Temu and Shein will raise prices for US customers due to Trump's tariffs

[William Seger]

12. I've ordered over two hundred items from AliExpress (which I assume will follow suit)

Most of the things I've ordered -- I'd guess over 95% -- have been quite satisfactory. You do need to be careful to read the reviews, and to their credit, AliExpress publishes honest reviews, and they have refunded items that were indeed junk or damaged in shipping. (I used to buy a lot of things from Banggood until I found out that they didn't publish negative reviews.) A LOT of the things I bought were exactly the same items you might find locally or on Amazon for a much higher price. For example, the most expensive items I've bought from them were 4 "action" cameras for $110 each, and the cheapest price for the exact same camera on Amazon is over $150. I got backup batteries with a similar savings. I also bought about a dozen name-brand 64GB memory cards on sale for about $2.50 each, and another half-dozen 128GB cards for less than $4.00. The reviews said they weren't counterfeit, which is a BIG problem with memory cards from China, but to be safe, I only ordered one of each to test first, and then ordered more when I found they were indeed the claimed capacity and speed. (I got a little careless, though, and bought two different ones that were only $2.00 each, and they proved to be fake. I posted a review with a screenshot of the test results, which was published -- along with others that I had neglected to read -- and when I applied for a refund, it was granted almost immediately.) And I got a large camera bag, a decent tripod for my DSLR, many assorted camera mounting devices for the action cameras, and a pair of video lights, all of which I'm quite happy with, especially since they were 50% to 75% of the price elsewhere.

That's just the savings from my video hobby. I've also ordered a lot of household items like various kinds of tape and glue, rope, battery chargers, cables and adapters, miscellaneous tools, and a bunch of cheap digital devices that I use a lot -- an oximeter, a battery tester, a small-item scale, a luggage scale, a laser thermometer, a micrometer, a digital level, a laser "tape measure", a digital protractor, a metal detector, a weather station, and a couple of "trail" cameras -- all of which were perfectly functioning items, and for prices that couldn't be beat elsewhere.

So, I'll respectfully disagree with your assessment -- this isn't doing me any favors.