It's as if people have never had shipping itemized before.
The only reason aliexpress shopping is cheap is because the rest of the world foots the bill. Unless somebody has finally removed China's "Developing Country" status thats gotten them essentially free international parcel service for the best part of 100 years.
Yeah OK, but if I only want 5 pieces and I have to choose between $5 or $30, I'm not going to think about the geopolitical situation, I'm just going to get the cheaper one.
I buy small parts with "Choice" shipping on AliExpress sometimes, because it's cheap and [usually] quick and they take care of all of that pesky tariff and customs business in ways that never have an opportunity to surprise me.
For years now, the shipping process has worked like this for me: They gather it up on their end and send the stuff on a cargo plane to a sort that is at or near JFK airport in New York.
If the order includes things from several different sellers, then at some point they generally get combined into one bag.
From there, they just mail it -- using regular, domestic USPS service. It shows up in my mailbox on my porch in Ohio a few days later.
Although it certainly was a thing I've experienced in the past, at no point does the process I've described exploit the "Developing County" loophole. They just send things to the other side of the world (at their expense), and then pay the post office the same way as anyone else does to bring it to my door.
EDIT: Oh lord, bad typo in my previous comment- it should have been aliexpress SHIPPING not Shopping.
It's not the same, what you described is Direct Entry (somewhere around page 25, linked below). Apparently the Terminal Dues system has been massively changed in the 5 years since I last looked- but it still appears unfavorable to USPS and US sellers, while favoring high volume foreign shippers.
As for how aliexpress delivers stuff, since the tarrifs: 1) no-name last mile. 2) USPS last mile, and USPS the entire way.
I don't know if any are associated with "Choice", Paid store shipping, and/or free store shipping.
Since I normally buy from aliexpress to avoid the insane 200-800% markups amazon/ebay/walmart/etc dropshippers demand the $5-$10 in shipping doesnt factor in.
As a consumer, here's how AliExpress Choice shipping functions for me: Like buying a widget from a shop downtown, the price is the price.
I don't see what anyone will pay (or has paid) for duties or tariffs or fees or delivery, I don't have any idea what the markup is at any level, and I don't know what GAO table they or anyone else used to get it to happen. That's outside of my purvey.
With this method: Same as with the shop downtown, I'm not importing anything myself; I don't see any customs forms or declarations at all. AliExpress handles all of that business, not me.
I can peek behind the curtain a bit and see some aspects of how things move from place to place as physical entities using the tracking data that they provide. And that's about it, until it eventually shows up inside of my mailbox -- and then I can have a nice gander at the labels and see that it was sent with USPS domestic postage.
This process doesn't (can't, AFAICT) abuse my nation's postal system, and I like that aspect quite a lot.
The downsides are cost and availability: There may be a dozen or more sellers offering seemingly-identical widgets on AliExpress, but maybe only one or two (if any) that ship that particular widget Choice. Like Prime, it can actually end up costing a bit more than other methods.
But it's fast, still cheap in absolute terms, and there's zero BS on my end so I like those parts, too.
It's as if people have never had shipping itemized before.
The only reason aliexpress shopping is cheap is because the rest of the world foots the bill. Unless somebody has finally removed China's "Developing Country" status thats gotten them essentially free international parcel service for the best part of 100 years.