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More than 1.3 billion packages entered the US under the de minimis exemption in 2024 alone. dennizn / Shutterstock. com
‘ Little public guidance’
Cindy Allen, CEO of consulting firm Trade Force Multiplier and a former customs executive with FedEx, said foreign postal services were being forced into a freight forwarder role of arranging customs clearance in the US or requiring shippers to do so on their own.
“ Little public guidance has been offered to foreign postal services, and without a set procedure or approach, each must determine what is required to move packages into the US,” Allen told the Journal of Commerce.
“ The implementation has been chaotic at best.”
“ The implementation has been chaotic at best,” she added.“ The biggest hurdle was who was going to assess, collect and tender the duty to CBP. The postal service doesn’ t have the mechanisms or capacity to appoint a broker to handle all the shipments, as would happen in a normal freight environment.”
Compliance with the new rules will require substantial modification of shipment control processes, and dozens of mostly state-run postal organizations around the world complained about the short notice given by CBP for new customs requirements.
Spain’ s state-owned postal service Correos said the two-week notice given by CBP was not enough, considering its impact on critical processes such as the collection of duties at source, the collection and reporting of new data and interaction with the various cross-border institutions involved in the new mechanism.
“ Due to the limited timeframe to adapt to these new requirements, and in order to protect the interests of its customers, Correos will temporarily suspend shipments to the United States and Puerto Rico until the appropriate solution has been developed and implemented to comply with the new regulation,” the company said in a statement.
France’ s La Poste noted that starting Aug. 29, US customs duties would be the responsibility of the sender and not the recipient— unlike in the rest of the world— and must be paid to CBP before the items enter the US.
“ However, to date, the United States has not provided European postal operators with concrete procedures for collecting taxes,” La Poste said in a statement announcing its suspension of US postal shipments in late August.“ It is therefore impossible for us to undertake the work necessary to implement these new requirements.”
Lingering questions
The DHL Group stopped accepting parcel and postal items destined for the US on Aug. 22, pointing out that new processes required by US authorities for postal shipping differed from previously applicable regulations.
“ Key questions remain unresolved, particularly regarding how and by whom customs duties will be collected in the future, what additional data will be required and how the data transmission to the US Customs and Border Protection will be carried out,” DHL noted in a statement.
The global elimination of duty-free access to lowvalue goods will not have a noticeable impact on air cargo, according to Frederic Horst, managing director of consultancy Trade and Transport Group.
“ US carriers reported about 22,000 tonnes of inbound mail in the 12 months ended May 2025. That is less than 1 % of total US inbound air cargo traffic,” Horst told the Journal of Commerce.
“ For mail [ to the US ], the biggest origins are the UK, Australia and Germany with 7,300, 3,200 and 2,100 tonnes, respectively, over the last 12 months,” he added.“ Most mail moves on passenger carriers, so if there is any impact, it will be felt by carriers operating from those countries.”
US customs data shows that in 2024, 1.36 billion packages valued at $ 64 billion entered the country under the de minimis exemption. The e-commerce shipments accounted for close to 50 % of China-to-US air freight volume, with big Chinese platforms Temu and Shein filling dozens of freighters every day.
That spigot was turned off on May 2 with dramatic effect when the de minimis exemption was eliminated for imports from China and Hong Kong.
Data from air freight analyst Rotate shows overall China-US air cargo demand fell more than 30 % in June year over year following a 28 % drop in May, while China’ s e-commerce exports to the US in July were down 44 % year over year.
email: greg. knowler @ spglobal. com
28 Journal of Commerce | October 6, 2025 www. joc. com