Fast-fashion giant Shein Group Ltd. raised US prices of its products from dresses to kitchenware ahead of imminent tariffs on small parcels, in an early sign of the potential effect of the trade war on American consumers.

Most of the hikes in US prices came on Friday, with markups significantly higher in some categories than others, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. The average price for the top 100 products in the beauty and health category increased by 51% from Thursday, with several of the items more than doubling in price. For home and kitchen products and toys, the average jump was more than 30%, led by a massive 377% increase in the price of a 10-piece set of kitchen towels. For women’s clothing the rise was 8%.

E-commerce shopping platforms like Shein and Temu face a 120% tariff on many of their products due to the US government’s decision to end the “de minimis” exemption for small packages from mainland China and Hong Kong. Exporters in recent years had capitalized on the exemption, which allowed goods valued at under $800 to enter the US without tariffs or customs duties. Washington will also increase the per-postal-item fee on goods entering after May 2 to $100 and even higher after June 1. 

As recently as April 21, Trump said in a social media post that “there is virtually no inflation” because of falling energy and grocery prices. But Shein’s price hike reflects the latest efforts by Chinese online retailers to pass at least some of the extra imports costs onto US consumers.

Back in February, in order to seek cover from Trump’s tariff policy, Shein offered incentives to some of its Chinese suppliers to set up production capacity in Vietnam. Temu wanted Chinese factories to ship their own wares in bulk directly to American warehouses, adopting what it called a “half-custody” framework.

Temu and Shein saw sales rebound in March and early April as American shoppers stockpiled everything from makeup brushes to home appliances before tariff-led price increases set in, Bloomberg data shows. Both companies announced earlier this month that they would raise prices in the US.

In general, prices rose by about 10% for Shein in the US from April 24 to 26 based on a sample shopping cart filled by Bloomberg News with 50 items from a range of categories. During the period, 7 out of 50 sampled items were delisted in the US. In contrast, Shein’s prices in the UK stayed mostly unchanged and no items were delisted. 

Of the 43 items still available in the US cart, 30 had a price hike of more than 10% in the two days. 

While broader price adjustments came on Friday, some goods had already become more expensive. The prices for dozens of top products in the Women’s Clothing category on Shein increased on April 22, pushing the average price for the top 100 products in the category to $9.06, from $8.68, an increase of more than 4%.

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Advertising firms are bracing for a pullback in clients’ marketing expenditure, with the outlook for 2025 appearing increasingly muddled for the industry.

Though companies like Paris-based Publicis Groupe SA and New York-headquartered Omnicom Group Inc. both recently dispelled the idea that tariff uncertainty had already squeezed clients’ marketing budgets, they did not dismiss the possibility of a bumpy road ahead.

“Of course, many of our clients are facing a very challenging situation due to uncertainty on tariffs, rising inflation and a geopolitical context that is more volatile than ever,” Publicis Chief Executive Officer Arthur Sadoun said on a call with analysts. Though this hasn’t yet materialized in the company’s numbers, “we could experience cuts from several clients across many industries for the rest of the year,” he added.

Some companies are already tightening budgets. Forvia SE, a supplier of automotive parts, slashed marketing and travel expenses as it expects tariffs to hurt business. “Any external cost, any cash that runs out of the company is under strict scrutiny right now,” Chief Financial Officer Olivier Durand said on an earnings call. 

The car industry, one of the sectors most vulnerable to a trade war, is likely to lead the way in curtailing ad spend, according to Bernstein analyst Annick Maas.

“It’s a very logical and first place to cut back in uncertain or lousy environments because it’s a lot easier to cut back your advertising budget versus firing people or shutting down locations,” Craig Huber, equity research analyst at Huber Research Partners, said.

The flexible nature of marketing spending led Omnicom to take a cautious approach to its outlook, lowering the bottom end of its organic growth range to 2.5% from 3.5% previously. 

