Amazon US is 8x more expensive than Costco China

Amazon US prices used to be among the cheapest in the world. Leading up to and during the pandemic, I would do much of my shopping on Amazon US, which ships to Hong Kong for free without Prime and is 100% tax-free. Slowly over the past decade, though, their advantage has eroded and almost of my regular shopping is done on mainland Chinese or Hong Kong e-commerce platforms. I don’t think most US-based Amazon customers who don’t have access to these other option…especially US Prime members who loyally buy everything from Amazon for the “free” shipping…realize how much they overpay for Amazon products. Yesterday, I found out exactly how much.

I was visiting Costco in Shenzhen with a family member and came across an apparently American-brand inflatable backyard pool for 114.70 CNY…approximately US$17. With a new infant that might like floating around in a backyard (floating infants is all the rage in this part of the world!), I wanted to see if the pool was a “real” American brand and how much it “normally”sold for in its home market, so checked Amazon US. I found that it is a real American brand and the product sells for the bargain-basement price of exactly US$126.06 which, for those keeping track, is 850 CNY. That’s an 8x markup over the Costco China price to buy the exact same product.

And the Costco China price includes China’s value added tax while the Amazon US price does not. If I wanted to ship this US$126.06 pool to Florida, for example, I’d have to pay an additional US$8.82 in sales tax. The Florida sales tax on this plastic pool alone is itself more than 50% of the entire tax-inclusive price of the pool at Costco China.

The implication of this is that an American consumer need to make more than 8 times as much money after taxes to enjoy the same inflatable pool quality of life as a Costco China shopper. That's brutal.