MAYDAY: The $800 Loophole Is Dead – Here’s What Happens to Amazon Prices Now
In this live YouTube session, Emanuel Ruiz (Speaker A) informs Amazon FBA and private‑label sellers that the U.S. de‑minimis import exemption (approximately $800 per shipment) has been eliminated, a change that removes a key cost advantage for Chinese dropshippers and sellers operating on Amazon’s low‑price “Amazon Hall” marketplace. He explains how the loophole previously allowed sellers to ship small parcels under $800 without paying duties or taxes, enabling platforms like Shein, Temu, AliExpress, and Amazon Hall to offer ultra‑cheap items. With the loophole closed, Chinese sellers must now pay full duties, freight, and tariffs, leading to higher landed costs and reduced price competitiveness. Ruiz details recent tariff enforcement incidents, including extreme surcharge examples (e.g., a $15,000 weekly tariff bill and fraudulent undervaluation of $5 per unit for a $200 Amazon sale). He highlights the lack of regulatory oversight for such fraud. The discussion then shifts to broader supply‑chain disruptions: Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are largely idle, container arrivals are stalled, and many sellers are “doing nothing” by keeping inventory in China, which risks stockouts and cash‑flow strain. Ruiz argues that this slowdown creates an opportunity for sellers who can secure cheap freight and use DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) shipping, but also urges price increases to protect margins as competitors run out of stock. He promotes his one‑on‑one mentorship program, describing how he analyses P&L, PPC, supplier terms, and cash‑flow to scale businesses. Ruiz announces the acquisition of a supplement brand, Nutri Labs, via Empire Flippers (purchase price $185k, $92k upfront, seller‑financed), and explains why supplement listings are currently hard for new sellers. Finally, he offers product‑launch advice: target the right customer avatar, manage 1‑star reviews, keep initial inventory low (200‑500 units), avoid stockouts, and consider “grandfathered” approvals for existing storefronts. The session ends with a call for questions, a reminder of upcoming private live streams, and a summary that the de‑minimis closure reduces competition, benefiting disciplined Amazon FBA sellers.
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Hey, how's it going guys? Let's see if I'm live here. Always this issue with YouTube where I really don't know if I'm live or not, but it looks like we are good to go. Perfect. All right guys, so interesting news, uh, coming out today is probably gonna be the most beneficial for Amazon FBA sellers, private label sellers. And bad news for a lot of dropshippers. So this announcement has already been made, but it just went into effect starting last night or tonight or this early this morning. And that's going to be one of our main topics. Our next topic is also going to be as far as what's going on right now when it comes to tariffs, freights, expanding into different countries as far as manufacturing is concerned, because there are some big news. That are being impacted. And I think that, you know, there's going to have some ramifications with our economy. It's going to have ramifications for a lot of Amazon FBA sellers and primarily Chinese sellers. So, and it's going to be good news for us. So without further ado, let me kind of go into exactly why I think it's bad news for Chinese sellers. And that's because a loophole that went into effect, like I mentioned before, Earlier today at midnight yesterday or whatever, May 2nd, right? So key loophole impacts Shein. Temu closes this week, but consumers are already being affected. All right. So this is a USA Today piece that was written yesterday and about 1 or 2 weeks ago, this loophole, which is called the minimus or whatever it might be, the minimus, right? So what does this loophole do? Well, whenever you go ahead and ship a product, or let's say you're traveling abroad, Um, and you want to go ahead and purchase goods at the airport, there is usually duty-free type of stores where you don't have to go ahead and pay taxes, um, in an individual country. So what is going ahead and being impacted? Well, now you do. And let me know if the audio is, uh, loud. I'm getting a signal that my audio might be loud, but let me know if it's good. So basically that is being impacted now where China is no longer going to be able to go ahead and have very cheap shipping coming out of China. So this impacts primarily a lot of dropshippers here, right? People that go ahead and dropship items from China for cheap. Places like Temu, places like AliExpress, places like Shein, right? Places like Amazon Haul. And I know that there's big news. Um, let me see first if there's any issues with the audio. Just want to make sure that everybody listening to this is being good before I go ahead and go forward. I think the audio is good. Okay, so my thoughts here as far as— let's go back to the article here. Yeah, so we heard big news as far as Amazon going ahead and implementing that