Trump’s trade policies may end deals such as Quince’s $50 Cashmere Sweater
Quince’s cashmere sweater, which is usually $50.0, is one of its bestsellers. Among Quince’s bestsellers is a cashmere sweater that you can typically buy for $50.
Now the Trump administration’s trade war with China could sharply increase prices for beloved online products like Quince’s crew neck sweater, which the company says is “made with care in China.”
Starting Friday, the White House eliminated a tariff-free shipping method that has been used for millions of daily online shopping orders arriving from China, including some from Quince. The changes will have a double impact on your wallet, as they coincide with the escalating tariffs placed on Chinese-made goods. This company declined to comment.
This product gives a glimpse of the likely higher prices Americans will pay for their shopping sprees as President Donald Trump attempts to reverse decades of American reliance on Chinese products. And it exposes cracks in the largely unseen e-commerce ballet that has reliably and cheaply brought anything you desire from around the world.
The one trick that lowered your online shopping prices
Shopping sites like Quince, Temu and Shein have capitalized on a different way to bring products into the United States than conventional stores like J. Crew.
J. J. Crew may manufacture sweaters in China, Cambodia, or Vietnam before importing them to U.S. port by shipload. Sweaters imported this way are subject to tariffs when they cross the U.S. border. Some online shops that originate in China and some U.S. retail stores like Quince may also purchase from factories in these countries but ship your individual online shopping order to you. Temu, Shein and other larger stores have used passenger and cargo planes to transport your package from China to U.S. Airports. Merchandise doesn’t generally sit in U.S. warehouses.
This second method uses a once-obscure trade law known as “de minimis” to essentially bypass the standard customs process. This method brought 1.4 billion packages to Americans last year. They paid no tariffs, and avoided some of the expensive importing bureaucracy J. Crew deals with. While Quince, Temu, and Shein may have some other advantages over conventional retailers in terms of price, the fact that they avoided tariffs and customs paperwork helped them lower their costs. This allowed them to charge you less when placing online orders. To make it comparable with Quince, let’s use a J. Crew cashmere sweater made in China. If a cashmere Crew sweater retails for $50, it currently owes approximately $29.80 of tariffs. I’ll explain the math in just a moment. The de minimis method allowed a similar sweater to be shipped to you for $0 in order to cross the border. That is, until Friday, when the Trump administration effectively banned this tariff-free shipping option from China.
Whether Quince, Temu and Shein now bring their sweaters from China in a massive container ship or in individually labeled orders stuffed into a delivery company’s airplane, the products must go through a conventional import process — and pay the same tariffs that J. Trump and others have also said it’s unfair to U.S. companies. Trump and others have also said it’s unfair to U.S. companies.
But ditching this option also raises prices for you.
Now when a $50 sweater from a company like Quince hits the U.S. border, it may have already cost the company more than $50 just to make and bring that sweater into the country.
(Quince has said that it uses the de minimis shipping method, but I couldn’t confirm that the company still does so for all or some of its products, including the crew neck sweater. The calculations are applicable to any Chinese cashmere sweater that has a similar retail price. )
Here’s how the costs add up:
For companies that previously used de minimis shipping, “there are costs after costs after costs,” said Bernie Hart, vice president of customs and trade business development at the logistics firm Flexport.
Hart and Izzy Rosenzweig, CEO of the logistics company Portless, said they’ve had constant, complex conversations with customers to plot the most efficient, least expensive shipping methods to prepare for the end to the tariff-free option for Chinese imports.
And for shoppers like you, the math doesn’t math anymore on a $50 sweater.
