(NewsNation) — Shein and Temu are seeing the number of active users on their sites in the U.S. decrease after President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods and closed a tax loophole that allowed the online retailers to avoid them.
Temu’s monthly active users dropped 51% to 40.2 million users across the U.S. between March and June. In that same timeframe, Shein saw a 12% drop in monthly users to 41.4 million, according to a report from The Financial Times.
In April, Trump signed an executive order that ended the “de minimis” exemption on merchandise from China and Hong Kong. The rule allowed companies to avoid import taxes and certain customs paperwork on packages worth $800 or less. Trump has called it “a big scam going on against our country.”
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After Trump’s policy changes, Temu began shipping orders from sellers within the U.S. instead of shipping products from factories in China.
The drop in users on Temu and Shein could also be linked to a decline in each company’s advertising spending. Over the past three months, Temu’s U.S. ad spending fell 87%, and Shein’s dropped 69% compared with the same period last year.
The retailers ranked as the 10th and 11th largest digital advertisers in the country. They now rank outside the top 60 advertisers.
Since the changes in trade with the U.S., Shein and Temu have shifted their focus to Europe, where users have increased between 64 to 76% in Spain, Germany and France.