tariff charge on On our checkout page, it had nothing to do with Amazon Marketplace. I know it got really big headlines, but it had to do with Amazon Hall. And for a lot of you guys that don't know what Amazon Hall is, because you are U.S. seller and this was primarily for Chinese sellers, basically 100% of Chinese sellers were on Amazon Hall. And what is Amazon Hall? Well, it's sort of like Amazon's version of Temu, where it's very, very cheap prices, something that we can't even go ahead and compete with. But people are able to offer dollar, two dollar items. And you're like, how the hell do they make money? Well, it's because of this loophole, right? So they're, they're got, they get very cheap shipping, plus they don't have to pay any import fees, any taxes, or any duty fees at all either. So all the fees are kind of stripped because of this one loophole that is being, that's already closed already. So another thing, the reason why this is really good is because most Chinese sellers go ahead and use this type of loophole, right? So in this article here, and I'll go ahead and link the articles at the bottom right now. I don't have them linked in the description, but I will after this live. So go ahead and check that out. So the, how other Chinese sellers will go ahead and use this type of loophole is that instead of them shipping, you know, freight, right? Like how we do when we have an order in China, we order 2,000, 3,000 units at one time. And then ship it into, you know, Amazon, we have to go ahead and pay import fees. We have to go ahead and pay duty fees. We have to pay the freight costs. What people in China would go ahead and do is they would drip their inventory into Amazon, meaning that they would go around paying all these import fees, these taxes, and all these other fees associated with freight by going ahead and using this exact loophole. You see, we do have tariffs and they're impacting Chinese sellers, but they're also impacting USA sellers a lot, but this right here is something that is impacting Chinese sellers dramatically, like way crazier than these tariffs. So I know that a lot of Chinese sellers are scrambling because of this loophole being closed, and I'm hoping that when the new tariffs— like there's an agreement or, you know, a contract in place or anything like that as far as when we go ahead and you know, come into agreement, that this still sticks because this is what's going ahead and hurting Chinese sellers the most and dropshippers the most too, right? So I would say that dropshippers are getting impacted heavily based on this type of loophole. So what would, what would they do? Let me go ahead and, you know, reiterate my thoughts. So instead of going ahead and doing regular freight, what they would do is they would go ahead and basically ship inventory in the drip system where they would go ahead and ship out you know, 500 units here, 500 units tomorrow, 500 units the next day, and they would all be less than $800. And I'll go ahead and kind of show you exactly how some people manipulate their actual cost of the value that they're going ahead and shipping. Right. So by going ahead and closing this, a lot of, you know, this black hat tactic is no longer available for Chinese sellers. So again, this is really great news. Because again, we can't compete with price with China. And once they go ahead and start using even further loopholes, it puts us at a way more disadvantage. So now it's actually an even playing field, believe it or not. So before I go to the next topic that I want to go ahead and discuss, let's see if there's any questions in the Discord. And again, this is primarily for students in the one-on-one mentorship. And eventually I'm going to go ahead and close this live. Um, to the public and just go ahead and just focus on the mentorship. And only because right now we have around 12 people in our one-on-one. So once we get a little bit bigger, we'll go ahead and start actually closing it off, um, and just primarily do these lives for, um, the students. So if you guys are interested, check out the one-on-one, um, link in the description. Go ahead and work with me. Um, but let's see here. Okay, no questions on the Discord, no questions on the YouTube Live. So let's go ahead and move forward to our next piece, which is how are we getting impacted? And look, when things change, there's obviously some fraud that's going to go ahead and go on, right? So let's actually go on to see what fraud is not happening first. So you can go ahead and follow these people on X. You can see that this guy Spencer went ahead and took a screenshot of how it looks like and how people are getting impacted by these tariffs. And it's really unfortunate. Right? Tens of thousands of small businesses, most of which are cash-strapped and operating on razor-thin margins to begin with, are getting hit with tariff extortion charges just like this as we speak. $15,000 weekly expenses out of complete nowhere. And if you can't pay the bribe, then you can't get your inventory. Short-term pain. And you can see somebody went ahead and