Wednesday, February 05, 2025

The Price of Stuff

A lot of people are suddenly getting "must pay duty" notices from other shippers.
HONG KONG/SEOUL/SHANGHAI, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service said it would temporarily suspend parcels from China and Hong Kong, after President Donald Trump ended a trade provision this week used by retailers including Temu and Shein to ship low-value packages duty-free to the U.S.

The Trump administration imposed an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods that came into effect on Tuesday and moved to close the "de minimis" exemption that allows U.S. shoppers to avoid paying tariffs for shipments below $800.
Figuring out how to prevent shippers from exploiting the de minimis exemption is probably not a bad idea, but doing it in this hamhanded "don't worry about the consequences" fashion would be low hanging fruit for Dems if they weren't, also, on this anti-China kick.

People love their dropshipping crap and people fucking hate getting surprise tax bills from their delivery companies.

...the USPS has resumed service but the duty issue remains! 

Anyway, this highlights a big issue with this kind of thing. The actual $ cost isn't necessarily a huge burden, but the paperwork and processing across several entities is.