The EU treats UPU ITMATT (CN 22/23) data as both advance security and the legal customs declaration, whereas the US treats it as postal AED for targeting only and requires a separate ACE customs entry with HTSUS-10, importer ID, and invoice details for clearance and liability. The US STOP Act is the proximate cause. Washington's framing is that de minimis had become a loophole for tariff evasion and fentanyl imports.
Express carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) were already compliant and unaffected. This article is about the UPU network (read: USPS, national carriers) parcels carrying goods, not ordinary letters or documents.
The UPU is building new duty-collection modules and working with CBP to certify intermediaries. Once those pipelines exist, traffic volumes will rise again, but under a much heavier compliance burden. Chat G knows what's up, it helped me understand.
esbranson · 18h ago
UPU Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) is the new duty-collection module.[1][2]
Pretty extraordinary. You just never see an 80% drop of anything globally in a week.
chews · 22h ago
During covid... oil dropped over 100% (crude went negative dollar a barrel)
jleyank · 1d ago
I suspect they’re pleased with that result…
esbranson · 20h ago
Yes probably. Express carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) were already compliant and unaffected. This article is about the UPU network (read: USPS, national carriers).
macintux · 23h ago
Yep. One more excuse to kill the USPS.
No comments yet
mensetmanusman · 22h ago
Awesome, this was a huge scam for taxpayers to subsidize.
churchill · 22h ago
How is letting people buy stuff from other countries a scam/subsidy? Do words have no meaning to your cohort anymore?
mensetmanusman · 22h ago
People were able to buy stuff from China with lower shipping costs than ordering something from across the street. Many organizations studied this loophole. Keep up :)
jleyank · 21h ago
Small businesses such as crafters and the like relied on this to ship from Canada or Europe to the us. Now, folks will have to prepay the tariffs when making their purchase assuming the small business are still alive. This will noticeably raise the cost borne by us-Ian’s.
neuralkoi · 21h ago
I am genuinely curious how this was working as a subsidy. My understanding is that now parcels valued at $800 or less are no longer exempt from tariffs, but it doesn't say anything about shipping costs subsidies. Surely those shipping costs will remain the same?
I know the article shows some pictures of USPS trucks, but is USPS the primary delivery service in other countries? I also believe the USPS does not receive tax dollars to support its operations.
Also, if you now go buy something across the street, wont it also be at a higher price since they are likely also shipping it in from abroad?
warmedcookie · 6h ago
I always found it odd for almost 20 years I could order cheap LEDs directly from Hong Kong. Free shipping. (LEDSHOPPE)
I assumed they just paid a fixed price for a container and waited for enough orders to fill it. (Which is why it would sometimes take 2-8 weeks to get an order)
lenkite · 14h ago
Also shipping lots of fentayl. Here is an article from 2019
No amount of noise America's nativist crowd makes will stop this. Are authorities going to open every single package making its way into the US? There are ways to cut down on drug trafficking, but this kneejerk repetition of anything Fox News says won't fix anything.
It'll make you and your cohort feel good about finally sticking it to China, but after a few years/months, it'll be abandoned. It's not a viable long-term strategy prohibiting trade with the rest of the world or inspecting every package. After all, didn't America have a severe drug problem even before normalizing trade with China?
But what do I know?
lenkite · 12h ago
It simply makes fentyal shipment far more burdensome. The U.S. had the highest de minimis threshold in the world ($800). The U.S. was receiving over 1 billion small parcels annually from China under de minimis. Narcotics traffickers exploited this flood of legitimate low-value parcels to hide fentanyl shipments. There was also less mandated official documentation and less scanning of such de minimis shipments.
Other nations with low thresholds (Canada, EU, etc) forced traffickers into bulk smuggling channels, which are riskier and more expensive.
Fentanyl is incredibly potent - ~2 mg is a lethal dosage. 1 kilogram can produce 500,000 doses. With a $800 exemption, traffickers could legally send parcels far above what other countries allow, maximizing the value per shipment while still looking like ordinary e-commerce.
All this is VERY well-known. I would strongly suggest doing some basic research instead of making "nativist crowd" allegations.
churchill · 11h ago
>Other nations with low thresholds (Canada, EU, etc.) forced traffickers into bulk smuggling channels, which are riskier and more expensive.
These countries still have issues with narcotics trafficking. Business has continued as usual. The impact of lower de minimis thresholds is a rounding error.
Drug cartels are sophisticated multinational corporations. They won't abandon a business channel that yields tens of billions of dollars' worth of annual profits because of a few lame obstacles on their path. If you factor in street value, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of merchandise. This business isn't going anywhere.
>Fentanyl is incredibly potent - ~2 mg is a lethal dosage. 1 kilogram can produce 500,000 doses.
I'm not making a moral judgement here. Fentanyl is obviously bad. How much friction are you willing to inflict on tens of millions of everyday Americans, individuals and businesses to stem this tide? How about ending all trade with the rest of the world? Where does the cost-benefit ratio stop/start making sense?
For the most part, Chinese syndicates don't even sell fentanyl to America directly. They ship to Mexico, American mules (sometimes hired on Instagram) drive across the border, and their cars are retrofitted with hidden drug compartments, then they drive back with it across the border. Will you also shut down vehicular traffic into the US?
These cartels hire Pakistani engineers to build them multi-million-dollar submarines that carry drugs across the oceans, to Europe, Africa, and America's coasts. And they're just going to stop because they can't ship tiny packages for free?