shipped out 56 cartons, was regularly charged $595 for this actual Product. They got slapped with a 20% fee and 125% fee, and their new total is $15,595. Again, I'm sure that there are some like late fees involved in this because obviously this does not equate to 145% tariff, but just going ahead and getting this type of bill is insane. And, um, I feel for a lot of people, right? Like the people that get impacted the most in this type of situation as far as tariffs concern is inexperienced sellers, because if they haven't had skin in the game and they don't know the contacts or the right people to go ahead and contact, they're going to be paying exorbitant amount of fees, right? And even if you do tariffs yourself and duties and do all the declarations yourself, you're getting impacted the most on this, right? If you're not using DDP shipping, you're getting impacted the most. So again, if you are Amazon FBA seller, use DDP shipping. Because they're gonna go ahead and declare all the values for you. It's the first sale doctrine. You're gonna get cheaper freight costs. So go ahead and use that. But again, my heart goes out to all the small businesses that are going ahead and getting impacted like this, right? Like my business is getting impacted heavily. I'm paying more than double, if not triple, the amount of freight because of these tariffs. They're really having an impact in my business. But if I had this bad of an impact, I would have to go bankrupt. Like, I would have to lay off staff. I would have to go ahead and raise my prices. I would obviously make less profit. So let's go on to what some people are still doing, which is, uh, quote unquote fraud, right? So this item was sent to Amazon FBA with a declared customs value of $5 per unit, which sounds pretty normal, right? The only difference is that this item sells on Amazon for over $200 per unit. That's a $4,000 markup, or it's tariff fraud. What do you guys think? Right? So you can see this invoice here shows if I go ahead and try and zoom in just a little bit, which it doesn't allow me to drastically, but you guys get the picture, right? Like what's happening here is this individual is going ahead and claiming that he goes ahead and makes this product for $5, but he charges on Amazon for $200. Right? Basically, if you're charging $200 for an item, you're probably going ahead and getting this for what? At least $30, $40, $50. So again, that's people are going ahead and doing this type of tactic, right? And that's what kind of gave me an issue with the whole tariff war that's going on right now is that we didn't really have regulation in place, right? Like I'm all for going ahead and You know, getting our fair share and you know implementing tariffs, right? As long as we were ready for them. So you have someone that's going ahead and getting impacted by this amount of tariff fifteen thousand dollars for fifty six cartons of item or inventory, and then you have somebody else that's going ahead and getting charged very cheap tariffs, right? Going ahead and declaring five dollars per unit. Like how does the United States government go ahead and you know? Basically, you know, are able to verify this, right? There is no systems in place. So stuff like this is going to go ahead and happen. So I just would have wished before we had this whole tariff agreement or disagreement, this thing would have got figured out, right? So again, if you guys have any questions right now so far, the next thing I want to go ahead and go over is how these new tariffs are going ahead and getting impacted. And we're talking about like the economy as a whole. So if you guys are here, if you have any questions whatsoever, guys, go ahead and ask us. This is why I do these live streams primarily for the one-on-one mentorship. But if you guys are here early this morning, it is 6:26 my time, so Los Angeles time. So I have Kareem that's going ahead and asking questions. Let's see if this is a Brand new. All right, this is more of a personal one-on-one question. So, uh, Kareem, I see it here on the Discord, so I'll go ahead and get to it as soon as this live is over with because it is more of a personal question, um, an exact question that you're going ahead and asking. Um, but it is safe to assume though, um, and I'll go ahead and kind of make a general assumption and it's going to tie into the very end of this video as well, is that supplements is getting hit hard. On Amazon and Amazon's going ahead and verifying a lot of different types of things now where if you're a brand new account and you're trying to come out with a supplement brand, there are issues in place. Like Amazon will allow you to go ahead and create these types of supplement listings. But when it's time to go ahead and ship these items into an Amazon fulfillment center, people are getting flagged. And if you have a brand new account, that's basically the people that are getting impacted the most. Okay, so if you guys have any other questions before I move forward. Sick livestream so far. Appreciate it, Kareem. Uh, that makes me think that it's coming blockchain