End of China de Minimis Dropped Volumes 75%; CBP Ready for Worldwide End

The majority of the 4 million-per-day de minimis shipments last year came from China, and that country's goods already have been barred from de minimis since May. A senior administration official told International Trade Today on a background call that since that change, the daily volume has fallen from 4 million to 1 million.

CBP hasn't quantified how many additional Type 11 entries it has received with Chinese goods, but an official said that through Aug. 26, the agency has collected more than $492 million in duties on goods that previously would have qualified for de minimis.

The officials downplayed the series of announcements by foreign countries who said their mail systems will no longer send packages to the U.S., because exporters cannot figure out what duties will be owed, or how to file entries.

A senior administration official noted that 95% of de minimis packages came via air cargo or express carriers, which she called "secure methods." An official noted that one-third of foreign postal carriers have contracted with third parties to handle the filings, including Canada, the U.K. and Ukraine.

In a CSMS message sent late Aug. 28, CBP noted that with the changeover, ACE will reject Section 321 manifest filings and Type 86 filings, the two ways that de minimis packages entered, and that the Truck Manifest Trade Portal also will remove the Section 321 manifest filing option.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said, "President Trump's ending of a deadly de minimis loophole will save thousands of American lives by restricting the flow of narcotics and other dangerous and prohibited items."

However, an enforcement official said that while more than 800 fentanyl shipments were detected in the de minimis lane in FY 2024, the threat of smugglers trying to send narcotics is not any less with de minimis gone. However, she said CBP has "a significant advantage" in receiving information that will lead to increased interdictions.

"This is going to be a significant enhancement to our enforcement posture, and actually ensure that our officers aren't working blind in this space," she said. She said the information shippers will provide will enable CBP officers "not just to identify shipments and threats, but even potentially to rule out packages that we would have potentially otherwise looked at, because there could have been a suspicion of a threat that now we have data that's going to help us really drill and allocate our resources to what actually is the risk."

Navarro said collecting tariffs on low-value e-commerce imports will add $10 billion annually in tax revenue and protect U.S. jobs that are endangered by counterfeits and intellectual property theft.

(If the amount of duty continued at the levels since May, it would be $1.36 billion annually.)

A senior administration official said that during the first Trump administration, he went to JFK airport, and they pulled aside thousands of Chinese packages entering under de minimis, and found about 10% contained counterfeit items, "and other dangerous things. So I know firsthand how these small packages can become really deadly smuggling devices."

For air cargo and express couriers, shippers will need to provide Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes and calculate the duty owed, regarding MFN, Section 232, Section 301, trade remedies, reciprocal tariffs and other tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

For packages sent via the mail, shippers can either choose to follow the above process, or, depending on the IEEPA tariff rate for the country the goods qualify under, $80 an item, $160 an item or $200 an item. For China and India, that's $200 per item. The $80 an item is for countries with 16% IEEPA rates or lower.

That system will last six months, and then all exporters will have to make informal entries.

A Federal Register notice published near the close of business Aug. 28 said, "For shipments sent through the international postal network that previously qualified for the administrative exemption under 19 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(2)(C), no entry will be prepared until CBP establishes a new process that is published in the Federal Register. For all such postal shipments, the transportation carriers delivering the shipments to the United States, or other qualified parties acting in lieu of such transportation carriers, must collect and remit duties to CBP...."

A senior administration official said it's a positive thing that so many countries' postal services have decided to opt out of sending packages entirely. He said that UPS and DHL will "swoop in and put them out of business," and said that more than half of narcotic seizures in de minimis were in the mail, even though mail was 5% of the volume. He also said letters would be unaffected.

Reporters asked if, in the future, certain countries might be able to export some level of goods under de minimis.

An official said that would never happen. "De minimis was one of the dumbest things this country ever did. If you do your homework, you look around the rest of the world, and nobody comes even close to the $800 de minimis standard," he said. "They're five bucks, 10 bucks, 20 bucks."

(Some countries have $80 or $200, but only Australia had as high a threshold as the U.S.)

The official said he got many calls and letters from companies that complained that foreign manufacturers were counterfeiting their designs. "So there's no going back on de minimis. This is not in any way a negotiating tool; no country in the world is going to get any exemption." He said if one country was able to send its goods through that channel, other countries would send their goods to the qualifying country and mislabel their goods to get around the limit.

He praised CBP for how it ended Chinese eligibility for de minimis, calling it a "completely smooth implementation."