Between 2025 and 2026, the “tax-free dividend” that supported the rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce is disappearing globally, but mainstream platforms are bucking the trend and investing resources in high-quality supply and localized infrastructure.
This seemingly contradictory trend marks that the core of industry competition has shifted from a simple price war to a comprehensive competition of commodity power, operational efficiency and compliance capabilities.
Data from Shanghai Port provides an intuitive footnote: in the first five months of this year, the value of its cross-border e-commerce maritime exports exceeded 5.8 billion yuan, surpassing the whole of last year.
Policy changes: The end of the tax-free era has forced industry transformation.
Adjustments to tariff policies in major global consumer markets are reshaping the cost curve and business logic of Chinese sellers.
In May 2025, the United States officially canceled its tax-free treatment for small packages worth less than $800 from China; shortly thereafter, the European Union determined to impose fixed tariffs on small packages worth less than 150 euros starting from July 2026.
These two key policy changes have directly impacted the distribution business model that relies on low-price direct mail, and its profit margins have been significantly compressed.
A Shenzhen cross-border e-commerce salesperson at the Ningbo Cross-border Expo said frankly that his company is looking for categories with high customer unit prices, such as pet supplies and maternal and infant products, because “it is becoming increasingly difficult for cross-border e-commerce companies to do simple distribution.”
Policy trends are changing at the same time as market demand.
Six departments including the Ministry of Commerce issued a document in April this year, clarifying that they will promote cross-border e-commerce from scale expansion to high-quality development and help upgrade “Made in China” to “Chinese Brand”.
Platform strategy: from chasing traffic to deepening supply.
Facing the new environment, platforms have adjusted their strategies and tilted resources towards merchants with supply chain advantages.
TikTok Shop Fully Hosted released the “Quality Wins Global” strategy at the merchant conference in June. The core of it is to integrate platform content and operational capabilities to serve factory-type merchants who “have goods but cannot sell them.”
In terms of market expansion, the platform has added 8 new European sites including Poland and the Netherlands, and its fully managed business has covered 16 markets including the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Japan.
Data shows that its business in the US market has doubled compared with the same period last year, and the UK and EU four countries have increased by 71% year-on-year.
In terms of capability empowerment, the AIGC tool can be used to generate multi-lingual delivery videos with one click, and provide direct access rights to expert institutions, reducing merchants’ content creation and communication costs.
The platform focuses on “quality-selected” and “new and unique” pallets, among which the user repurchase rate of carefully-selected products is 20 percentage points higher than the broader market.
AliExpress is betting on emerging markets and seizing the benefits of Brazil’s policy of eliminating federal import taxes on cross-border goods under $50.
On May 28, the platform signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazil Post to focus on improving the “last mile” delivery capabilities and expand coverage to remote areas. It also launched multiple weekly charter flights to improve customs clearance time.
Other platform actions also point to refined operations: Amazon’s overseas shopping launched the annual “Sea Fold Festival” promotion, and opened a pop-up store in the Kuanzhai Alley of Chengdu to link online sales through offline scene experiences; SHEIN made its official debut at a professional cross-border exhibition for the first time, dismantling its “self-operated + platform” dual-engine model, aiming to empower China’s textile and apparel industry to go overseas.
Regulatory storm: Compliance costs have become a new competitive threshold.
While platforms are expanding their markets, they are also facing increasingly stringent global regulatory scrutiny.
On May 28, 2026, the European Commission announced a huge fine of 200 million euros on the cross-border e-commerce platform Temu for failing to effectively prevent illegal and non-compliant goods from flowing into the European market.
The European Commission made it clear that the investigation against Temu is far from over and more penalties may be imposed in the future.
In Southeast Asia, regulators have also stepped up scrutiny of platform rules.
The National Competition Commission under the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam has launched a review of the charging policies of e-commerce platforms, focusing on the basis of charging and the impact on sellers.
Shopee originally planned to enforce the new “maintain display” rule in Vietnam from May 29, automatically deducting at least 1% from orders for advertising promotion, but the implementation has been suspended after regulatory intervention.
Model innovation: Logistics efficiency solves the bottleneck of small and medium-sized sellers going overseas.
In addition to policies and platforms, innovations in supervision and logistics models provide underlying support for industry growth.
The “total order + LCL” supervision model launched by Shanghai Customs allows cross-border e-commerce scattered goods and other general trade goods to be exported in LCL, solving the pain point of “difficulty in LCL” for small and medium-sized sellers.
Yang Chengwu, general manager of Youlianda Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., said: “Now even if there are only a few cubic meters of goods, they can be transported by sea at any time, and the logistics cost is directly discounted by 30%.” In terms of efficiency improvement, the logistics company’s collection time has been shortened by 50%, and the average cost saving per TEU is about 4,000 yuan.
In terms of the siphon effect, this model has attracted the supply of goods from large e-commerce platforms such as Amazon to the Shanghai port, pushing the maritime cross-border e-commerce LCL business to handle over 1,000 tons of goods per day.
Tax policy also provides assistance.
The preferential tax policy for export returns issued in February this year has reduced the tax burden on returned e-commerce goods worth 4.263 million yuan at Shanghai Port.
Future path: high-quality growth and merchant response.
The structural changes in the cross-border e-commerce industry are irreversible.
For merchants, the key to adapting to the new cycle lies in three adjustments: embracing the full custody model. For factory-based sellers who lack local operation capabilities, full custody can directly combine their supply chain advantages with platform content and contract fulfillment capabilities to lower the threshold for going overseas; focus on quality and differentiation, abandon the logic of low-price distribution, and switch to
Look for highly repurchased “high-quality” products or “new and unique” products that can be produced quickly. The success rate of the latter within 45 days of being online is four times that of other new products. Compliance should be given top priority, especially for the European market. Product certification and quality control need to be carried out in advance. At the same time, pay close attention to changes in platform rules and regulatory developments in places such as Vietnam.
The competition dimension of the industry has broadened.
When tax-free dividends become a thing of the past, high-quality product supply, efficient cross-border logistics and strict compliance management will together constitute a new ticket to the next stage of growth.
