Postal traffic into the United States plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.
The Universal Postal Union says it has started rolling out new measures that can help postal operators around the world calculate and collect duties, or taxes, after the U.S. eliminated the so-called “de minimis exemption” for lower-value parcels.
Eighty-eight postal operators have told the UPU that they have suspended some or all postal services to the United States until a solution is implemented with regard to U.S.-bound parcels valued at $800 or less, which had been the cutoff for imported goods to escape customs charges.
“The global network saw postal traffic to the U.S. come to a near-halt after the implementation of the new rules on Aug. 29, 2025, which for the first time placed the burden of customs duty collection and remittance on transportation carriers or U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency-approved qualified parties,” the UPU said in a statement.
The UPU said information exchanged between postal operators through its electronic network showed traffic from its 192 member countries — nearly all the world countries — had fallen 81% on Aug. 29, compared to a week earlier.
Next Up: “Hey, do we even NEED a postal service?”
They’re going to privatize it
And then we get to hear the endless litany of “hey why is shipping 20x more expensive now here in Bumfuck Montana?” And blaming Biden for it
yea he wants dejoys company to takeover, hes been angling for it for years. Although its wierd that dejoy barely did anything under biden.
I think he just wanted to fly under the radar when Biden was in charge. Biden couldn’t remove him personally, but I think there were mechanisms for his removal in there somewhere…
Biden stupidly appointed some corporate shit bags who sided with the Republicans on the board to keep DeJoy in the head position. If you’re going to run to protect the country from that shitbag, you have to actually protect it once you win, not contitenabling his bullshit
That’s what these assholes have been saying ever since they got on AOL in the mid-90s - “hey, email and FedEx can do everything USPS does, why don’t we just get rid of it?”
Hot take: ending Chinese drop-shipping for cheap junk from Temu, etc. might actually be a good thing.
Ending all parcels from 88 countries is not,
Yeah cheap temu crap is one thing. Localised products from other nations just won’t happen on the individual level and will require a USA company to act as a middle man. In Australian news, we keep hearing about companies that are losing a large chunk of trade because of this. Most are small businesses with niche products; emu leather, kangaroo products, eucalyptus oil, etc. All things that are only made in Australia.
Even having a middle man won’t help. The postal services are not engaging until there is a system in places and clarity.
Sure, mass shipping can work, but is cost prohibitive for all niche products, like you’ve mentioned unless they have a giant distribution deal.
They don’t want to get the ultimate bill for the duties owed. They don’t usually keep customer information, so it needs to be collected up front or not at all.
Millions of small retail or craft businesses now out of business: “haha so true bestie!”
The thing is that not every idea they have is bad. No one wants an overflow of cheap junk from China, but the problem is obviously how they’re going about it - basically halting trade in general rather than having a logical and pragmatic way of working; but then again their end goal isn’t actually to improve USA or to help regular Americans in any way so it figures.
Hot take almost everything you own was partially or fully made in China or other Asian countries
not everyone buys from temu, some chinese products for asian business owners need the other stuff especially around asian related foods ingredients.
We’ve thrown out the baby, but atleast we got rid of that awful bathwater.
Yeah it’s definitely not how it should be gone about, but I think this was far more bathwater than baby.
All part of their plan to gut and strip America and take whatever money they can before Donny and his friends die.
So what if they ruin America for the next 50 years? They will be dead and the people they hate will suffer. Remember to thank your GOP neighbor for this.
It’s what 77 million wanted. So, fuck them.
Putin is doing a good job of destroying America from within.
My American GE dishwasher just broke and I ordered a part from their US based site. The 17$ part ships from China, I have no idea what’s going to happen. Guessing I’ll be handwashing dishes from here on.
To me, this is one of the largest issues. I don’t know – or historically have needed to know – where my goods actually come from. I buy a thing for a price and it is delivered to me. When I buy common goods, I probably go to a store, but for anything that is uncommon, like a machine part, I’ll find it online.
The internet and internet commerce has done wonders to allow us to buy a type 34 widget from ACME without having to spend hours finding a store that carries it or can custom-order it.
The de minimis exemption revocation does two things in the short term: increase the price of a type 34 widget due to tariffs, and add uncertainly as to whether it will come with unexpected overhead like a flat customs fee (sorry, reddit link), delays, or paperwork. People will choose to not buy items, from anywhere, when the rules are both constantly changing and unclear.
The rest applies to tariffs in general, and not the de minimis exemption.
In the long term, we’re also fucked. Orange-D’s policies have been struck down multiple times. In this case, I think he’s asked the Supreme Court to rule on a tariff appeal in the last few days. Almost regardless of the outcome of that, our goods prices will rise, since the companies that sell them will never reduce the price just because the tariffs are removed.
This is the scam: If you are in on the timing, you can buy-low-sell-high when news hits about tariffs and make a ton of money off stocks. We don’t have that info, so we can’t act on it without guessing. Instead, the regular citizen just has to eat the added price of goods.
When my large appliances broke under warranty I’d sometimes find replacement parts on Amazon or eBay, install myself, and keep the replacement that inevitably shows up 90 days later as a spare.
Better than washing dishes by hand
Of course they push tariffs through but raising taxes on the ruling class is never mentioned.
What’s interesting is I believe the postal service was losing money on Chinese Epackets.
Isn’t it misleading to say they are losing money when they are funded by taxpayer dollars?
USPS is self funded, and only until a couple years ago now were we losing money. Once retirement prefunding was repealed we started making money again
USPS is self funded
Cool. It doesn’t mean we start giving a shit about profit margins. It’s a public service. Sometimes it’s gonna cost us money.
The Epackets problem isn’t about profit margins, it’s about one country saddling part of the shipping cost on another. They also come in these awful plastic bags called “china sacks” and they are made from like a multitude of different shredded plastics so they can’t be recycled. They get like literally tons and tons of these bags each month and China won’t take them back.
Why isn’t it on the consumers themselves to stop buying the products?
How would the consumers even know? Why would consumers pay more for a product if there is no tangential benefit for themselves?
It’s a bit ridiculous to expect consumers to do a full supply chain analysis on every product they purchase.
I’m saying that it’s on consumers to stop ordering shit from China if you really care that much about it
no wonder the gop was pissed, they had been planning for decades for it to cripple the USPS, and why dejoy probably wasnt doing much under biden.
The USPS has been self funded for quite some time
I thought the USPS was funded through usage fees/stamps.