so people can't cheat. Yeah, again, that I would hope for that, right? Some type of blockchain or something like that where like we have a chain of, of structure, right? So we have a chain of structure as far as we understand, as far as these items were shipped in 2 months ago, 3 months ago, 4 months ago at this valued price. And if it stays consistent or elevates a little bit or comes down a little bit, then fair, right? That can go ahead and happen. But I'm pretty sure that, that, you know, $200 item that's selling on Amazon wasn't $5 declared a few months ago, right? So, so hopefully there's something in place, right? Blockchain, some type of, you know, A through Z checklist to go ahead and, you know, Prevent that from happening. But let's go ahead and go over something else, right? Like, so what is actually happening, right? So this is the terminals here in Los Angeles and Long Beach, which is the number one port in the entire world where people go ahead and get goods from China, get them shipped into the West Coast, primarily Los Angeles, get on a truck and get onto Amazon FBA. So you can see 3 terminals in LA, Long Beach closed their day gates yesterday because they have no vessel calls. No, this is not normal. And as you can see, shipping ports are empty across the United States and nothing is coming in. Businesses have canceled the remainder of their 2025 orders. Even with tariffs entirely removed, you won't see an uptick in orders because, as you can see the video, there is no one there to go ahead and get any type of containers that are coming in from Los Angeles and Long Beach. This is what I talked about, right? Yes, we're getting hit by tariffs like crazy, but on the turn of that, people are basically having a strategy of doing nothing. And what does doing nothing mean? Well, they have their containers in China right now, and they're waiting for Trump, they're waiting for China, they're waiting for all of us to come into an agreement so they can have more clarity as to what they're going to go ahead and pay. What I don't like about this actual strategy is that if you do nothing, the strategy you're choosing is that you're going to go ahead and have this inventory stuck in China for another week, month, year. You're eventually going to run out of stock. And when you run out of stock, you're eventually going to have to go ahead and lay off staff. You're eventually going to have to figure out things on your own if you're relying on this type of money. to go ahead and live day to day. So by doing nothing, it's probably one of the worst strategies to go ahead and have, right? So, but in turn to that, people that are going ahead and doing nothing is opening up the opportunity for us to get very cheap freight costs, like extremely cheap, like never seen before freight costs being this cheap because during COVID everything shut down, right? So even if you wanted to ship out inventory, you just couldn't because the ports were locked down in China, right? Even in the US, there was like holding times. I remember in the beginning where like a chip— a ship or container coming in from China had to literally sit for 14 days, um, before anybody can go ahead and actually get to it. So we're looking at very cheap freight costs, right? But obviously the tariff cost is being impacted from there. So you have to outweigh which is the beneficial thing to do, right? Is it going ahead and just paying the tariff costs? Is it going ahead and reaching out to different types of freight forwarders, asking your manufacturer for DDP shipping? So the list goes on and on, right? But what this means is that people at these ports aren't working. So they're not making money. The people trucking, getting it sent to Amazon are not making money and inventory is not getting into your retail stores, right? So what does this mean in 2 or 3 months? Does that mean that whatever is currently at Target, at Walmart, you know, going to be out of stock in a month or two months? Yeah. So that's why I'm saying a lot of you guys raise your prices, right? It might mean that you have short-term pain as far as you not getting enough sales right now, but I would rather not get sales right now, heighten my prices, have more profit margin for my current items that you know weren't impacted by these tariffs. So when my competitors do go out of stock in a month, two months because they try to keep prices the same. And they have more demand in the short term, once they're out of stock and they have to pay these exorbitant amount of tariff fees, customers have no choice but to go ahead and purchase my goods, right? Because if there's a bunch of money chasing fewer goods, these prices are going to go up eventually, right? So keep that in mind. Like, we're all in the business of going ahead and making money, right? Like, obviously we have different causes and why we go ahead and do Amazon FBA, but if we're running negative, Every single day, like we don't have a business to go ahead and run. So I understand that people might go ahead and consider you know Amazon FBA people greedy that we're