Follow up to previous post – Maps – Tracking Trump’s New Tariffs on Every Country, See also Forbes: “The postal services of Mexico, India, Japan and several other countries have suspended the shipment of packages to the U.S. as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and new rules implemented by his administration that end duty exemptions for lower-value shipments entering the country, known as the “de minimis” rule. The “de minimis” provision was a special exemption granted to shipments entering the U.S., that were valued at $800 or less. Items covered under this provision could be shipped to the U.S. without paying duties or certain taxes. This exemption was seen as a loophole leveraged by e-commerce platforms like Temu and Shein. Earlier this year, Customs and Border Patrol reported it had processed at least 1.36 billion “de minimis” shipments in the fiscal year 2024, which was a nearly tenfold increase from 2015. How Has The Trump Administration Changed The Exemption? In April, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the provision for imports from China and Hong Kong, which went into effect in May. The “de minimis” exemptions on shipments from other countries are set to end on Friday, as per an executive order signed late last month…”
See also Washington Post – “The postal service operators of more than 30 countries, including almost all of the ones in Europe, have limited or stopped shipping all or most U.S.-bound parcels valued at $800 or less, which has been the cutoff for imported goods to escape customs charges.
See also CNBC – Retail panic: What the end of the ‘de minimis’ exemption means for brands across the globe
See also Yale Department of Economics: How much would eliminating the “de minimis” tariff exception cost the American consumer? On February 1, the Trump administration moved toward eliminating a provision of the 1930 Tariff Act that, for nearly 100 years, has allowed low-cost consumer goods to enter the country duty-free and with minimal customs paperwork burden. ¹ Known as the “de minimis” exception to existing tariffs, the provision has played a major role in the rise of direct-to-consumer online goods platforms like Temu and Shein. In 2012, just $50 million worth of goods entered the U.S. under the de minimis exception. By 2024, that number was $64.6 billion, spread over 1.36 billion small shipments.
Recognizing the increased prevalence of these shipments, we analyzed how ending the de minimis exception might impact American consumers and found that eliminating the exception could cost the average family up to $136 a year, with low-income and minority consumers seeing the biggest impacts on their spending
