Catenaa, Friday, August 29, 2025- The “de minimis” exemption that allowed low-value parcels shipped to the US to avoid tariffs ended on Friday morning, as Trump looks to reshape US trade.
President Trump signed an executive order suspending what’s known as the de minimis exemption late last month.
At the time, the White House said that it would close what it called a “catastrophic loophole” that shippers use to “evade tariffs and funnel deadly synthetic opioids or below-market products” into the US.
The exemption applied to parcels valued at $800 or less and allowed overseas retailers to ship inexpensive goods to consumers in the US tax-free.
Trump “is putting an end to the proliferation of shippers worldwide that, among other things, deceptively exploit the de minimis privilege in an effort to evade duties, inspection, and US law,” the White House said in a fact sheet outlining the new policy.
The president’s “ending of the deadly de minimis loophole will save thousands of American lives by restricting the flow of narcotics and other dangerous prohibited items, and add up to $10 billion a year in tariff revenues to our Treasury,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters Thursday.
But there will still be a six-month transition period when postal service shippers can choose to pay a flat duty of $80 to $200 per package, depending on the country of origin, Reuters said, citing Trump administration officials.
The number of low-value parcels entering the US has surged over the past decade. Between 2015 and 2025, that figure jumped from 134 million shipments per year to nearly 1.4 billion.
Customs and Border Patrol was processing more than 4 million de minimis shipments to the US daily, the White House said.
Retailers such as Shein and Temu were forced to scramble when the loophole for imports from China and Hong Kong was suspended.
China-based Temu halted shipments of Chinese goods to American customers and shifted to only selling products to US shoppers that could be sourced from the company’s US warehouses.