Publicis reiterated its full-year guidance of organic net sales growth of 4% to 5%, with 4% being a “solid floor” that prices in the current economic climate, Sadoun said. Analyst expectations currently sit below the midpoint of the range. Estimates and investor sentiment will continue to factor in the possibility of a sharp downturn in economic activity in the second half of 2025, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Matthew Bloxham said.

WPP Plc said it hadn’t seen clients pulling back on advertising due to tariffs yet, though warned that sales this year would remain flat or decline as much as 2%.

“Uncertainty is not great for business confidence, and that’s what we were talking about when we gave our guidance for the year,” WPP CEO Mark Read said in an interview Friday.

Interpublic Group of Cos Inc., whose acquisition by Omnicom is set to be completed this year, said the media market has been steady so far in April and the consumer has been resilient. “If the economy slows, we would see it in projects because they’re somewhat more discretionary, or digital spend that you can action more quickly,” CEO Philippe Krakowsky said on a call with analysts. “But at this point, everybody’s trying to understand when there’ll be some measure of clarity.”

Previous Experience

Companies may be loath to make drastic budget cuts for fear of falling out of favor with consumers. “If these advertisers learned anything in the financial crisis and during Covid, it was that those firms that pulled back dramatically on advertising hurt their longer term outlook,” Huber said.

It’s “counterintuitive” to cut advertising in a time of economic stress because that’s exactly the time when it’s good to market to consumers that are being more strict with their budget, according to Bernstein’s Maas. Advertising did tend to be cut first in past recessions, which hurt the likes of Publicis, IPG and Omnicom.

“If you only have 3,000 clients and thousands of your clients are are having budget pressure, it’s impacting you more than if you have thousands and thousands of clients,” Maas said. 

Even if drastic cuts don’t materialize, advertisers will be more tactical with their spending, focusing on retail media networks, artificial intelligence-powered tools and other digital-first campaigns, while leaning away from splashy TV ads, Scotiabank analyst Nat Schindler wrote in a note earlier this month. 

Alphabet Inc.’s search advertising business generated sales of $50.7 billion in the first quarter, ahead of analyst estimates. The insurance, retail, health care and travel industries helped buoy the unit, executives said on an investor call. Digital advertising peers Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which report next week, will have a high bar to clear as investors look for signs of a slowing ad market. 

The second quarter “is shaping up to be about control, caution and conversions,” Schindler said. “For advertisers, that means maintaining spend where outcomes are clear, and dialing back where they aren’t.”

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• Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, 40, of Bowie, Maryland will be sentenced in August after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud this month. Vong’s guilty plea is the latest intrigue in what authorities say is a vast fake IT worker scheme that funds North Korea’s illegal nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. Authorities alleged Vong essentially rented out his U.S. identity to developers based in China who used it to get more than a dozen remote tech jobs, some of which involved contract work for sensitive government agencies. 

A 40-year-old Maryland man is facing decades in prison after he allegedly worked with foreign nationals in China to get remote work IT jobs with at least 13 different U.S. companies between 2021 and 2024. The jobs paid him more than $970,000 in salary for software development tasks that were actually performed by operatives authorities allege are North Korean and working out of a post in Shenyang, China, according to the Department of Justice. 

The China-based developers used the company IT jobs, some of which involved contracting out software services to U.S. government agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration, to get access to highly sensitive government systems that they logged into from overseas, authorities said. According to the Department of Justice, the Maryland man’s scheme is part of a vast fraud operation in which trained North Korean nationals work with American facilitators to fraudulently obtain remote-work IT jobs under various identities, do the work from Russia or China, and then illegally remit their salaries to Kim Jong Un, authoritarian leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). 

