Do you have a package coming your way from overseas? (I do, it’s a gift, and I’m very annoyed.) Hopefully it’s not urgent, because it’s going to be a minute before that thing gets to our shores. Questions surrounding the Trump administration’s ongoing tariff regime, including a policy to end an exemption from taxing small packages, have resulted in postal services across the world simply choosing not to ship to the United States until things get sorted out, according to Bloomberg.
Central to this problem is the de minimis exemption, which allows packages valued at no more than $800 to enter the country without being subject to tariffs. According to the White House, about four million packages that qualify for the policy enter the United States every single day, amounting to more than 1.35 billion per year. Trump has rolled back that policy considerably, setting the new bar at a value of under $100 to enter the country duty-free. Everything else will be subject to the tariffs that apply to the country from where the package is being shipped.
