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Home > Guides > The end of de minimis
It was suspended. On August 29, 2025, Executive Order 14324 ended duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value imports into the United States, after an earlier suspension for China and Hong Kong in May 2025. Every commercial shipment now needs a customs entry and duty payment regardless of value. The suspension is still in force, confirmed by a further executive order in February 2026.
This is general information, not tax advice.
One honest note first: LetterAgent's shipping labels are Canada-only Xpresspost labels with a 5 kg cap, so they cannot cover a US-bound import. This guide answers the general question, which matters to anyone selling or shipping into the United States.
De minimis comes from Section 321 of the US Tariff Act of 1930. It let shipments valued at or under the duty-free cutoff enter the United States without duties and with minimal paperwork. The threshold was two hundred dollars until 2016, when it rose to eight hundred. For decades it was a minor administrative convenience; the reasoning was that processing tiny shipments cost more than the duties were worth. Then e-commerce turned it into the foundation of a business model. By 2024, more than a billion de minimis parcels a year were entering the US, with platforms shipping individual orders direct from overseas warehouses to American buyers at prices domestic retailers could not match. That volume, and the competitive distortion behind it, became the argument for ending it.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| May 2, 2025 | De minimis suspended for goods from China and Hong Kong, with a steep tariff or a flat per-item fee on postal parcels. |
| July 30, 2025 | Executive Order 14324 issued, suspending de minimis for all countries globally. |
| August 29, 2025 | The global suspension takes effect. Imports under the old duty-free cutoff lose that status regardless of origin; non-postal shipments require formal customs entry. |
| February 2026 | The US Supreme Court strikes down certain tariff measures, but a new executive order confirms the de minimis suspension stays in place regardless. A 10% global import surcharge takes effect. |
| February 28, 2026 | The transitional flat-rate duty period for postal shipments ends; duties calculated on declared value become the only method. |
| April 2026 | Japan Post resumes US-bound parcels after an eight-month pause, with duties prepaid before shipping. |
| July 2026 | The EU ends its own low-value duty exemption and moves to a flat per-item duty regime. |
Every commercial shipment into the US, whatever its value, now needs a formal or informal customs entry filed through CBP's Automated Commercial Environment, a 10-digit tariff classification code, a declared country of origin, and payment of all applicable duties. For postal shipments, the duty has to be collected and remitted by the postal carrier or a certified party before the parcel arrives, which is why dozens of national postal operators temporarily stopped accepting US-bound parcels while they built the systems. Ordinary letters and flats kept their exemption, as did small bona fide gifts.
If you sell into the US, your old landed-cost math is wrong. Duties now apply to every parcel, so build them into pricing or collect them at checkout; surprise duty bills at the door are a leading cause of refused parcels. Confirm your carrier has a working duty-collection process for US-bound shipments, and get the tariff classification right from the start: the wrong code means delays or penalties. None of this reverses on its own; as of late 2026 there is no sign the suspension will be lifted.
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