going to go ahead and you know heighten prices. But we're only able to control what we can control right now. Tariffs are impacting a bunch of businesses. They're impacting our businesses. So we have to do what we have to do in order to go ahead and survive. So that's that. So let me see if we have any other questions either on the YouTube or. Or in the Discord? No questions on the Discord. Let's go ahead and go on to YouTube. Yeah, that's crazy, man. Like, those ports are— doesn't look good. But turning to that question with Kareem that we asked about supplements, so I did actually go ahead and purchase a supplement brand. So I'm excited to go ahead and bring it to you guys. You can see it's gonna be called Nutri Labs. They currently sell on Amazon right now. We're in the migration phase on Empire Flippers. So I'm very excited to go ahead and take this brand to new heights as far as what is currently selling right now, what we can go ahead and do and implement. And obviously I bought this business and, you know, I'll go over in a different video as far as like why I purchased this business and the inefficiencies that I saw and what my plans are to go ahead and scale this. Because I'm an open book, right? That's, that's the reason why I teach one-on-one with current Amazon FBA sellers, because I love digging into the numbers of your current Amazon FBA business and seeing exactly inefficiencies that I might see in your business that can really help you scale. Because believe it or not, like, I can go into a business and see your P&L statement and see where you lack or where you have to go ahead and work on in your business. And primarily a lot of it has to do with PPC and running PPC efficiently. But you can also go ahead and like if you have no terms with your supplier, right? Or if you go ahead and negotiate even further with your supplier, or if you have net thirty with your freight forwarder to go ahead and you know unlock cash flow in order for you to go ahead and scale that way, right? All of us have an issue as far as why we can't scale. A lot of it has to do with cash flow, and a lot of it has to do with PPC primarily, right? So really excited to go ahead and bring you guys on there. So again, if you if you guys do. Don't follow this YouTube channel again. This is basically what the contract looks. I'm purchasing this business for $185,000. I'm putting $92,000 upfront. The rest of it seller finance over the next 12 months. As I scale this business, I'll go ahead and use any profits that I go ahead and gain to go ahead and purchase that business. And again, I'm very excited to go ahead and go ahead and show you guys the ins and outs. I'm always an open book. Right? So whether that's the brands that I currently own right now, brands that I went ahead and purchased, brands that I'm actually having for sale as well. So yeah, you man's about to go crazy on TikTok Shop. Yeah. The thing is I stay in my lane, right? Like I know TikTok Shop is like a goldmine right now. Um, but I always just do what I know when that's Amazon FBA. So yeah, let's focus. I'm going to go ahead and focus on expanding with Amazon FBA first. And the reason why I purchased that brand specifically, I'll tell you the truth, is because again, new sellers, if I try and create a new account and I try and sell supplements, it's very hard right now. Seller finance the Kareem way, man. Kareem is a hustler, man. And that's why I like this young generation. People are go-getters. This guy Kareem is going through every single marketplace out there and just hounding people. to give him seller financing. And he's gotten a few deals that way. It's kind of crazy to think, right? For me, I only go to Empire Flippers just because I don't have the time to go to Flippa. I don't have the time to go to Quiet Life. I don't have the time to go to all these other marketplaces and do the digging. So I've already offered Kareem, hey, if you find a deal and you can't go ahead and fund it, I'm more than willing to go ahead and give you type of a wholesale deal like we do in real estate. Okay, cool. All right, guys, if you guys have other questions, go ahead and ask it. I'm gonna go ahead and stay on as long as I can, but if there is no questions, if you have no questions, then I'm gonna go ahead and log off. So ask away, guys. So again, my final thoughts on, on the entire thing: the de minimis or whatever exception clause that's going to an end is going to be big, big news for us Amazon FBA sellers. Because that primarily just means that we have less competition in the marketplace. Again, we— I like to go ahead and position all of my, you know, mentorship students to have a premium type product. So we're never the cheapest in the market. But again, once we have competition that leaves the market, it's obviously still good for everybody in the market, right? It's less people. I mean, less competition, but people are still chasing those same goods. Why do you do if you get too many 1-star reviews at launch? That's a great question. That's a good thing as far as you getting a bunch of one-star reviews