“France is urging the European Union to increase customs duties on small packages two years earlier than planned, expanding its campaign against Chinese retailers as it tangles with e-commerce giant Shein,” reports Bloomberg News. The higher customs duties should go into effect “as soon as possible,” preferably “at the start of 2026,” said French Finance Minister Roland Lescure, who said he hopes to “make progress on this subject” at a meeting tomorrow with other finance ministers.
Bloomberg notes that
France and other EU countries are concerned that an influx of small e-commerce packages from China may undermine local businesses and are discussing ways to raise shipping costs on the items.
On Thursday, EU finance ministers are aiming to approve a proposal that would end a customs duty exemption for all parcels under €150, a change that would heavily affect Chinese retailers. France is rushing to inject a last-minute revision that would move up the timing on the repeal, currently slated for 2028.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, proposed erasing the exemption as part of a broader plan to modernize its custom system. But China has become an increasingly urgent concern during those discussions.
Between 2023 and 2024, the number of e-commerce packages from China worth less than €150 more than doubled, from 1.9 billion to 4.2 billion, according to EU data. That accounted for 91% of all such packages entering the EU in 2024.
In the U.S., the Trump administration eliminated the exemption from customs duties for small packages in August, resulting in foreign postal services in Europe and much of the world cutting off shipments of such packages to the U.S.
Postal traffic and express mail plummeted as a result. DHL Express “saw U.S.-bound billed weight plummet 32% year over year in the” third quarter of 2025.
In October, “Postal traffic to the U.S.” from other countries was “still down about 70% five weeks after the end of the ‘de minimis’ exemption that spared low-value packages” from tariffs, reported an international postal agency. Confusion “reigned since the U.S. ended the tariff exemption for packages worth less than $800 on Aug. 29,” reported 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.
