This isn’t about protecting "middlemen" for the sake of it, it's about applying consistent rules across different channels of commerce. If a domestic retailer has to pay duties to bring in inventory from abroad, but a foreign seller can ship the same item directly to a U.S. consumer with no duty via de minimis, that's a structural arbitrage opportunity, and yes, that does distort the market.
Whether the intermediary adds value or not is a fair debate, but the real issue is the system favoring one pathway over another based on a technicality, not merit. If you want to argue for a globalized market with no tariffs or friction, I’m sympathetic to that. But that’s not what we have, and pretending that eliminating de minimis while raising punitive tariffs are the same problem is a conflation.
I’m with you on criticizing high tariffs — retaliatory or otherwise, especially when they become a blunt weapon. But de minimis wasn't a free-market policy, it was an exploit. Fixing it doesn’t mean embracing protectionism, it means closing a loophole that had gotten too large to ignore.
This isn’t about protecting "middlemen" for the sake of it, it's about applying consistent rules across different channels of commerce. If a domestic retailer has to pay duties to bring in inventory from abroad, but a foreign seller can ship the same item directly to a U.S. consumer with no duty via de minimis, that's a structural arbitrage opportunity, and yes, that does distort the market.
Whether the intermediary adds value or not is a fair debate, but the real issue is the system favoring one pathway over another based on a technicality, not merit. If you want to argue for a globalized market with no tariffs or friction, I’m sympathetic to that. But that’s not what we have, and pretending that eliminating de minimis while raising punitive tariffs are the same problem is a conflation.
I’m with you on criticizing high tariffs — retaliatory or otherwise, especially when they become a blunt weapon. But de minimis wasn't a free-market policy, it was an exploit. Fixing it doesn’t mean embracing protectionism, it means closing a loophole that had gotten too large to ignore.