In a U-turn following President Donald Trump’s end to a trade agreement used by retailers like Temu, Shein, and Amazon to ship low-value packages duty-free to the US, The United States Postal Service ( USPS) announced on Wednesday ( Feb 5 ) that it would accept packages from China and Hong Kong.
In a speech, USPS and Customs and Border Protection said they are “working tightly together to adopt an effective collection process for the new China taxes to ensure the least disturbance to offer delivery.”
The Trump administration imposed an extra 10 % tax on Chinese products and ended the “de minimis” exemption, which allows US customers to evade paying taxes for supplies from China that cost less than US$ 800.
USPS did not immediately address whether Trump’s momentary suspension had been in direct relation to his de minimis supplies from China, which were announced on Saturday and became effective one minute past nightfall on Tuesday.
” There has really been completely zero day for anyone to make for this”, said Maureen Cori, co-founder at New York-based firm Supply Chain Compliance.
” The state needs to give us specific instructions on how to manage this without giving any notice,” the statement states.
Now, de minimis parcels are consolidated so that customs is clear hundreds or thousands of shipments at once, but they will then need specific clearances, substantially increasing the burden for post services, brokers and customs agents, said Cori.