Importing from China to the United States

The wording matters here more than usual, because the scope is unusually wide and the summaries have been unusually loose.

The scope. The exemption "shall no longer apply to any shipment of articles not covered by 50 U.S.C. 1702(b), regardless of value, country of origin, mode of transportation, or method of entry." Four dimensions, all removed at once: not a lower threshold, not a China-specific measure, not an air-freight measure, not a courier measure. All shipments, all countries, all values, all modes.

The consequence. All such shipments, other than those through the international postal network, "shall be subject to all applicable duties, taxes, fees, exactions, and charges."

The date. It applies to goods entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on 29 August 2025. Note what that date is measured on: entry, not order date and not shipping date — which is why goods already in transit were caught.

And it has been continued. A further presidential action, "Continuing the Suspension of Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries", was issued on 20 February 2026. That is a currency marker rather than a forecast: it tells you the suspension was still live at that date, and tells you nothing about tomorrow.

This is the part that changes how a business operates, and it gets far less attention than the money.

The order provides that entry for shipments which previously qualified for the exemption — other than postal — "shall be filed using an appropriate entry type in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) by a party qualified to make such entry."

Read that phrase carefully: "a party qualified to make such entry." Filing an entry is not something anybody can do; it is a regulated act. So a business that previously sent hundreds of small parcels with no customs interaction now needs an arrangement — a broker, or its own qualified capability — for traffic that never required one.

And the data burden arrives with it. Every one of those consignments now needs a commodity code, a declared value and a declared country of origin. For a seller that has been shipping mixed parcels from a warehouse, that is not a tariff problem; it is a product-data problem, and it is usually discovered to be one only after the first entries are rejected.

The order also touches bonds. CBP is authorised to require a basic importation and entry bond for informal entries valued at or less than $2,500, and any carrier transporting international postal shipments must hold an international carrier bond. Bonds are a cost and a lead time, and they are the sort of thing a small importer has never had to arrange before.

Shipments through the international postal network were carved out and given their own duty mechanism, and it is worth understanding because it is charged to the carrier rather than assessed parcel by parcel in the ordinary way.

Carriers choose one of two methods. Either an ad valorem duty *"equal to the effective IEEPA tariff rate applicable to the country of origin of the product"*, assessed on the value of each dutiable package; or a specific duty per package, set by band: $80 per item where the effective rate is under 16 %, $160 where it is between 16 and 25 % inclusive, and $200 where it is above 25 %.

One method at a time. A carrier must apply the same methodology across all covered shipments in a period and may change it no more than once per calendar month, on at least 24 hours' notice to CBP.

The specific-duty option was time-limited by the order itself — available *"for a period of 6 months from the effective date"*, after which *"all shipments … through the international postal network must comply with the ad valorem duty methodology."* On the face of the order that window has passed, and this page makes no assertion about whether a later action changed it. Check.

And one requirement applies to both methods: the country of origin of the article must be declared to CBP. That is a real change for postal traffic, and it turns origin — which the plus-one guide explains is a legal test rather than an address — into something that has to be right on every parcel.

Antidumping, countervailing and quota goods stay outside this. The order requires that postal shipments subject to those measures continue to be entered under an appropriate entry type in ACE.

A model built on shipping single units directly to consumers from China, duty-free, no longer has the thing it was built on. That is worth stating plainly rather than softening, because a lot of businesses are still pricing as though the exemption exists.

Consolidation becomes the obvious answer, and it has its own risks. If every consignment needs an entry anyway, the fixed cost per entry argues for fewer, larger consignments held in-market — which changes your working capital, your warehousing and your returns handling. And a consolidated shipment brings the hand-off problem the consolidation guide sets out: several suppliers, one container, and nobody named to check the goods in.

Your commodity code and your origin now matter on everything. They used to matter only on the containers. Now they matter on the parcels too, and they have to be right in a system rather than in somebody's head.

And the importer of record question arrives on traffic that never had one. Somebody is now legally responsible for the accuracy of a great many small declarations. Decide who, deliberately, before a carrier decides for you — because the convenient arrangements are the ones that put a name on an entry without the named party understanding what they signed up for.

Price as though there is no exemption, on this route and on every other one in this cluster. Five other governments have moved the same way for the same reasons; this is simply the largest example.

No tariff rates and no IEEPA rates are published on this page — they are the fastest-moving numbers in this entire cluster and a stale one is worse than none.

Follow the instruments instead. This area is governed by executive orders and by CBP notices in the Federal Register, both of which are dated, numbered and citable. A news story about a rate is not an instrument; a guide with no instrument behind it cannot be checked.

And use the rights you have. Trade measures are made through processes with published dates, and — as the tariff guide sets out — the importer of a product subject to an anti-dumping investigation is a named interested party with a right to notice, to the non-confidential file and to be heard. That is a different situation from waiting for news.

Ask your broker a specific question: for this commodity code, this declared origin, this value, entering on this date — what applies? Entry date, not order date. The whole of this page turns on that distinction.