The US Postal Service (USPS) said it would temporarily suspend parcels from China and Hong Kong, after US 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 US.
The Trump administration imposed an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods that came into effect yesterday and moved to close the "de minimis" exemption that allows US shoppers to avoid paying tariffs for shipments below US$800.
Photo: AFP
The extra tariff and the elimination of de minimis follow repeated warnings by Trump that Beijing was not doing enough to halt the flow of fentanyl, a dangerous synthetic opioid, into the US.
Reuters reported previously that Chinese suppliers use the duty-free provision to export chemical materials for fentanyl by disguising them as gadgets and other low-cost goods.
"This is huge... People waiting for orders from Amazon, Shein and Temu have no way of knowing when they can receive those orders," said Ram Ben Tzion, founder of Ultra Information Solution, the firm behind digital shipment vetting platform Publican.
"I do expect this to be a short-term measure replaced by a longer-term measure that will be more measured," he said.
The USPS said the change would not impact the flow of letters and "flats" — mail that can be up to 38cm long or 1.9cm thick — from China and Hong Kong.
It did not immediately comment on whether this was tied to Trump's change to ending de minimis shipments from China and other countries.
"The USPS would require some time to sort out how to execute the new taxes before allowing Chinese packages to arrive in the US again," Morningstar senior equity analyst Chelsey Tam said. "This is a significant challenge for them because there were 4 million de minimis packages per day in 2024, and it is difficult to check all the packages, so it will take time."
At a Hong Kong post office, a businessman who had come to check the status of a package he sent to the US earlier expressed frustration after a staffer told him it was not possible to ascertain where his delivery might be now.
"This political war is affecting the local people, not just in Hong Kong, but in other places too. It’s very disturbing for us," said John Khan, who has run a trading business for nearly 30 years.
Logistics provider Easyship warned that clients who regularly send sub-US$800 shipments to the US were likely to face much greater scrutiny and advised them to set up distribution centres within the US, or partner with a local warehouse or US fulfillment center.
Some other international couriers including FedEx and SF Express, China's largest express delivery company, said they continue to send packages to the US.
Fast-fashion retailer Shein and online dollar-store Temu, both of which sell products ranging from toys to smartphones, have grown rapidly in the US thanks in part to the de minimis exemption.
The two firms together likely accounted for more than 30 percent of all packages shipped to the US each day under the de minimis provision, the US congressional committee on China said in a June 2023 report.
Nearly half of all packages shipped under de minimis come from China, according to the report.
Shein and Temu did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
"Doing the paperwork for customs declarations was not something these companies had to deal with very often before," said Basile Ricard, operations director at Ceva Logistics Greater China. "So this is a very new process for them. If this remains largely manual process it will be incredibly difficult... It's really not clear for us at this stage how they are going to manage that."
Amazon also has a large seller base in China, with e-commerce consultancy Marketplace Pulse estimating this month that China-based sellers represent nearly half of the top 10,000 sellers on Amazon in the US.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In November last year, the US company set up Amazon Haul to allow shoppers to purchase US$5 handbags and US$10 sweaters from China-based sellers.
Trump's crackdown on de minimis would make the products sold by the likes of Shein and Temu more expensive, but is unlikely to dramatically impact shipment volumes, experts said.
"E-commerce volumes out of China grew 20 to 30 percent last year, so it's going to take a sledgehammer to crack that level of consumer demand and I'm not sure de minimis alone is enough," said Niall van de Wouw, Chief Airfreight Officer at freight platform Xeneta. "They will still be cheaper than buying through retailers in the US. Delays in receiving the goods due to operational disruptions could have a bigger impact than price."
Shein has previously said it supports reform of the de minimis provision.
Both Temu, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, and Singapore-headquartered Shein, which plans to list in London this year, have taken measures such as sourcing more products from outside China, opening US warehouses and bringing more US sellers on board, to mitigate the impact.
In what would be another blow to the two China-founded e-commerce platforms, the US is discussing whether to add Shein and Temu to the US Department of Homeland Security's "forced labor" list, Semafor reported yesterday.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS