get from AliExpress is lower-priced items so this EU protection racket is gonna suck. EU and corporate mouthpieces like to go on about how cheap Chinese goods are bad for the environment but most of the shit I get is replacement parts and accessories for things I already own that I could not get locally at all, or only at some ludicrous markup. I saw some electronics repairman say that they buy individual components directly from China because otherwise you would have to buy many of them in industrial quantities
Edit: Just look at this fucking shit, dude. My latest purchase contained a couple of Micro USB to USB-C adapters because I have a bunch of older devices and I figured it would be easier to have a couple of adapters instead of finding new Micro USB cables. The adapters cost less than 2€. Look at these prices at local retailers:
See that 2.90€ listing? Yeah, that one has a 6€ shipping fee and I'm pretty sure they're just a middle man for Alibaba products anyway 
Also, as a sidenote, I was commiserating about this and other shit with some real life acquaintances, and we were all in agreement until I brought up how our shitty fucking government is going to gut the welfare state to buy military jets and other weapons from the Yanks, at which point the mood changed completely. "We've got no choice but to defend ourselves from Russia" 
All their anger at the government, the EU and the US completely evaporated in an instant. These people are lefties
This entire stupid continent is 99% Nato-brained and there's like 10 communists. I guess this is better than the time I was accused of being a tankie Russian stooge for disagreeing with the take that Putin's ultimate goal is to conquer Europe for lebensraum for the Russians and he's gonna do it any day now
Genuinely drives me batty when people harp on about this shit like 50% of businesses aren't just reselling the same stuff with a 100% markup. They're not even providing extra value of local expertise or something, just ghouls sitting on a warehouse forwarding shipping.
I just repaired a timer switch, the NiMH clock backup died. New switch? 50 bucks. New battery here? 40 bucks. Battery from china? same part number: 2 bucks.
Isn't not wasting money and creating waste good?
The usual examples of bad Chinese imports they use is stuff like cheap, disposable fashion and potentially hazardous toys. Just do something about those then and leave genuinely useful things like electronics and spare parts alone
To be honest though, I think that's just an excuse they trot out for the media to drum up public support, what's really going on is those middlemen you mentioned being salty about being left out and lobbying the EU to do something about it
Well yeah, locally we have at least three strores where the entire business model is selling stuff made in China at a huge markup. The chuds love these stores as they are typically very "male branded" and they go buy the same plastic cup holder for their car from Biltema for 10€ that they could get for 1€ from Temu.
Amazon has also been selling this stuff at a huge mark up for as long as I can remember. But it's ok when the money goes to Bezos./s
I have a few hobbies like indoor plant growing, baking and crafts and why would I pay 10€ for the paintbrushes I can get for a third of the price. The underwatering pots I use cost like 1/5th of the price from Temu compared to somewhere like Amazon or one of these local stores.
What really annoyes me about this is that it is the free market stans who moan about this the most. Again, the market is only free and global only as long as the actual customer has no say in where they want to buy their stuff from. The resellers in the West are all pure leeches.
Yea when you put it like that it makes sense. Maybe a better approach would be more granular, like fast fashion taxed like a motherfucker and part of that goes to subsidize the cost of spare parts for people repairing things.
Did you know that producing a single cotton t-shirt requires 2,700 litres of water, or approximately two and a half years of someone's drinking water needs? A single fucking shirt! And they're cranked out by the million! It's totally bonkers.
Fast fashion shirts ain't cotton lol (ಥ﹏ಥ)
I feel like a lot of the fast fashion hate is just classism
I don't need fashion I just need clothes so that I'm warm in the winter and so that people don't yell at me in the summer.
Well yeah, locally we have at least three strores where the entire business model is selling stuff made in China at a huge markup. The chuds love these stores as they are typically very "male branded" and they go buy the same plastic cup holder for their car from Biltema for 10€ that they could get for 1€ from Temu.
Amazon has also been selling this stuff at a huge mark up for as long as I can remember. But it's ok when the money goes to Bezos./s
I have a few hobbies like indoor plant growing, baking and crafts and why would I pay 10€ for the paintbrushes I can get for a third of the price. The underwatering pots I use cost like 1/5th of the price from Temu compared to somewhere like Amazon or one of these local stores.
What really annoyes me about this is that it is the free market stans who moan about this the most. Again, the market is only free and global only as long as the actual customer has no say in where they want to buy their stuff from. The resellers in the West are all pure leeches.