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China Government

USPS Halts All Packages From China, Sending the Ecommerce Industry Into Chaos (wired.com) 209

Posted by BeauHD from the trade-war dept.
The United States Postal Service has suspended all package shipments from China and Hong Kong following President Donald Trump's decision to eliminate the de minimis exemption, which previously allowed small packages under $800 to enter the U.S. without import duties. "The move could potentially create chaos and confusion across the online shopping industry, as well as make purchases more expensive for consumers, especially because many global manufacturers and internet sellers are located in China," reports Wired. "Shoppers are now on the hook not only for the additional 10 percent tariff, but also whatever original tax rate their products were exempted from until Tuesday." From the report: Cindy Allen, who has worked in international trade for over 30 years and is the CEO of the consulting firm Trade Force Multiplier, gave WIRED an example of how much additional cost the tariff will incur: A woman's dress made of synthetic fiber shipped from China through de minimis will now be subject to a regular 16 percent tariff, a 7.5 percent Section 301 duty specifically for goods from China, the new 10 percent tariff required by Trump, additional processing fees and customs brokerage fees, and perhaps increased brokering and handling costs due to the sudden change in rules. "Will the dress that was $5 now cost $5.50 or $15?" says Allen. "That we don't know. It depends on how those retailers react and change their business models."

In the immediate term, clearing customs will become a challenge for most ecommerce companies. Their long-term concern, though, is the potential impact on profitability. The appeal of Temu and Shein and similar Chinese ecommerce companies is how affordable their products are. If that changes, the ecommerce landscape and consumer behavior in the US may change significantly as well. While the USPS has announced the suspension of accepting any parcels from China and Hong Kong, CBP hasn't elaborated on how the agency will enforce Trump's new tariffs other than saying in an announcement that it will reject de minimis exemption requests from China starting today.

USPS Halts All Packages From China, Sending the Ecommerce Industry Into Chaos More | Reply

USPS Halts All Packages From China, Sending the Ecommerce Industry Into Chaos

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  • Oh great (Score:3)

    by Dripdry ( 1062282 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:14AM (#65142609) Journal

    The pcie riser I have on order from China was supposed to be on the way... Wonder how that will turn out.

    Well, no homelab for anybody now!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vilain ( 127070 )
      Yep. I've got a chassis from AliExpress that just shipped today. When and if it arrives is anyone's guess. Last couple of things I bought from there were delivered by a courier rather than USPS. Amazon's costs are surely going up. I wonder what their head of Logistics is doing right now.

    • Re:Oh great (Score:5, Funny)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:44AM (#65142659)
      What's the problem? This will spur a great resurgence in American manufacturing of small low-value electronic components and you'll get your parts, perhaps as soon as 4-10 years from now.

      • Re:Oh great (Score:4, Funny)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @02:06AM (#65142781)

        What's the problem? This will spur a great resurgence in American manufacturing of small low-value electronic components and you'll get your parts, perhaps as soon as 4-10 years from now.

        Not to mention more locally-grown food instead of imports.
        I'm planting avocado trees tomorrow ... :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I am sure you can get a far more expensive (but not better) one domestically now. Or maybe not if the market is not interesting enough. But hey, maybe you can import one yourself with just a few $100 in taxes and fees and a few hours of bureaucracy for that $10 card!

  • ORANGE PIGFUCKER PIECE OF SHIT (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:15AM (#65142613)

    Hard to believe all these MORON MOGAS votes for this PIECE OF SHIT.
    Egg prics - up.
    Fuel prices -up
    Milk prices - up

    FUCK you magas and orange pigfucker supporters.

    • Re:ORANGE PIGFUCKER PIECE OF SHIT (Score:5, Funny)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:22AM (#65142625)

      But, but, but, you are supposed to be distracted by the onslaught of crazy and lose focus on actual results

      Wait! Are you not watching your required quota of Fox News?

      This WILL be reported

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by tiananmen tank man ( 979067 )

      egg prices are up because of the bird flu and chickens being euthanized, not because of orange man.

      • Re:ORANGE PIGFUCKER PIECE OF SHIT (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Frogking ( 126462 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:12AM (#65142717) Homepage

        And the best way to decrease egg prices is to end bird flu, which you can't do by hiding all of the health reports and banning testing, like the orange man wants.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Other countries have started to vaccinate free range ducks and chickens against bird flu. With success. But the the US, no, too expensive !

