| Bonjour et Bienvenue to the Paris Edition. I’m Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lionel Laurent. If you haven’t yet, subscribe now to the Paris Edition newsletter. Bad Things Come in Small Packages | Most of the people heading to Charles de Gaulle Airport this week probably had a May Day vacation in mind. For French Finance Minister Eric Lombard, it was also the right place to send out a Mayday signal to the rest of Europe about the e-commerce boom that’s about to take a grim trade-war turn. The huge popularity of Chinese platforms like Temu and Shein with cost-conscious consumers has recently fueled a deluge of packages arriving in Europe every year, with about 1.5 billion landing on French doorsteps alone. Yet their small value and high quantity means they fly under the enforcement radar, overwhelming customs officials and frustrating regulators who complain of the knock-off, counterfeit or unsafe goods frequently found inside.  Eric Lombard Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg With the US now pulling up the drawbridge against cheap Chinese goods, the tsunami is about to hit Europe with full force as trade is re-routed, warned Lombard. Data from Bloomberg Intelligence suggests that Europe has become an increasingly key market for the likes of Temu and Shein, based on monthly users adjusted for economic buying power. I’ve noticed Temu ads everywhere on (French) YouTube since Trump's tariff blitz, offering a free Android tablet to those who download the app. To stem the tide, the European Union is proposing to end the customs exemption for packages worth less than €150, but this is years away from becoming reality. It has also opened a probe into whether Temu is in breach of rules designed to prevent potential market abuse by large digital platforms, with which the company says it’s fully cooperating. But this too is months away from completion. There’s a lot of hesitation — after all, nobody wants to fight a trade war on two fronts. Lombard is right to sound the alarm and call for a more resolute response, such as slapping more fees on those parcels — a Temu tax, you might call it — as soon as possible. At the European level, nobody is yet willing to voice publicly what should also be on the table: A possible closure of market access for e-commerce platforms that undermine the single market’s rules. Cheap goods for European consumers in the middle of a trade war won’t be a win if the hidden costs of these bargains keep rising. It’s a Mayday signal worth heeding. | 
