Chelsey Dulaney

So even just the announcement that this was coming had caused a huge stir in Paris and in France.

After the tariffs went into effect into the U.S., China needed new places to sell all that stuff.

It was no longer selling to the U.S., and Europe looked like the perfect place.

They make everything.

They make clothes.

They make vehicles.

They make phones.

They make laptops.

There's very little in our lives that we, you know, interact with that does not have a Chinese component to it.

I think it's underappreciated how big a part of China's export sector has become these low-value packages.

So in 2024 and also 2025, they've exported about $100 billion of these low-value packages.

So it has become really enormous.

It just made it very easy to ship small packages from a place like China into the U.S.

because you avoided all of the hassle and the bureaucracy that comes with bigger shipments.

So that's what a lot of the Chinese e-commerce companies did.

So instead of sending a bulk shipment through it with a container full of, you know, a thousand shirts, they'd send a small package through the mail and then they wouldn't have to do all of the customs declarations and pay the taxes.

People thought it would be really bad for Chinese manufacturers.

The U.S.

is the most important market for a lot of these Chinese exporters, and the tariffs were huge.

If you think back to April, some of the tariff levels were like 145%, just absolutely devastating for a lot of these companies.