      • Trolls aside it actually is orange man (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:44AM (#65142757)
        He slashed regulations that would have reduced the spread of the disease those chickens were slaughtered for. Biden didn't even try and put the regulations back because Trump and pretty well packed the courts and he expected he was going to lose there so he didn't want to spend a limited supply of political capital fighting for it. Instead he focused on other things to fight inflation like antitrust law enforcement and increasing supply elsewhere in the economy.

        Regulations are written in blood. You can't just start slashing them and then pack the courts full of pro-corporate sycophants and not have consequences. But those consequences take a while to hit and since the media is controlled by billionaires it's easy to shift to blame around and confuse the issue

      • egg prices are up because of the bird flu and chickens being euthanized, not because of orange man.

        Nah, according to Trump it's his own fault. According to him it was Biden's fault they went up, then it must be Trump's fault they went up further.

      • egg prices are up because of the bird flu and chickens being euthanized, not because of orange man.

        The notion x was president therefore everything good or bad that happens is because of the president is obviously absurd. Most of what happens has little to nothing to do with whoever is in office.

        Having said that this is Trumps metric. He was prolific in hanging this kind of shit on others so I see no reason why egg prices or anything else that goes sideways should not be hung on him.

        In the case of eggs there is even a coherent argument for blaming Trump. Dozens of countries are currently vaccinating th

    • Right on.
      As not a complete moron I knew I would be getting fucked by massive price increases (among endless other ways), but there is some tiny satisfaction in you evil and/or idiotic jackasses who voted for that fucking orange rapist deranged senile moron currently calling himself President being surprised by just how badly you're getting fucked too. Buckle up you conservative pieces of shit, your life is going to keep getting worse, and it's your own god damn fucking fault. Democrats aren't perfect and do

    • Hard to believe all these MORON MOGAS votes for this PIECE OF SHIT.

      No, no, you have it wrong. These price rises are down to the liberal elite, the wokerati and communist, fascist countries like Denmark that the US should just take over.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Ah, the sweet sound of Maggots signing up for the Gaza Strip Expeditionary Force to forcibly remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and replace them with Israeli religious freaks. Shortly, la Presidenta promises to make a major announcement on annexing the West Bank.

      This will create a homeland for the Evangelicals in the U.S., surely they will sign up to move to their new haven, all in preparation for Jesus to return:

      The Scene: the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem....the clouds roil, the trumpets blare, and

    • I'm in violent agreement. Also, I hope AliExpress exploits a loophole because my account looks like this: 64 shipped, 43 to ship.

  • Wait... what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:19AM (#65142619)

    You mean the entire world and EVERYBODY on it is dependent on each other?

    Crazy, just crazy, it is like the whole world has been integrating for the past 80 years, and the trumptardians are going to change it on their say-so

    What is next? Drag their throne to the beach and decree that the tide won't come in

  • Show Pitch: Surprise Shipping Container (Score:3)

    by EreIamJH ( 180023 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:19AM (#65142621)
    Contestants bid for an unopened shipping container fresh off the boat from China. Winners are on the hook for the bid price + the taxes on whatever is inside.

  • I flooded Aliexpress with orders for the past three months, ordering all the small shit I could think of. Got me lots of crap. I was too late on the Chinese vacuum tubes, though. I'll have to pay the US markup from a reseller.

  • Urgh (Score:5, Informative)

    by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:27AM (#65142635) Journal

    Almost none of the things I've ordered from Aliexpress et al over the last few months was available via an American manufacturer. And they were too obscure to be anything an American supplier would be interested in importing (HDMI EDID simulators?)

    This is going to suck especially for anyone waiting for spare parts to come in.

    Yes, the supply of cheap sprocket sets is at an end, but so is a lot of the stuff that only comes from China after the same Republican party that's gung ho about tariffs and destroying imports today destroyed our manufacturing industry in the 1980s, encouraging businesses to off shore manufacturing and celebrating the resultant destruction of unions as a result.

    I am genuinely worried with this level of malignant mismanagement we'll be looking at food shortages by the end of the year. And Trump's supporters are so tribal they'll respond to this claiming I'm an alarmist, and then justify it as "necessary" when it happens, because nobody is willing to admit Trump's a problem who has any influence over the bastard.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tiananmen tank man ( 979067 )

      stop calling it a tarriff, because maga folks have a hard on for that word. Call it what it really is, an import tax.

