The Unraveling of the $800 Order

How Shein and Temu Rewired American Shopping, and Why the Era Just Ended

For years, it felt like a tap turned wide open, pouring a relentless stream of astonishingly cheap goods directly from Chinese factories onto American doorsteps. Leggings for $5, kitchen gadgets for $2, electronics accessories for the price of pocket change – delivered in days, often for free. This was the reality shaped by Shein and Temu, e-commerce behemoths born in China that, seemingly overnight, captured the wallets and phone screens of millions of Americans. But the tap has now been abruptly throttled.

The mechanism behind this deluge wasn't just clever marketing or efficient logistics; it was rooted in a little-noticed provision of U.S. trade law, Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930, commonly known as the "de minimis" rule. An obscure regulation, designed decades ago for administrative convenience, became the linchpin of a multibillion-dollar strategy that bypassed tariffs and fundamentally altered the competitive landscape of American retail.

Now, that linchpin has been remove…