“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Adam Smith, who knew a thing or two about how power disguises itself in principle, wrote that line nearly 250 years ago. It has the peculiar ring of something you half-wish wasn’t true, but which the world keeps confirming in small, familiar ways, like when petrol stations mysteriously raise their prices at once, or when supermarkets suddenly ‘harmonise’ the cost of milk, as though the gods of dairy whispered the same secret into every buyer’s ear.

But Smith wasn’t talking about coincidences. He was describing the instinctive reflex of market players to defend margins, reduce uncertainty, and, if possible, reshape the rules in their favour. And nowhere is this instinct more visible than in the corridors of today’s British retail industry.

This week, a rare chorus of agreement emerged from the upper echelons of fashion and consumer goods. Executives from Inditex (Zara’s parent company), Associated British Foods (Primark), Sainsbury’s and Currys all issued statements, carefully phrased, of course,  calling for urgent reform of the UK’s de minimis customs threshold.

The threshold in question allows goods under £135 to be imported without customs duties. It was meant as a bit of administrative lubrication,  a way to avoid clogging the system with paperwork over a £3 phone charger or a novelty mug. But large Chinese platforms, particularly Shein and Temu, have turned it into a full-blown strategy. Direct-to-consumer shipping, split into thousands of tiny parcels, now bypasses not only duties but, in many cases, the quality and compliance standards that domestic retailers are held to.

In the US, the figures have already raised eyebrows: over 30% of all de minimis shipments in 2023 came from Shein and Temu alone. And in April, after a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, the loophole was closed for goods shipped directly from China and Hong Kong. Reuters source

Now, British retailers want the same. Oscar Garcia Maceiras, Inditex CEO, told the BBC he was simply asking for “a level playing field.” George Weston at ABF called it “a positive step.” Currys CEO Alex Baldock was more blunt ,  warning of “dumping” and supply chains being flooded through online marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba and TikTok Shop.

In my view, what they are really saying, beneath the formal language and polished press releases, is that the rules, once so accommodating, now feel strangely unfair. Though not, one suspects, unfair in the abstract sense. Merely unfair to them. And here, if one is paying the right kind of attention, a quiet irony begins to surface, not loud or outrageous, but the sort that lingers.

Because Shein and Temu didn’t invent this game. They’re simply playing it with greater agility. It was the high street giants, now appealing to principles of fairness, who first normalised ultra-fast supply chains, outsourced labour, and race-to-the-bottom pricing.

Primark’s business model is not a monument to regulatory purity. Zara practically patented the idea of designing today what will be discarded next Thursday. They were, for a time, the disruptors, the ones exploiting scale, outsourcing, and timing to decimate slower, more traditional competitors.

That they are now outraged to find themselves on the receiving end of such tactics is, if not hypocritical, then certainly convenient.

Of course, there is a legitimate problem here. When imported products are waved through with minimal oversight, standards erode. British retailers are expected to comply with safety laws, employment regulations, tax codes, not always perfectly, but at least with the occasional audit. If the playing field becomes tilted enough, even the illusion of competition vanishes. And it is the illusion, not the reality, that capitalism depends on to sustain its moral story.

Still, the appeal to fairness rings hollow when it arrives only once one’s position is threatened. It’s a bit like a landlord who spent years exploiting loopholes in housing law, now complaining bitterly that short-term lets are undermining his returns.

And here we return to Smith, not the soft-focus version on economics textbooks, but the sharp-eyed moral philosopher who understood that markets, left to themselves, do not produce virtue. They reward advantage.

They reward the capacity to bend, nudge, and, when possible, rewrite the rules.

The de minimis issue will likely be addressed. But the broader pattern will remain: those who thrive on loopholes will always cry foul when the loophole benefits someone else. The disguise changes, innovation, disruption, fairness, but the instinct remains the same.

If there is a lesson in all this, it is not just about customs policy. It is about power,  and the stories it tells to make its position sound like principle.