Art and Memes

As some of you may know, starting tomorrow July 1st, there will be a tax implemented to make shopping from sites like shein, aliexpress etc more expensive. EU wants to reduce shopping there because of „sustainability reasons“, but we all know that’s maybe half the intention, if not a pretense for the actual intention: they are desperately trying to increase consumption activity within the EU market. Over the years it got worse and worse, though there’s a simple reason why: high living costs and low wages. So people look elsewhere for cheap goods to make life a bit easier (and for the sake to keep things short I am simplifying here. Of course there is the big problem of excessive overconsumption and other topics). Politicians call it a loophole (yea no shit, if the same products are sold here for triple the price then people buy it for the actual price directly from the source). They closed this „loophole“, including the products that are already stored and send from EU warehouses. Packages now can become really pricey depending on what you buy.

Thing is: Chinese companies will still „win“ in the end. Why? This tax counts for every company/country outside of the EU. I‘d think those are the ones that will be at a disadvantage. GB for example, that still upholds a stronger trade with EU countries. Compared to china, products from other countries tend to be much higher in costs anyway. Also: Products from within EU are less bought already and with the new tax companies have another „reason“ to raise prices again for their products, so there‘s no real incentive to buy from within EU anyway. Especially if it’s the very same item that a EU shop tries to sell 3x the price. So even with the tax, shops like shein will unfortunately still be the cheapest choice.

The only thing that will change is customer behavior. How and when they buy for example. One theory could be that for example instead of buying a product category 5 times a year, people now buy twice a year but with a bigger order instead, with the expenses being the same more or less in the end.

Also another contra is the disadvantages this holds for smaller businesses and freelancers. Whereas big companies buy in bulk and therefore care less about the tax, smaller businesses that buy for example basic materials (like for jewelry/charms making) for their production will feel that tax. Therefore need to raise prices for their clients and in return may lose customers. For example in germany we have a real problem with increasing bankruptcy numbers for small businesses. We can’t afford to lose more.

So in the end it may look like EU will only hurt its own economy (again). Another question is: Where will that tax money go? What will it be used for? Wouldn’t be the first time politicians embezzle some of the money, especially in this timeline. Another example is again: germany. Where the government took upon more debt by taking a looot of tax money to improve infrastructure, housing and other things, only for most of the money to go poof.

And I guess we wouldn’t even have to deal with this weird tax in the first place, but if you‘re making everything more expensive but don’t raise the wages accordingly then people buy their products where it’s the cheapest.

(And yes I know, for clothing we have ways like thrifting. It’s a good alternative, especially if you search for organic materials, but not if like in bigger cities they make second hand prices rise, since it’s „trendy“, also with more and more clothing actually being second hand fast fashion at this point. It happened to me where the second hand item from shein cost a bit more than buying it directly from shein (they actually had it still on there when I checked). Enshittification everywhere.)

You can find them on: inprnt.com/gallery/sansho