Trump ends tariff loophole for low-cost shipments
An exemption on duties and taxes for select import shipments has come to a halt under an executive order from President Donald Trump.
On Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, Trump’s executive order globally ended the availability of the de minimis exemption. This special exemption eliminated duties and taxes on imported shipments with an aggregate value of less than $800 and also allowed them to enter the U.S. while revealing less information about the contents than other imported shipments. This means shipments will incur charges that range from 10% to 50% of their declared value or, for the next six months, a flat duty of $80 to $200 per parcel.
“Consumers are going to be shocked,” Alison Layfield, VP of product development at international shipping and logistics provider ePost Global told The Associated Press, reported nbcnewyork. “They are going to end up, I think, (with) sticker shock, or somewhere along the way, they’re going to see that extra cost.”
According to an official White House fact sheet released in September 2024 (during the Biden administration), from 2014-2024, the number of shipments entering the U.S. claiming the de minimis exemption grew from roughly 140 million per year to more than one billion per year, largely originating from "several China-founded e-commerce platforms."
Previously, the de minimis exemption had been scheduled to expire globally in July 2027. As part of his tariff policy, Trump had previously specifically excluded Chinese imports from the de minimis exemption. This significantly impacted low-cost shopping apps that rely on Chinese imports, such as Temu and Shein.
Responses from those companies included Temu restricting sales in the U.S. to sellers that are based in and ship from the country and Shein increasing U.S. prices to offset the price impact. Recent surveys indicate U.S. consumers have already been feeling the effects of the end of the de minimis exemption for Chinese imports.
U.S. adults now spend an extra $12.2 billion each month, averaging $47 more per person monthly following new tariffs on Chinese goods, according to a survey by email and SMS marketing platform Omnisend.
And data from Consumer Edge showed a sharp deceleration in U.S. consumer spending growth at Temu and Shein following the end of the de minimis exemption for Chinese goods in April.
[READ MORE: Study: U.S. shoppers pull back from Temu, Shein; shift spending to Old Navy, others]
Many European post offices have temporarily halted some deliveries to the U.S. while they formulate strategies to deal with the end of the exemption, and prices on a wide variety of goods from countries across the globe may rise as a result.
"The ending of that under-$800-per-person-per-day rule, from a global perspective, is about to probably cause a bit of pandemonium," Lynlee Brown, partner in the EY global trade division, told CNBC. "There’s a financial implication, there’s an operational implication, and then there’s pure compliance."
In other tariff-related developments, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a 7-4 Aug. 29 decision that many of the tariffs Trump has imposed this year are unconstitutional. The decision allows the tariffs to remain in effect while the Trump administration appeals the verdict.
