WASHINGTON – Days after ordering high-end computer parts, Mr Chris Pawlukiewicz got an unpleasant surprise: a bill for US$934 (S$1,197) in tariffs he owed to US Customs and Border Protection.
“I was immediately like, ‘hell no’,” said the avid gamer from Louisiana.
He consulted Reddit and made a few calls to customer service to parse the details in his invoice – delivered by United Parcel Service on the US government’s behalf – and found that the parts he ordered from Germany had been over-tariffed.
But he still owed a 25 per cent tariff because his purchase included components originating from China and a 50 per cent duty applied to an aluminium derivative.
The final tab was about US$340 before brokers’ fees, roughly 75 per cent of what he paid for the parts themselves. What’s more, he’d had no choice but to order his gear from overseas because US retailers were out of stock.
“I’m still super confused about why I paid what I paid,” Mr Pawlukiewicz said.
Mr Pawlukiewicz was hit with tariffs because the Trump administration in May
ended a longtime exception
that allowed parcels from China worth less than US$800 to avoid duties, known as the de minimis exemption.
The
aluminium-related levies
he paid went into effect in June.
More American consumers are all but assured to encounter similar shocks starting Aug 29, when the US ends the de minimis exemption for shipments from the rest of the world – which for years had allowed parcels carrying low-value goods to enter the US duty-free.
The number of packages claiming the exemption has surged over the last decade, totalling nearly 1.4 billion in the government’s 2024 fiscal year, or roughly 3.7 million a day. That in turn has helped fuel the growth of e-commerce businesses such as Amazon.com and Shein in recent years.
President Donald Trump’s decision to scrap the policy means that surprise bills will increasingly accompany deliveries that have become a staple of modern life for many consumers.
“It’ll only be exacerbated after Aug 29 when the rest of world loses access to de minimis,” said Mr Derek Lossing, founder of logistics consulting firm Cirrus Global Advisers.
Starting Aug 29, parcels entering the country will be assessed duties based on the country-of-origin tariff rate that Mr Trump imposed using his emergency powers. Alternatively, packages shipped via international post could be assessed with a temporary flat fee of US$80 to US$200 per item, but only for the next six months.
The looming expiration has already sown chaos with logistics companies, sellers and postal services attempting to sort through a complicated and costly process with what they say are limited instructions from US authorities.
Postal services around the globe have
halted shipments to the US
until additional clarity emerges, further confounding the global shipping apparatus.
For companies that rely on those networks – oftentimes small businesses looking to save money – the choice they face is to either shut off orders to US customers or opt for pricier express carriers such as UPS and FedEx Corp. that are still shipping.
“If you sort of limit one channel, then that volume is going to go somewhere else,” said Mr John Pickel, vice-president of international supply chain policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, an organisation that advocates for open trade.
In the meantime, retailers with robust e-commerce operations should be prepared to handle the tariff change on their end, Mr Lossing said.
“It would be a disaster if you’re trying to get a consumer to deal with it,” he said.
Mr Josh Gachera, a college senior in Alabama, recently ordered US$1,029 Italian-made boots from a seller in Canada.
He received a US$190 bill from FedEx about a month after his boots arrived.
“I thought it was a scam at first,” he said.
With the rules seemingly ever changing and confusion abounding, Mr Gachera has yet to pay the surprise bill. He figures he will just see how everything plays out.
After all, he already has his boots. BLOOMBERG