LONDON — Postal services across the world are halting shipments to the United States this week amid mounting confusion over new import duties that will apply to parcels starting Friday.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month abolishing the trade loophole known as “de minimis,” which since 2016 had allowed goods worth up to $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free.
The end of the exemption is being extended worldwide after the loophole was closed in May for packages from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Under the new rules, personal gifts worth less than $100 will still be duty-free, but all other packages will face the same tariffs as standard imports from their country of origin.
The planned policy shift, which operators say lacks clear procedures, has raised concerns about backlogs as services are put on hold.
Postal providers in Belgium, Denmark and New Zealand are among several operators that have already suspended shipments of packages to the U.S. until they can retool their systems to comply with the new rules. Letters and documents are generally unaffected.
Services in Germany, France, Britain and India have announced they will follow suit in the coming days.
France’s national postal service, La Poste, said in a statement that the U.S. did not provide full details or allow enough time to prepare for new customs procedures. New Zealand’s postal service said parcel deliveries to all U.S. states and territories would be “temporarily unavailable until further notice” while systems are updated to meet new U.S. customs requirements.
DHL, one of the world’s largest courier companies, said Friday that it will stop accepting parcels containing goods from business customers destined for the U.S. beginning Monday.
The company cited unresolved “key questions” about the process, including “how and by whom customs duties will be collected in the future, what additional data will be required, and how the data transmission to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection will be carried out.”
DHL will, however, continue to deliver private parcels labeled as gifts valued under $100, in line with White House assurances.
The White House said ending the duty-free exemption would help combat “escalating deceptive shipping practices, illegal material, and duty circumvention,” claiming some shippers had “abused” the exemption to send illicit drugs such as fentanyl into the U.S.
It said the number of de minimis parcels jumped from 134 million in 2015 to more than 1.36 billion in 2024 as shippers “deceptively exploit the de minimis privilege in an effort to evade duties, inspection, and U.S. law.”
Most of those packages came from mainland China and Hong Kong, which the Trump administration initially targeted as part of efforts to curb American shoppers from ordering low-value goods from China-linked retailers such as Temu and Shein.
The White House briefly closed the loophole for mainland China and Hong Kong in February, but quickly extended the deadline to May 2 amid confusion over how the new duties would be collected.
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