Temu’s US web traffic quietly recovered from last year’s tariff blow
Temu’s parent company’s stock is still under pressure though, both this year and this morning.
Just over a year ago, countries around the world scrambled to make a plan about how to respond to the “Liberation Day” tariffs. Consumers, meanwhile, scrambled to order as many $1 phone cases, kitchen gadgets, cheap clothes, and novelty storage containers as they could.
But even a global trade war hasn’t kept Americans from seeking out deals for too long, as web traffic data provided by Similarweb reveals that monthly visits to temu.com have broadly returned to pre-tariff levels in the US, reaching close to a record high shortly after the Supreme Court ruled against President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs in November before stabilizing to 353 million estimated visits in April.
In the days and weeks following Trump’s big billboard of tariffs last spring, Temu announced a series of price hikes while cutting back on its marketing spend, as the scrapping of the “de minimis” tax exemption for Chinese goods saw its sales and web visits plummet.
Since then, Temu has evolved its supply chain, put resources into recruiting more US sellers, and encouraged overseas manufacturers to ship inventory in bulk to US warehouses to insulate its operations against trade policy changes (at the cost of many small sellers on the platform). Temu also restored its direct-from-China shipping option by June and has sprung back into the US market with price cuts of up to 60% for some products, fighting to maintain its reputation for ultracheap goods.
We have Temu at home
While Temu’s top line has recovered, the company’s margins seems to have taken a hit, and the stock has suffered as a result. ADRs of Temu owner PDD Holdings are down 24% so far in 2026, and are suffering another 12% drop this morning — but it’s the company’s home market that’s arguably proving more problematic than the US.
Though PDD doesn’t break out revenue separately for Temu, analysts at Citi wrote in a report last quarter that its US traffic likely recovered after tariff policy normalized — but with two consecutive quarters of profit drops (trailing 12 months) on its track record now, Temu’s bottom line continues to run into fierce competition and regulatory pressure domestically, especially as it tries to prevent merchants from defecting to other platforms like Alibaba and JD.com.