    • Funny enough you will still be able to buy all those things. They may just stop being priced at fantasy rates. Many countries have removed their exceptions on import duties for small packages. What it reduced was the senseless spending on commodity rubbish (seriously that $5 dress in TFS is no joke, look at the likes of Shein and what they are flooding western streets with feces tier clothing often worn once and thrown away).

      Yeah every time I read a hackaday article talking about hacking a $2 Xaiomi thermos

    • Almost none of the things I've ordered from Aliexpress et al over the last few months was available via an American manufacturer.

      It miiiiiiight be in one of those obnoxious B2B settings where the lead time is infinite, you have to shcmooze with the vendor for ages and tell them your life story and after 5 months you find the price is about 10x what you can justify. Oh also unsearchable so unless you know a guy you'll never know where to get it from anyway.

      I like with Aliexpress how they have prices and you

  • If you order a new laptop from, say, Lenovo, it drop-ships from China.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Your Lenovo laptop probably wasn't under $800 so it wouldn't be under de minimus. No change, except for the new taxes.

      But the average de minimus package is ~$40 and there are a LOT of them. The point of de minimus is to not tie up customs with insignificant shit. The US has traditionally been a big proponent, bullying other countries into raising their exception limits. But now slamming it to zero... that's going to be some nice chaos.

    • How long til it drop ships from Vietnam instead?

  • If Trump really wants to go after China he should end the special rules under the international postal agreements that make shipping stuff from China to the US so cheap.

  • Good job Trump voters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:51AM (#65142679)
    You have put our entire fucking economy into a tailspin because of whatever stupid reasons you had for voting for a senile felon who stole classified documents.

    For fuck sakes get over your goddamn pride and admit that you fucked up so we can try to fix this shit. I know some of you think because you're old and retired you're untouchable and maybe you are. Right up until they stop paying for your pills. As for the rest of you when this bullshit costs you your job at 50 and you're completely unemployable what the hell do you think is going to happen?

    You are in the fuck around and find out stage. If you start panicking a little maybe just maybe your other elected representatives who still think they need your votes might move to put the brakes on the worst of this shit long enough for people like me to clean up after your mess

  • National sales tax (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:52AM (#65142683)
    Trump's goal here along with the tariffs is to create a national sales tax so that he can eliminate his tax burden and the tax burden of his buddies. As a percentage is still much much much less than you pay but because they have about 60% of all the money in America it's still a pretty big number and they wanted for themselves.

    Take a look at your tax bill from last year. Now double it.

    That's the Donald Trump tax plan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bsolar ( 1176767 )

      Take a look at your tax bill from last year. Now double it. That's the Donald Trump tax plan.

      Trump's plan is to hide that tax increase. Your tax bill would be the same or even lower, but you would be indirectly taxed through tariffs which would make the products you buy more expensive. Part to the higher price would cover the tariffs and would effectively be an indirect tax.

  • Dresses for $5 shouldn't exist at all. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by henrik stigell ( 6146516 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:53AM (#65142685) Homepage

    Dresses for $5 shouldn't exist at all. That is in practice a one-usage-dress. Buy quality instead, not dresses made of plastic ("synthetic fiber").

    • Don't wear a dress at all then (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly the statement that Kayne was making.

    • You were just paying a 1000% markup.

      Outside of a few people who can afford extremely expensive tailored clothing everything we buy is made in sweat shops by slave labor. There used to be a website that would tell you who made your stuff. Years ago I remember looking up a soccer ball I bought my kid and finding it was made by a kid about the same age as mine.

      The point is cutting out middlemen is all that happened here and all that's happening now is a new tax is being imposed by Republican so that t

    • Dresses for $5 shouldn't exist at all. That is in practice a one-usage-dress. Buy quality instead, not dresses made of plastic ("synthetic fiber").

      Fashion being as fleeting as a GenZ attention span, has FAR more to do with that problem. And by fashion I mean women.

      If only men made clothing, it would be crafted from a self-wicking Under Armour cottonhemp blend designed to be washed once a month, and last 100 years because a century from now no man will care if it still only comes in brown or black.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Find a $50 dress on Amazon and buy the same thing on AliExpress for $5. You are paying for a massive mark up, not for better quality.

