THE online shopping-fuelled surge in air cargo demand looks set to continue despite US government attempts to tighten import regulations for e-commerce, reports London's Air Cargo News.

Niall van de Wouw, chief air freight officer at analyst Xeneta, said propose regulations that will expand the types of goods excluded from paying duties under the de minimis exemption for goods worth less than $800 will "not put the genie back in the bottle".

"E-commerce platforms Shein and Temu were not set up to expose a loophole in de minimis regulations. The cornerstone of the e-commerce business model is the massive and seemingly insatiable consumer demand in the West for low-cost fast-fashion, apparel and textiles," he said.

"More than a billion shipments now enter the US under de minimis exemption each year, with the majority originating from Chinese e-commerce platforms. This extraordinary level of demand is not going away and the genie cannot be put back in the bottle."

Xeneta figures show that e-commerce demand is up by around 30 per cent this year while this summer there were more than 37 million new downloads of the Temu app alone in a single month.

"Companies like Shein and Temu have known for a long time that changes to US import regulations are inevitable, and I don't think they will be overly concerned by the latest announcement," said Mr van de Wouw.

"Even if the new de minimis regulations cause prices to rise slightly on e-commerce platforms, they will still be very low cost. The US Government is trying to level the playing field for American retailers and manufacturers, but the price differential is so big that they aren't even playing on the same field as Chinese e-commerce."