WASHINGTON: The US tariff exemption for package deal shipments valued beneath US$800 ends completely on Friday (Aug 29), with a six-month transition interval beneath which postal service shippers can choose to pay a flat obligation of US$80 to US$200 per package deal relying on the nation of origin, Trump administration officers stated.
The US Customs and Border Safety (CBP) company will start accumulating regular obligation charges on all world parcel imports, no matter worth after 12.01am EDT (4.01am GMT) on Friday.
The transfer broadens the Trump administration’s cancellation of the de minimis exemption for shipments from China and Hong Kong earlier this 12 months.
“President Trump’s ending of the lethal de minimis loophole will save 1000’s of American lives by proscribing the stream of narcotics and different harmful prohibited objects, and add as much as US$10 billion a 12 months in tariff revenues to our Treasury,” White Home commerce adviser Peter Navarro advised reporters.
“It is a everlasting change,” stated a senior administration official, including that any push to revive the exemptions for trusted buying and selling accomplice international locations was “lifeless on arrival”.
The de minimis exemption has been in place since 1938 and was raised from US$200 to US$800 in 2015 as a way to foster small enterprise development on e-commerce marketplaces.
However direct shipments from China exploded after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese language items throughout his first time period, creating a brand new direct-to-consumer enterprise mannequin for e-commerce companies Shein and Temu.
Many of those packages entered with out screening, and the Trump administration has additionally blamed the exemption for permitting fentanyl and its precursors to stream into the US.
CBP has estimated that the variety of packages claiming the de minimis exemption jumped practically 10-fold from 139 million in fiscal 2015 to 1.36 billion in fiscal 2024.
A second senior Trump administration official stated that CBP has collected greater than US$492 million in extra duties on packages shipped from China and Hong Kong since their exemptions had been eradicated on Could 2.
The official stated that full tariff charges will apply to all packages shipped by categorical carriers resembling FedEx, United Parcel Service and DHL, with the companies accumulating the duties and processing the paperwork.