      That's why they hate AliExpress, it cuts out one of the middle men and gives people access to much better prices. It's not just that people buy that stuff from AliExpress instead of Amazon, it's that it has recalibrated their sense of what things are worth, and made them aware that most of the crap they see in the shops is just some Chinese OEM with a logo silkscreened onto it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      Dresses for $5 shouldn't exist at all. That is in practice a one-usage-dress.

      $5 is a bit low for a dress, but it is not inconceivable to have good enough quality for a $5 simple, light dress.
      The fashion industry wants you to think that quality is expensive, but what you are really paying for is marketing. Also a $5 dress won't be "made in the USA", but this is a political statement that is not necessary for quality.

      Buy quality instead, not dresses made of plastic ("synthetic fiber")

      Cotton is cheap, that's what $1 t-shirts are made of. And synthetic fiber (yes, plastic) can be expensive, a lot of high quality clothes are made of it for its desirable

    • Dresses for $5 shouldn't exist at all. That is in practice a one-usage-dress. Buy quality instead, not dresses made of plastic ("synthetic fiber").

      Point taken, but there's a certain "let them eat cake" element to what you're saying.

      Rich people don't buy very, very cheap products. Poor people can't buy expensive products. I guess poor people just can't have good-enough products anymore.

  • The real issue (Score:3)

    by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:56AM (#65142689)
    The real issue is not the cost, it is the paperwork. Instead of sailing through customs, even item under $800 will now generate a sheaf of paperwork. It may even require someone to physically visit the custom office in question and sign for the individual item. Given that customs is as understaffed as most of the working parts of the US government and Trump and Musk are determined to get rid of the staff that exists, the chances of minor items ever seeing the light of day seem remote.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      And the cost of the paperwork. I'm feeling the effects of Brexit on importing something that was only available in the UK to Spain: I got a customs bill yesterday for 1.51 EUR in duty and 31.25 EUR in admin fees for stopping the package and charging me the duty.

    • The rest of the world abolished this exception and is doing just fine. The only problem with the customs office right now is the usual Trump bullshit of shooting from the hip. When they got rid of such exceptions in my country they did it with 1 years notice, and packages seem to arrive just as fast as they did in the past, though they do cost a bit more.

      But hey if that means one brain damaged moron less spends $5 on a wear once item of disposable rubbish tier clothing then I'm all for it. Maybe products fr

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      For Europe, AliExpress charges sales tax at the checkout and pays it to the destination country. So no paperwork, sails through customs. Typically stuff arrives about a week after you order it.

      If the US wants the same thing then all they need to do is ask. No need for this nonsense.

    • It will generate electronic messages and spot checks, eventually. No extra paper or human involved for a package, unless some seller is scamming and gets caught in the spot check.

      Eventually can take a while.

  • Another round of Calvinball every day for the next four years?

  • Hey China (Score:3)

    by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:27AM (#65142737)

    If you really want piss the US off, stop with the currency manipulation. Trump has already started threatening BRICS if they use their own currency(ies) within their own clique, what if you called his bluff?

    Price everything in Yuan or euros instead of $US and my ordering of stuff from your country won't be more expensive when the USD to AUD exchange rate changes.

    (Sure, I'm an Aussie who is sick of the Canberra sycophancy but after Scott Morrison cluelessly trashed our relationship with China when Mr Trump was last in office, we owe America no favours.)

    • (Sure, I'm an Aussie who is sick of the Canberra sycophancy but after Scott Morrison cluelessly trashed our relationship with China when Mr Trump was last in office, we owe America no favours.)

      Thanks to AUKUS, Australia owes the USA $368 billion dollars.

      Imagine if that money were spent domestically on schools or hospitals or railways or affordable housing.

      • (Sure, I'm an Aussie who is sick of the Canberra sycophancy but after Scott Morrison cluelessly trashed our relationship with China when Mr Trump was last in office, we owe America no favours.)

        Thanks to AUKUS, Australia owes the USA $368 billion dollars.

        Imagine if that money were spent domestically on schools or hospitals or railways or affordable housing.

        Australia doesn't "owe the USA" the full cost of AUKUS. The figure you cite includes the cost of building out the Australian supply chains and shipbuilding capacity to build the subs (in Adelaide), and then the funding for the Australian navy to operate them through the 2050s. I'll let the Australians decide if that's the most useful form of domestic investment, but they're definitely not writing a check for a quarter $TRN and sending it to the US Treasury.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A lot of people are trying to disengage with the US. Replace US payments systems, move cloud data out of the US, switch to non-US software. Unfortunately the US is no longer reliable, and does not uphold the rule of law.