There have been dozens of indictments in the conspiracy, including Americans who have pleaded guilty to hosting computer farms, where they keep dozens of company-issued laptops in their homes for a fee so that it appears the work is being done in the U.S. The UN has estimated the scheme generates revenues between $250 million and $600 million each year and funds North Korea’s illegal nuclear weapons program. The FBI, State Department, and  Department of Justice say thousands of DPRK IT workers have been hired for positions at hundreds of Fortune 500 companies in recent years. 

In the case involving Maryland man Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, the DOJ claims he worked in league with developers in China, including one who called himself “William James.” Court records show authorities believed James and other John Does in the scheme are natives of North Korea. Vong allegedly told an FBI agent “William” approached him through a cell phone video game app and told Vong he could “legally” make money by getting development jobs and then giving William his computer access credentials. 

According to the DOJ and court documents, Vong allegedly let James and the other unnamed conspirators draw up a fraudulent resume for him saying he had a degree from the University of Hawaii, 16 years of experience as a software developer, and had previously maintained a secret-level security clearance. The DOJ said Vong, who worked in a nail and spa salon, had neither a degree nor did he have experience in development. 

At one of the 13 jobs, someone who identified himself as Vong allegedly joined an online interview with a senior software developer who recommended he get the job and took a screenshot of him during the meeting.  The CEO of the Virginia-based company later hired him after a successful final interview in which Vong allegedly showed his Maryland driver’s license and U.S. passport to confirm his identity, and the company screenshotted Vong a second time holding up the documents. (Court records show authorities believe these screen grabs are of two different people—one who is allegedly a North Korean IT worker posing as Vong, and another who is the real Vong from Maryland holding his license and passport.)

The company set Vong to work on an FAA contract that involved an application monitoring aviation assets in flight in the U.S, according to court records. The software is used by government agencies such as the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and Secret Service. The Virginia company shipped Vong a MacBook Pro laptop with administrative rights to download software and the FAA let Vong have a Personal Identity Verification card to get him into government facilities and systems, court records show. Vong allegedly installed remote access software on the company device so that James and his cohort could use it from China. 

Between March and July in 2023, the Virginia company paid Vong more than $28,000 while the work was performed by James and other unknown people, the DOJ said. During his time there, someone known as Vong attended Zoom meetings for work and spoke to his team about his task list at a daily meeting. As part of his guilty plea, Vong admitted the Virginia job was only one among 13 different companies that hired him between 2021 and 2024. Several did contract work for the U.S. government, in addition to the FAA. Vong got fired by the Virginia company after it submitted his information to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency for a secret clearance and found out he might have another job. 

After he was fired, the CEO showed Vong’s picture to the senior developer who initially recommended him. The developer told the CEO that the individual he called “Vong” in the photo wasn’t the same “Vong” he had initially interviewed and screenshotted. He also wasn’t the person who participated in daily virtual meetings and did work.

Vong pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and is facing 20 years in prison. Reached by phone, Vong declined to comment. 

Michael “Barni” Barnhart, principal insider risk investigator at Dtex Systems, told Fortune in a statement the continued efforts by U.S. law enforcement to expose and disrupt the North Korean IT worker operations and the facilitators who enable them are positive advancements.

“These indictments are another critical step in thwarting adversarial operations,” said Barnhart in the statement. Still, Barnhart said his group has directly observed IT workers trying to get other highly sensitive jobs, including positions with clearance within the U.S. government and third-party contractors for federal agencies.

Furthermore, in a report published this month, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group revealed the scheme is expanding, and one DPRK worker late last year operated at least 12 personas across Europe and the U.S., and was looking for more jobs in European defense and with government contractors. Other investigations found fake IT worker identities seeking jobs in Germany and Portugal, according to the latest report.  

“Even if these actors are primarily financially motivated, the risk they pose to critical infrastructure is enormous,” John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google’s Threat Intelligence Group, told Fortune. “This scheme has become so widespread that targeting of these organizations is almost inevitable. Given their connection to the intelligence services, that kind of access could be a nightmare.”

The FBI’s Baltimore office is investigating the case.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com