The US government may be preparing to investigate internet retail giants like Shein and Temu

On-line retailers like Temu and Shein are recognized for promoting low-cost merchandise like child garments, kitchen devices and electronics. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) needs to know the true prices that international on-line retailers are reducing to promote these merchandise at decrease costs.

CPSC commissioners Peter Feldman and Douglas Dziak launched a joint assertion in the present day calling for his or her employees to guage the operations of international e-commerce websites. The assertion cites Shein and Temu as two on-line retail corporations that “elevate particular issues.”

Latest information stories of “lethal child and toddlers merchandise” being offered on these platforms began to lift purple flags on the CPSC. A latest report from The Information discovered a number of child and kids’s merchandise on Shein deemed to be unsafe, comparable to youngsters’s drawstring hoodies on the market that had been flagged by regulators as a strangulation threat. The style business information website Fashion Dive discovered Temu promoting youngsters’s pajamas by manufacturers that the CPSC dominated violated “the flammability requirements for youngsters’s sleepwear.”

A Shein spokesperson mentioned in an announcement to CNN that its prospects’ security stays their “prime precedence and we’re investing tens of millions of {dollars} to strengthen our compliance packages.” In the meantime, a Temu spokesperson informed us that it required “all sellers on [its] platform to adjust to relevant legal guidelines and laws, together with these associated to product security.” The spokesperson added: “Our pursuits are aligned with the US Shopper Product Security Fee (CPSC) in making certain shopper safety and product security, and we’ll cooperate totally with any investigation.”

The CSPC isn’t the primary US authorities company to scrutinize international e-commerce corporations like Shein and Temu. Final yr, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission issued a short detailing the challenges introduced by “Chinese language ‘quick style’ platforms.” The Fee questioned these platforms’ alleged exploitations of commerce loopholes and issues about its sale of things that posed product security dangers, violated copyrights and logos and used pressured labor to make and promote merchandise.

Replace, September 05, 2024, 12:19AM ET: This story has been up to date so as to add Temu’s assertion.

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