By
Reuters
Revealed
February 5, 2025
The U.S. Postal Service stated it could briefly droop parcels from China and Hong Kong, after President Donald Trump shut a commerce loophole this week utilized by retailers together with Temu and Shein to ship low-value packages duty-free to the U.S.
Reuters
The Trump administration imposed an extra 10% tariff on Chinese language items that got here into impact on Tuesday and moved to shut the “de minimis” loophole that permits importers and U.S. consumers to keep away from paying tariffs for packages value lower than $800.
USPS stated the change is not going to affect the move of letters and ‘flats’ from China and Hong Kong. It didn’t instantly touch upon whether or not this was tied to Trump’s change to ending de minimis shipments from China and different international locations.
Quick-fashion retailer Shein and on-line dollar-store Temu, each of which promote merchandise starting from toys to smartphones, have grown quickly within the U.S. thanks partially to the de minimis exemption.
The 2 corporations collectively possible accounted for greater than 30% of all packages shipped to the US every day below the de minimis provision, the U.S. congressional committee on China stated in a June 2023 report.
Almost half of all packages shipped below de minimis come from China, in response to the report.
Shein and Temu didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
“In our view, the USPS would require some time to sort out how to execute the new taxes before allowing Chinese packages to arrive in the U.S. again,” stated Chelsey Tam, senior fairness analyst, Morningstar. “This is a significant challenge for them because there were 4 million de minimis package per day in 2024, and it is difficult to check all the packages – so it will take time.”
Trump’s crackdown on de minimis would make the merchandise offered by the likes of Shein and Temu costlier however is unlikely to dramatically affect cargo volumes, consultants stated.
“E-commerce volumes out of China grew 20-30% 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,” stated Niall van de Wouw, Chief Airfreight Officer at freight platform Xeneta.
“They will still be cheaper than buying through retailers in the U.S. Delays in receiving the goods due to operational disruptions could have a bigger impact than price.”
Shein has beforehand stated it helps reform of the de minimis provision.
Each Temu, a subsidiary of Chinese language e-commerce large PDD Holdings, and Singapore-headquartered Shein, which plans to checklist in London this 12 months, have taken measures comparable to sourcing extra merchandise from exterior China, opening U.S. warehouses and bringing extra U.S. sellers on board, to mitigate the affect.
However the overwhelming majority of their merchandise are nonetheless made in China.
Trump imposed the additional tariff on Chinese language items after repeatedly warning Beijing it was not doing sufficient to halt the move of fentanyl, a harmful artificial opioid, into the U.S.
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