Comment by throwaway7394
5 days ago
There's a minimum charge, as well a percentage.
> Washington will also increase the per postal item fee on goods entering after May 2 and before June 1 to $100 from the planned $75. Parcels entering after June 1 will pay a fee of $200 per item instead of $150 announced previously, according to the Wednesday order.
ref. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-aga...
As far as I know, the way it works is shipping companies can do the % package value (ad valorem duty) or the flat rate per package (specific duty) but have to do the same method for all packages and can only change their method once a month.[1]
My speculation is the ad valorem duty requires more manpower to implement and so that's why there's the specific duty option. Especially because they originally temporarily halted the de minimis changes due to USPS not being able to handle it.
Executive order 14266 is the most recent rates with 120% ad valorem or $100 / $200 specific (gated by date as noted above). [2]
[1] EO 14256: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/furt...
[2] EO 14266: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modi...
Wait, what?
So I can buy my carton of 120 iphones if I pay a $100 package fee, instead of $200,000 at the 120% rate?
Alternately: My Chinese excavator only costs $100 in tariffs?
Can someone give me pseudocode here?
Neither of those are going to be postal service packages with a De Minimis value (<$800).
6 replies →
Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.
Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.
No it won’t. It will be either 1) good or 2) somebody else’s fault.
If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing.
disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
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They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.
US "liberal" media is being extremely cagey about what and how it reports on this admin. They know they're in its crosshairs and are doing this clumsy balancing act of trying to retain their relatively left-leaning or centrist viewers while trying not to draw any more ire. It won't work, of course, and if we continue on this trajectory you can expect that they'll change over to apologia and ass-kissing or be dismantled.
I feel like you can just replace liberal with Capitalist and you don't need the quotes.
They're trying to retain their audience because you know, cash. And making the far right fascists angry by calling them autocratic, authoritarians who will deport them, would cost money.
No need to make this politics. At this point it's basically capitlism against authoritarianism. "Left" doesn't exist as a viable political position right now.
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There's so much chaos being flooded out all at once that things that massively impact normal people don't have time to gain traction in the news. And the moment things do make the news, there's an even larger flood of people everywhere saying, "Fake news. Didn't happen." followed by "So what? How does this affect you personally?" and then ending with "This is actually a great thing and you're suspicious if you're against this."
"Firehose of falsehood" in action. :/
I am going to miss getting free seeds from China.
Free seeds?
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I've seen countless interviews of Trump supporters who believe that China is the one paying for it. Which I can completely understand because if it is a cost on them it would be typically be called a tax.
That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but believe it's all just a negotiating tactic:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/
Some Chinese exporters are definitely splitting the cost of these tariffs with their American importer counterparts. While this isn't as significant as "China pays all the tariffs", it's also not "Americans pay all the tariffs".
Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.
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> Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press
It's hard reporting on the current administration, it's the classic Russian flood style messaging, where you just flood as much (mis)information as you can, and people just can't follow.
Truth be told, the status quo, with 5-dollar packages clogging the USPS, was a DoS on-going thing in real life/physical form, there had been many posts in here detailing that. Yes, it will most probably negatively affect a lot of people who were relying on that DoS thing to carry on, and, yes, most probably the proposed charges are too high, but it was obvious that something needed to change.
I don't agree with Tariffs, but the discounts some countries get on postage is BS. It should not be cheaper to have a parcel delivered from overseas than interstate in your own country.
https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866c...
How long will it take him to change his mind again? He has already exempted a bunch of stuff from tariffs, coincidentally the same stuff that is likely to be imported because the US doesn't make much of its own of.