Where Temu and Shein's American Shoppers Actually Went — Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom Rack, and Old Navy Are Now Tracking the Migration in Card Data

Consumer Edge card data isolates U.S. shoppers who bought from Shein or Temu twice in early 2026 and then disappeared in March and April. Their spending didn't vanish — it landed at Bloomingdale's (+52%), Nordstrom Rack (+21%), Old Navy (+12%), and Kohl's (+6%). The de minimis closure isn't a tail risk anymore; it's a margin tailwind for U.S. mid-market retail.

For two years the case for U.S. department stores and discount apparel chains has been that the de minimis tariff loophole — the one that let parcels under $800 enter the U.S. duty-free and powered Shein's and Temu's American gross merchandise volume — was structurally unsustainable. We just didn't have evidence yet that closing it would actually push share back to legacy U.S. retail. As of this week, we do.

Bloomberg's Spencer Soper first reported the data and it has been spreading through the buyside this week as Q1 retail prints validate the thesis. Consumer Edge Research isolated U.S. shoppers who placed at least two orders with Shein or Temu in January and February 2026, then placed zero orders with either site in March and April — the four-week window immediately after the de minimis exemption was slashed from 54% to a permanent flat schedule we covered last Wednesday. Then Consumer Edge tracked where that demand reappeared in card-and-bank-account panel data through April 27.

The redistribution is sharper than even the most aggressive bulls had modeled:

Bloomingdale's: spending up 52% versus the same shoppers' prior baseline.
Nordstrom Rack: up 21%.
Old Navy: up 12%.
Kohl's: up 6%.

Per Apparel Resources' summary of the underlying analysis, the migration is concentrated in apparel, accessories, and home — exactly the categories Shein and Temu had built share in over 2022 through 2025. And it doesn't appear to be migrating to Amazon Haul or Walmart's low-price assortment in anywhere near the same magnitude. The card-panel data isolates traded-up behavior: when shoppers can no longer get $5 acrylic sweaters from Guangzhou shipped duty-free, they don't necessarily walk to Walmart for an even-cheaper alternative. A meaningful share trades up.

That has direct read-through into the prints that just landed. Macy's reports Q1 next Wednesday, and consensus is now penciling in its first positive Bloomingdale's comp in five quarters, with traffic at the higher-tier banner running well ahead of the full Macy's namesake comp through April. Nordstrom — taken private last year by the Nordstrom family and Liverpool — is now reporting only limited public data, but Bloomberg's reporting indicates Nordstrom Rack has been the bright spot since the de minimis change. Gap reports Old Navy comps next week, and the Street has revised Old Navy estimates upward twice since the tariff threshold was cut on May 15.

Kohl's is the trickiest read. The 6% lift on the former-Temu-shopper cohort is meaningful in absolute terms, but Kohl's overall comp continued to deteriorate in Q4 FY25 and full-year guidance from CEO Michael Bender still calls for flat-to-down 2% net sales in 2026. The Temu-shopper bump may not be enough to close that gap. TheStreet noted yesterday that Kohl's has now said it does not currently plan additional closures from its ~1,150-location fleet — a notable shift from late 2025 commentary, and one that's only defensible if the de-minimis tailwind is real and durable.

The Shein and Temu side of the migration is the real story underneath. Per Bloomberg's reporting, the two sites have watched their U.S. momentum "crater" since the loophole closed. Marketplace Pulse and SimilarWeb data referenced in SGB Media's writeup shows U.S. session counts on Temu down 31% year over year in late April and Shein U.S. sessions down 22% — both inflecting sharply lower from February levels. Some of that share is shifting to Amazon Haul, some is going to TikTok Shop, and some — based on the Consumer Edge cohort data — is going back to bricks-and-clicks U.S. retailers.

The strategic implication for the U.S. retail complex is harder to overstate. For five years, the Shein-Temu dynamic was treated by every CMO and merchandising EVP as a one-way share-leakage problem: low-price global e-commerce eating mid-market American apparel and home from underneath. As of April 2026, that flow has reversed for the first time. It may not last forever — Shein and Temu have already announced U.S. warehousing buildouts to ship duty-paid from inside the country at lower transit costs — but the next four to six quarters look meaningfully better for the retailers Wall Street was writing off twelve months ago than they did at the start of 2026.

Watch the Macy's, Gap, and Nordstrom prints over the next three weeks. The de-minimis tailwind isn't a forecast anymore. It's a comp.