President Donald Trump has enacted an executive order on Wednesday to halt the de minimis exemption, which previously allowed packages containing goods valued at less than $800 to be imported into the US without duty, for all countries. Trump had previously revoked this exemption for goods originating from China and Hong Kong earlier this year.
According to the White House, this policy shift will be implemented on August 29th. Under the executive order, for the first six months, items delivered through the international postal system will incur either a standard tariff rate depending on their country of origin (an ad valorem duty) or be subject to a fixed duty ranging from $80 to $200 per item. After this six-month period, all tariffs will transition to ad valorem duties.
The rationale provided by the White House for abolishing the exemption is that packages benefitting from it undergo less scrutiny than traditional imports, potentially “posing risks to health, safety, national, and economic security.” The White House asserts that 98 percent of narcotics confiscations (by “number of cases”) originate from de minimis shipments and indicates that low-value consignments from China and Hong Kong have predominantly made up “the majority of de minimis shipments to the United States.”
