WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - The United States is suspending a “de minimis” exemption that allowed low-value commercial shipments to be shipped to the United States without facing tariffs, the White House said on Wednesday.
Under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, packages valued at or under $800 sent to the U.S. outside of the international postal network will now face “all applicable duties” starting on August 29, the White House said.
I ordered a large keyboard enclosure from JLCPCB’s 3D-printing division recently. The tarriffs were like $48 on top of $45 postage and a $80 actual-goods price.
When I fed the job into Craftcloud (probably not the cheapest but a quick way to read the market) trying to get a US-based supplier would have been like $800.
They can’t tarrif these industries back on shore. At least not in any sort of useful timescale.
But the most frustrating part is just the ever-changing aspect. If they said it was a specific amount eith a clear timetable, merchants could at least build prepayment and accurate prices into their checkout flows. Now there’s the risk that whatever amount you paid 2 weeks ago is wrong, and the couriers seem to be responsible for collection, who love to turn that into an excuse to add penalty fees and hold parcels hostage.
Yup. My last JLC PCB order, also keyboard related, came at the worst of the recent tariffs, and it was still 1/3 the price of the cheapest option for PCBs in the US, and the pre-clearance rolled into shipping was as much as the tariffs themselves. The only place even close in price was a fab in India.
It’s dubious to to think that every country needs to have every sector fully spun up anyway, but even if that’s your goal you don’t just dump it on people overnight. That just raises prices and hammers the economy without creating any new jobs. Even the Trumpers know this at some level, hence TACO.
I’ll agree till your last sentence. Trumpers know very little about reality, they operate entirely on wishes and imagined the unfairness.