>I would strongly suggest doing some basic research instead of making "nativist crowd" allegations.
I'm calling out the nativist crowd because they support tariffs & other trade disruptions for inconsistent reasons. They can't even stick to a reason, so they're guaranteed to fail because of the showbiz nature of US politics. First, it was trade deficits. Then Fentanyl. Taiwan. American debt. Raising revenue. Getting Mexico and Canada to do something about the border. Something, something Golden Age of America. Then the tariffs were dialed back significantly across the board.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not fighting the War on Drugs on the side of drugs. I think narcotics destroy the fabric of society. But the only realistic way to combat it is Singapore-style death penalties for possession exceeding certain amounts. HN's libertarian crowd may dislike this, but it's how Singapore has become one of the world's wealthiest countries by gdppc without a pronounced drug problem.
Stop chasing around small fish, wasting time pandering to American nativists who love showbiz-style politics. Or maybe I'm wrong. The problem isn't even supposed to be solved. It's designed to rile people up and it's working as intended.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 14h ago
Be nice
AnimalMuppet · 22h ago
> How is letting people buy stuff from other countries a scam/subsidy?
Valid question.
> Do words have no meaning to your cohort anymore?
Don't comment like that here. Site guidelines call for assuming good faith on the part of other posters. They also call for avoiding personal attacks. You violated both in one sentence.
GlitchInstitute · 35m ago
technically, you can't personally attack someone and speak in good faith. i think
Express carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) were already compliant and unaffected. This article is about the UPU network (read: USPS, national carriers) parcels carrying goods, not ordinary letters or documents.
The UPU is building new duty-collection modules and working with CBP to certify intermediaries. Once those pipelines exist, traffic volumes will rise again, but under a much heavier compliance burden. Chat G knows what's up, it helped me understand.
[1] https://www.upu.int/DDP [2] https://www.upu.int/en/postal-solutions/technical-solutions/...
No comments yet
I know the article shows some pictures of USPS trucks, but is USPS the primary delivery service in other countries? I also believe the USPS does not receive tax dollars to support its operations.
Also, if you now go buy something across the street, wont it also be at a higher price since they are likely also shipping it in from abroad?
I assumed they just paid a fixed price for a container and waited for enough orders to fill it. (Which is why it would sometimes take 2-8 weeks to get an order)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2019/08/23/fen...
It'll make you and your cohort feel good about finally sticking it to China, but after a few years/months, it'll be abandoned. It's not a viable long-term strategy prohibiting trade with the rest of the world or inspecting every package. After all, didn't America have a severe drug problem even before normalizing trade with China?
But what do I know?
Other nations with low thresholds (Canada, EU, etc) forced traffickers into bulk smuggling channels, which are riskier and more expensive.
Fentanyl is incredibly potent - ~2 mg is a lethal dosage. 1 kilogram can produce 500,000 doses. With a $800 exemption, traffickers could legally send parcels far above what other countries allow, maximizing the value per shipment while still looking like ordinary e-commerce.
All this is VERY well-known. I would strongly suggest doing some basic research instead of making "nativist crowd" allegations.
These countries still have issues with narcotics trafficking. Business has continued as usual. The impact of lower de minimis thresholds is a rounding error.
Drug cartels are sophisticated multinational corporations. They won't abandon a business channel that yields tens of billions of dollars' worth of annual profits because of a few lame obstacles on their path. If you factor in street value, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of merchandise. This business isn't going anywhere.
>Fentanyl is incredibly potent - ~2 mg is a lethal dosage. 1 kilogram can produce 500,000 doses.
I'm not making a moral judgement here. Fentanyl is obviously bad. How much friction are you willing to inflict on tens of millions of everyday Americans, individuals and businesses to stem this tide? How about ending all trade with the rest of the world? Where does the cost-benefit ratio stop/start making sense?
For the most part, Chinese syndicates don't even sell fentanyl to America directly. They ship to Mexico, American mules (sometimes hired on Instagram) drive across the border, and their cars are retrofitted with hidden drug compartments, then they drive back with it across the border. Will you also shut down vehicular traffic into the US?
These cartels hire Pakistani engineers to build them multi-million-dollar submarines that carry drugs across the oceans, to Europe, Africa, and America's coasts. And they're just going to stop because they can't ship tiny packages for free?
>I would strongly suggest doing some basic research instead of making "nativist crowd" allegations.
I'm calling out the nativist crowd because they support tariffs & other trade disruptions for inconsistent reasons. They can't even stick to a reason, so they're guaranteed to fail because of the showbiz nature of US politics. First, it was trade deficits. Then Fentanyl. Taiwan. American debt. Raising revenue. Getting Mexico and Canada to do something about the border. Something, something Golden Age of America. Then the tariffs were dialed back significantly across the board.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not fighting the War on Drugs on the side of drugs. I think narcotics destroy the fabric of society. But the only realistic way to combat it is Singapore-style death penalties for possession exceeding certain amounts. HN's libertarian crowd may dislike this, but it's how Singapore has become one of the world's wealthiest countries by gdppc without a pronounced drug problem.
Stop chasing around small fish, wasting time pandering to American nativists who love showbiz-style politics. Or maybe I'm wrong. The problem isn't even supposed to be solved. It's designed to rile people up and it's working as intended.
Valid question.
> Do words have no meaning to your cohort anymore?
Don't comment like that here. Site guidelines call for assuming good faith on the part of other posters. They also call for avoiding personal attacks. You violated both in one sentence.