“Postal traffic to the U.S.” from other countries “is still down about 70% five weeks after the end of the ‘de minimis’ exemption that spared low-value packages” from tariffs, an international postal agency says. “Confusion has reigned since the U.S. ended the tariff exemption for packages worth less than $800 on Aug. 29,” reports the Associated Press.
Since the exemption ended, purchases that previously entered the U.S. without needing to clear customs now have to be vetted, and are now subject to the U.S. tariff rate imposed on the country they came from, which typically ranges from 10% to 50%.
88 of 192 countries suspended all or some of their postal services to the U.S. to take the time needed to adjust their shipping procedures to the end of the tariff exemption. On October 10, the Universal Postal Union said “only a handful” of those nations had resumed postal services to the U.S.
It said that as of October 3, postal volume to the U.S. was down 70.7% compared with the volume a week before the end of the exemption.
On August 29, when the exemption ended, postal volume fell 81% from a week earlier.
The UPU, which is based in Switzerland, said it is deploying new technology that will help the 192 nations that belong to it calculate, collect and pay required duties to U.S. Customs (through the UPU Customs Declaration System).
Lati Matata, Director of the UPU’s Postal Technology Center, says that the technology — an application programming interface, or API — will let “every postal operator in (UPU’s) network – no matter how big or small – meet customs requirements to ensure that citizens worldwide, including U.S citizens, receive their postal items.”
