Small businesses who use dropshipping direct from Chinese companies will stop being able to compete with big businesses who buy in bulk and ship from US warehouses. This will benefit the likes of Amazon more than anyone else.
Not sure if that's an unintended consequence though.
A _huge_ chunk of Amazon is low effort Chinese clone / drop shipped crap or straight up forgery. I don't feel sorry for /r/entrepreneur denizens' loss.
It will help the kind of small business with core competencies revolving around producing things and hurt the kind of small business with core competencies revolving around buying things on Alibaba and selling them on Amazon.
People who actually wanted to do things well often couldn't even afford to ship their product for the entire price of product + shipping for lots of dropshipped things under the old ways. I'm happy that the class of business that monetizes outdated shipping policy are going away.
You think intermediaries (e.g. dropshippers) can't add value to a supply chain? I don't know why you'd be so uncaring about /r/entrepreneurs when these are generally just people trying to get by as best they can. Having said that, this treaty withdrawal is still a good idea.
You think intermediaries (e.g. dropshippers)
can't add value to a supply chain?
I don't see what value an extra intermediary adds in that situation?
they also cut out other middlemen like wholesellers and brick-and-mortar retailers. Done well, and at scale, this could be one of the more serious thrats for Amazon in the future.
Yes, it's pretty standard to find the same company with store-fronts on AliExpress, Ebay and Amazon. It's sometimes worth checking for differences in prices though due to lag in updating each catalogue.
E.g. if a dropshipper is selling mobile phone covers at scale, and stops using supplier x because the poor quality is affecting the dropshipper's brand, this puts more pressure on the supplier than if individual end-users stopped buying their products. Same applies to all brokers. They glean great power over suppliers in this fashion, while improving the experience for end-users (prime example: Amazon).
can being the operative word. Amazon, New Egg, WalMart et al. opening themselves up to a certain sort of very low effort intermediaries sucks quality out of their platforms and makes online shopping a minefield of avoiding knockoffs (sometimes with Amazon impossible, to the extent where there are certain things you just shouldn't buy) and fake or paid-for reviews.
Fixing artificially low shipping won't kill this sort of behavior but it will make it easier and more profitable to compete against.
Trump should focus on putting more money in our pockets rather than making things more expensive and hoping the pipe dream of any manufacturing is coming back to US is a reality.
Also, if you're really buying clothes from China for $1-$5 you're almost certainly supporting child labor.
I walk to work, so I don't want to subsidize your commute or travel by roads, and I don't fly often so I'd rather not subsidize the FAA as well.
I agree that we shouldn't pretend that we can make everything domestically--but we also cannot allow our economy and basic goods--by virtue of subsidies, no less--to atrophy while we become dependent on the parasitic influence of the PRC. China is not a free country, they are a aggressive totalitarian regime and it is a shame that the US will soon be 100% dependent on them for every good we buy.