A duty-free loophole for low-value packages has been closed by president Donald Trump, pushing up prices for US customers of firms like Shein and Temu.<\/p>\n
The BBC has the details:<\/p>\n
The Chinese online retail giants relied on the so-called “de minimis” exemption to sell and ship low-value items directly to the US without having to pay duties or import taxes.<\/p>\n
Supporters of the loophole, which applied to parcels worth less than $800 (\u00a3600), argue it helped streamline the customs process.<\/p>\n
But both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, said it damaged American businesses and was used to smuggle illegal goods, including drugs.<\/p>\n
De minimis is a Latin term, which loosely translates to English as “of the smallest”.<\/p>\n
In this context it refers to a US trade rule enacted by Congress in 1938 to avoid the expense of collecting only small amounts of import levies.<\/p>\n
In the 21st Century, after a series of rises to the threshold, it allowed retailers to ship packages worth less than $800 to US customers without having to pay duties or taxes.<\/p>\n
Shipments under the exemption accounted for more than 90% of all the cargo entering the US, according to the country’s Customs and Border Patrol, external (CBP).<\/p>\n
Chinese online retailers like Shein and Temu benefited greatly from the loophole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A duty-free loophole for low-value packages has been closed by president Donald Trump, pushing up prices for US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,1395,393,1880,4884,1144,712,24533,34338,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-68162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-ftse-100","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-trade-talks","17":"tag-trade-war-with-china","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114437814093465245","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}