      It's sad but it's what they voted for. Here's a handy website to get you started: https://european-alternatives.... [european-alternatives.eu]

      • That transition already happened long before Trump was president, so it really hasn't got anything to do with Trump.
        Let's face it, Trump is merely trying to protect the US itself, like many other countries already do. The bigger problem is actually every single country doing its own thing, having its own laws and government. We really need to start moving away from that to one law/one economy/one government for the whole world. We need to put more effort in making 'third world' countries safer and invest in

  • Rest of world... (Score:3)

    by Adrian Harvey ( 6578 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:37AM (#65142745)

    Australian and New Zealand eliminated their de minimis equivalents for large overseas retailers some years ago. What they did was reach an agreement with the big resellers, AliExpress, Temu, etc that they would charge the very simple GST at order time. Then remit the tax to the government much like onshore companies. There was an exemption for small/occasional shipping companies (like those that couldn't even find New Zealand on a map but ship there because they're shipping provider can), this levelled the playing field a little between the local companies and the mass shippers. But didn't result in any extraordinary distortion of the market. However, those were planned and executed in an orderly fashion, and were feeding into far far simpler tax systems that didn't require multiple rates for different kinds of goods.

  • Return to yesteryear (Score:5, Interesting)

    by khb ( 266593 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:41AM (#65142751)

    Back in ancient times, like the 1970's, there were companies specializing in "import/export", mostly the import for China->US trade in trinkets, and low end electronics. These companies were put out of business by direct ship to consumer. Their value add was paperwork, warehousing and for the better shops ... some quality control (they actually vetted the supplier, rather than playing Russian roulette with some mostly anonymous figures on the China side.

    Going from direct back to intermediaries is going to be disruptive and will cost more. But it wouldn't be the end of the world, and we might have a lot less waste, and perhaps energy savings (surely shipping by the pallet by boat is more efficient than packaging each item in plastic and sending by air mail.

    • These companies were put out of business by direct ship to consumer. Their value add was paperwork, warehousing and for the better shops ... some quality control (they actually vetted the supplier, rather than playing Russian roulette with some mostly anonymous figures on the China side.

      Some of them still exist. RS's entire RS Pro brand is basically what you said. It's vetted generic stuff with a markup for the vetting work, CE cert and warehousing. Works for me, I use tons of RS pro stuff.

  • NOW it's gonna be normal / EU-like (Score:3)

    by Petr Blazek ( 8018844 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @02:56AM (#65142867)
    as for imports from China, in my country (an EU one): Before 2022, parcels declared under cca 22 USD were exempt from VAT, meaning their import was totally free. Now, we pay: - value added tax (think sales tax in the US) on ALL imports - import tax on the goods above cca 150 USD. Just for those who don't seem to have any clues about global context...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Samare ( 2779329 )

      It's not gonna be EU-like, because the EU has created the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) before removing that exemption. https://vat-one-stop-shop.ec.e... [europa.eu]
      This means that the tax is already paid and the package declared when it reaches customs, so it's actually faster than when there was an exemption.

  • Fix the haedline for you. Everything else is just repetitive.

    This is not the first, and this is not the last. When you re-elect The Orange Pigfucker you get what you get, not what he said.
    Eggs: $12.99/doz.
    Fuel: $4+/gal
    Market: down 5%

    What's next? Vote Orange Pigfucker and find out. Whining on /. doesn't change priing.

  • Seriously, that's a crazy high threshold to start charging customs. In many (most?) countries, the threshold is a small fraction of that. It's pretty dumb for the postal service to say "stop" - that's just obstructionist. They should just start working their way through the shipments, while putting better processes in place. They stand to earn a lot from customs clearance fees.
    • The threshold was probably picked due to the brokerage costs of assessing and collecting duties. I remember many years ago having something shipped from Canada (a jacket I forgot to take with me when I was visiting there). The used jacket was valued at $50. The duties were maybe $5, but the brokerage and assessment fees were $55. So I ended up having to pay an extra $60 in addition to shipping, for a $50 jacket I forgot to pack. Had I known that, I would have just told my family to send it to the landfill i

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