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.
That new policy is set to go into effect on August 29, and the rest of the world is throwing up its hands about it. Per Bloomberg, there are still questions as to how the tariffs will be collected and how countries are even supposed to submit the relevant information to US authorities. Instead of dealing with all that, some countries are opting to simply not ship to America for the time being.
Bloomberg reported that Korea’s postal service, Korea Post, will stop sending packages to the US starting Tuesday. Singapore’s SingPost and Austria’s postal provider will do the same, just a day earlier. Norway and Finland are getting an even bigger head start, announcing that they will stop sending packages to America starting on Saturday, and Belgium is halting shipments as of Friday. Deutsche Post in Germany and the Czech Republic’s postal service have already stopped shipping packages state-side due to the confusion. Other countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom, announced temporary suspensions until they get things sorted.
Meanwhile, it’ll be low-income Americans hit the hardest by this new policy, per the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that eliminating the de minimis exemption would increase average tariffs faced by the poorest ZIP codes in the country to about 12%, nearly double the impact on richer ZIP codes. In total, the researchers warn that ditching di minimis will reduce consumer welfare by between $11 billion and $13 billion per year. But hey, that’s a small price to pay for pissing off the whole world to little actual gain.
It mentioned that packages under $100 can still skip by but I assume you still gotta do all that in order to support orders over $100
Not sure where the article is getting the $100 from. I read the executive order itself (needed a shower afterwards) and didn't see anything about lowering the limit. It was removing the limit altogether so all packages would be subject to greater scrutiny.
You're correct that all this work is still necessary to ship. We'll be trying it out for now, but if the tariff cost isn't covered by the blanket increase in prices, or if the process is a huge pain in the ass, we'll likely just stop selling to the U.S. altogether. The shop is there to cover the material costs for my wife's hobby, so I'm not terribly worried about a drop in sales as a result.
I think that's what etsy should be.
A hobby is something you do for fun. Selling products should be mainly to recoup costs and maybe reinvest.
This whole "side hustle" crazyness makes people do stupid shit like buy China products and resell which floods low quality crap.
I'm going to start a hobby of woodworking which has a massive up front equipment and labor cost. But it's a hobby so I might sell stuff to recoup material cost to keep making more.
Just highlighting this for no particular reason.