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Temu’s sales decline in the U.S. is deepening as the online marketplace drastically cuts spending on advertising targeting American consumers, signaling a shift in focus after President Donald Trump’s tariff barrage.
Compared to a year ago, Temu’s weekly sales dropped more than 25% in the period from May 11 through June 8, according to Bloomberg Second Measure, which analyzes credit and debit card data. That’s in contrast to other e-commerce platforms run by Shein, Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., where weekly sales have all returned to year-on-year growth since Trump’s trade truce with China in mid-May.
The deepening sales decline comes alongside Temu’s cut in advertising spending, an abrupt turnaround in strategy after it spent big last year to attract the attention of U.S. shoppers, including running commercials on Super Bowl night.
From creating thousands to tens of thousands of new advertisements daily before April 10, the numbers are now down to dozens or even single digits, with some days in June seeing no new commercials, according to analytics company AppGrowing Global.
“Temu’s sales growth has always been glued to their aggressive advertisements,” said Wu Yanwei, chief content director of AppGrowing’s parent YouCloud. “The abrupt slowdown in advertisement spending is likely turning its growth engines off” in the U.S., Wu said, noting that Temu was channeling ad spending toward other markets including Europe.
While declining to specifically comment on sales and ad numbers, a spokesperson for Temu said the company has been working with local merchants across regions to deliver stable pricing to consumers.
Temu and Chinese e-commerce shopping platforms such as Shein had for years relied on a tariff exemption on small parcels to ship cheap clothing and household goods to American consumers duty-free. After President Donald Trump plugged that loophole this year, they largely lost the discount-appeal that drew U.S. shoppers in droves.
Still, Shein’s U.S. sales have fared relatively better in recent months. It has managed to reverse a drop in sales to return to growth from June 1, Bloomberg Second Measure data showed. Shein, which was founded in China but is now headquartered in Singapore, has seen single-digit growth since then that is similar to levels posted by Walmart’s e-commerce platform.
Shein’s advertising in the U.S. has remained more stable than Temu, with the number of new commercials most days this year being anywhere between dozens to a few hundreds, according to AppGrowing Global.
Shein has major operations in Indiana. In summer 2022, the company opened its Midwest distribution hub just northwest of Indianapolis—a 659,000-square-foot center in Whitestown—and announced plans for a second, 550,000-square-foot warehouse on its Boone County campus. At the time, Shein said it expected to boost employment at the site from about 750 to 1,400 by the end of 2025.
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