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Reuters

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Business & Economics

Trump closed the ‘de minimis’ import loophole ‒ until all hell broke loose

Reuters
Summary
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72% Informative

President Donald Trump ended duty-free entry for cheap Chinese goods entering the U.S. The White House gave just three days for the policy to take effect.

Logistics experts say it was impossible for major parcel carriers, e-commerce platforms to overhaul their operations in a matter of days to begin collecting tariffs on previously exempt goods.

The need to pay duties on the millions of low-value packages coming from China each day also risks slowing a shipping system built to move parcels quickly.

USPS only accounted for about 5% of last year's total de minimis shipments, some 75 million parcels.

USPS is not set up to process duties on packages of sweaters, shoes and headphones coming from abroad.

USPS on February 4 temporarily stopped accepting incoming packages from China and Hong Kong as it worked to figure out how the duties might be collected.

VR Score

83

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89

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23

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formal

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English

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57

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possibly offensive

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not hateful

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short-lived

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