HONG KONG - The US Postal Service has temporarily suspended parcels from China and Hong Kong, after President Donald Trump ended a trade provision used by retailers including Temu and Shein to ship low-value packages duty-free to the United States.
The Trump administration imposed an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods that came into effect on Tuesday. Beijing responded immediately with measures of its own.
Washington also moved to close the “de minimis” exemption that allows US shoppers to avoid paying tariffs for shipments worth less than $800.
China on Wednesday condemned the move as “unreasonable suppression”.
“As a matter of principle, I want to point out that we urge the United States to stop politicising trade and economic issues and using them as tools, and to stop the unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
The extra tariff and the elimination of de minimis follow repeated warnings by Trump that Beijing was not doing enough to halt the flow of fentanyl, a dangerous synthetic opioid, into the US.
Reuters reported previously that Chinese suppliers use the duty-free provision to export chemical materials for fentanyl by disguising them as gadgets and other low-cost goods.
“This is huge. … People waiting for orders from Amazon, Shein and Temu have no way of knowing when they can receive those orders,” said Ram Ben Tzion, the founder of Ultra Information Solution, the company behind the digital shipment vetting platform Publican.
“I expect this to be a short-term measure replaced by a longer term measure that will be more measured,” he said.
USPS said the change would not impact the flow of letters and “flats” — mail that can be up to 15 inches (38cm) long or 3/4 inches (1.9cm) thick — from China and Hong Kong. It did not immediately comment on whether this was tied to Trump’s change to ending de minimis shipments from China and other countries.
“The USPS would require some time to sort out how to execute the new taxes before allowing Chinese packages to arrive in the US again,” said Chelsey Tam, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar.
“This is a significant challenge for them because there were 4 million de minimis packages per day in 2024, and it is difficult to check all the packages — so it will take time.”
At a Hong Kong post office, a businessman who had come to check the status of a package he sent to the US earlier expressed frustration after a staffer told him it wasn’t possible to ascertain where his delivery might be now.
“This political war is affecting the local people, not just in Hong Kong but in other places too. It’s very disturbing for us,” John Khan, who has run a trading business for nearly 30 years, told Reuters.
Greater scrutiny
The logistics provider Easyship warned clients who regularly send low-value shipments to the US were likely to face much greater scrutiny and advised them to set up distribution centres within the US, partner with a local warehouse or US fulfillment centre.
Some other international couriers including FedEx and SF Express, China’s largest express delivery company, said they continue to send packages to the US.
The fast-fashion retailer Shein and the e-commerce site Temu, both of which sell products ranging from toys to smartphones, have grown rapidly in the US thanks in part to the de minimis exemption.
The two companies together likely accounted for more than 30% of all packages shipped to the United States each day under the de minimis provision, the US congressional committee on China said in a June 2023 report.
Nearly half of all packages shipped under de minimis come from China, according to the report.
Shein and Temu did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
“Doing the paperwork for customs declarations was not something these companies had to deal with very often before,” said Basile Ricard, operations director at Ceva Logistics Greater China.
“So this is a very new process for them. If this remains largely manual process it will be incredibly difficult. … It’s really not clear for us at this stage how they are going to manage that.”
Amazon also has a large seller base in China, with e-commerce consultancy Marketplace Pulse estimating in February that China-based sellers represent nearly half of the top 10,000 sellers on Amazon in the US Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In November, the US company set up Amazon Haul to allow shoppers to purchase $5 handbags and $10 sweaters from China-based sellers.
Delays in deliveries
Trump’s crackdown on de minimis would make the products sold by the likes of Shein and Temu more expensive but is unlikely to dramatically impact shipment volumes, experts said.
“E-commerce volumes out of China grew 20-30% last year, so it’s going to take a sledgehammer to crack that level of consumer demand and I’m not sure de minimis alone is enough,” said Niall van de Wouw, chief airfreight officer at the freight platform Xeneta.
“They will still be cheaper than buying through retailers in the US. Delays in receiving the goods due to operational disruptions could have a bigger impact than price.”
Shein has previously said it supports reform of the de minimis provision.
Both Temu, a subsidiary of PDD Holdings, and Singapore-headquartered Shein, which plans to list in London this year, have taken measures such as sourcing more products from outside China, opening US warehouses and bringing more US sellers on board, to mitigate the impact.
In what would be another blow to the two China-founded e-commerce platforms, the US is discussing whether to add Shein and Temu to the Department of Homeland Security’s “forced labour” list, Semafor reported on Tuesday.