No, no… that’s the point. We often think of costs in monetary values only. Costs are two-dimensional: money and time to acquire the good. This is a tariff on time.
And it is the carrier who does most of the customs work these days - government delegates most of the enforcement to carriers.
The basic idea was that they'd figure out the tariff on everything they shipped during a time period as if it was done in one shipment, pay that, and then do individual shipments.
I suspect that something like this will happen.
Of course, there will be auditing to ensure that companies don't pay tariffs on $10M worth of goods when the actual total is $100M, but that's doable.
For big intl retailers the effect is as you describe, they collect and remit the tax, then their shipments are considered tax paid when imported otherwise they would be held at customs.
It probably wouldn't be that hard to audit just with data from the major payment processors.
The last time I imported from an overseas order, I was enthralled by a hot blonde Irish singer and buying all her CDs, but most of them were also on eBay from American sellers who already did the messy work of importing goods.
Many consumers order parts internationally for hobbies or even professional products.
Just because you don’t do it doesn’t mean it’s going to negatively impact a lot of people.
Cutting out the middleman is a good thing for consumers which is going away.
What do you mean by this, and why do you consider it plausible?
The mass media and way too many people continue to say "surely the Trump administration will see reason and admit failure" when they have NEVER ONCE done that in the last 9 years.
Effective April 5, 2025, all shipments to the U.S. with a declared customs value over USD 800 require formal entry processing - down from the previous USD 2,500 threshold due to new U.S. Customs regulations.
> All postal items containing goods described in section 2(a) of Executive Order 14195 and sent to the United States through the international postal network from the PRC or Hong Kong and transported by carriers that are valued at or under 800 dollars and that would otherwise qualify for the de minimis exemption authorized in 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(C) shall be subject to the duties described in subsection (c) of this section.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/07/2025-06...
So yes, it is related to the tariff changes.
And it wasn't just era of cheapness, it was also an era of variety, as many trinkets which were economical to produce for the whole world wouldn't be economical to produce in/for the walled tariff gardens.
To hack Star Trek imagine the replicator system as a transport pad and then think about who controls the transporters. Next, imagine the phaser system as a transporter pad. Now you have a critique.
And, consumers importing amounts over $800 is probably fairly unusual.
Not true. It’s common to receive phones and laptops shipped internationally from Apple, for example.
I don’t understand why some people are searching for ways to dismiss and downplay this in these comments. DHL is doing this because the volume of processing was excessively high now that the thresholds are lower. That means a lot of packages were meeting this criteria.
Likely not—I have a Macbook Pro on order from the Apple Store, shipped via DHL with origin from Shanghai, and currently jammed up in Cleveland.
Can you buy a bike for less than $800? A camera (Say from Japan perhaps)? A good fountain pen from Japan, Germany or Italy?