at a launch in some perspective, right? It just means that either one, you have a shitty product. Two, that means that you're probably not targeting the right person, right? The reason why— so let me go ahead and put this into perspective, right? I sell a shoe cleaning product, and my shoe cleaning product is geared towards people that go ahead and collect sneakers, right? People that go ahead and collect limited edition sneakers. So my entire listing is focused on Yeezys, it's going ahead and focusing on Common Projects, it's going ahead and focusing on limited edition shoes that I know my shoe cleaner can go ahead and clean. So if someone goes ahead and purchases my product, and they think that it's a work boot cleaner, and my product doesn't work for them, they're gonna leave a 1-star review. So same concept with yours, right? If you're not targeting the right person, and you're not coming out with the with the product in your right customer avatar, chances are they're going to leave a 1-star review. So again, that's one, right? So either you have a shit product or you're, you're going ahead and not targeting the right person for your actual product, right? Because you can have the same exact product, but you're going ahead and targeting a different segmentation, targeting, positioning, and a customer avatar. Um, but primarily if you have a 1-star review, it's a, it's a bad product. So that's why it's always great to go ahead and test out your products primarily, but also don't order too much inventory in the very beginning. Always negotiate to try and go ahead and order No more than 500 units. And I would probably say 200 units at the very beginning. The cardinal rule with Amazon FBA is always don't run out of stock. But if you're launching a product, that's the only exception. Once you've already verified a product and it's good to go, if you run out of stock, we can go ahead and relaunch the actual product. And after that relaunch, once everything is good, once you all— you have the data back, don't run out of stock there. Okay. What if you already have an Amazon storefront for years with other products and you launch a supplement in there? From my understanding, Amazon FBA is—it's like you having an aerosol spray or you having flammable goods. It's basically being grandfathered in. So if you already have the approval to go ahead and sell a supplement, a aerosol, a flammable good, chances are you're okay. But if you don't, chances are you're not okay. But again, we're trying to figure out a workaround. So. I'm myself is in different masterminds. Like I'm in Titan Network. I'm in Million Dollar Club. So whatever I do find the information, and once I you know figure it out, I'll be more than welcome. I'll be more than willing to go ahead and share it with you guys. All right, guys. Let me see here. So no questions on the. Discord. Let me check one more time. Our main chat. Nothing on our main chat. Cool. All right, we're good there. So again, guys, I'll give one more minute with any new questions. If not, I'm gonna go ahead and log off. But yeah, basically that's, that's basically it, guys. So Again, I'm going to try and do this every Monday and Friday. Once we have a certain number in our Discord, this is going to become private only live streams. So it'll be a private only live stream and then I'll go ahead and make it public afterwards. But it's not fair for the guys that are in the actual Discord already paid for the one-on-one mentorship. So if you are interested in one-on-one, having me dissect your actual Amazon FBA business, we're only accepting current Amazon FBA sellers that are looking to go ahead and scale and don't know how to. So if that's one of you guys, take a call. You're actually gonna get a call with me, um, and you're actually gonna get one-on-one mentorship with me as well. So I don't have a team behind me or anything like that. I do have a team as far as like taking care of the, the operations of everything, but you are gonna go ahead and get one-on-one training with myself. So it'll be on the link in the description if you guys are watching this on repeat. Um, but I want to hear your thoughts. Like, what are your thoughts about, you know, this whole loophole being closed? I want to hear your thoughts as far as like what's happening right now at the ports of Los Angeles, New York, because it's all the same story. Like, no, there's not a lot of ships coming in and there's a bunch of ships just stuck in the harbor of China, just waiting for a deal to happen. Um, I do see people going ahead and trying to, um, hit up manufacturers in India, in different parts of Asia, even in Mexico. Um, but just know, like eventually everybody's going to get impacted. The whole goal of this is to have fair trade everywhere. So, um, if we don't have fair trade everywhere, obviously all of those places are going to get impacted too, but it's great to have China plus one, which is you know having that backup plan. But other than that, guys, I hope you guys appreciated this video or this live stream, and I'll catch you guys in the next one.
