TEMU also existed because of the de minimis exception. To speed up customs processing and ease business, the US and EU had minimum package values before customs and tariff inspection occurred.

TEMU and Shein just kind of took it and ran with it by shipping $5 shirts en masse.

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This also only really happened because China's whole export oriented policy relies on keeping workers underpaid via capital control. Workers get their bank accounts at uncompetitive rates and that capital is used to fund manufacturing expansion. The normal thing that happens as a country gets richer is that workers earn more, start buying more of their domestic surplus and their export advantage goes away. However, the current thinking promoted by Xi is that consumption is just capitalist decadence, and so Chinese consumers can't buy the ever increasing goods surplus even if they wanted to. And China is also dealing with internal deflation now due to the massive confidence shock after the property bust.