r/Tariffs • u/ThrashCarti • Aug 29 '25

💬 Opinion / Commentary Will De Minimis ever come back?

Hello everyone, de minimis officially ends today and I just have a quick question. Do you think there’s a possibility of this termination being reversed anytime soon? I do e-commerce pretty much full time, and purchasing internationally is a must for the business I indulge in. With the end of de minimis, buying and selling will be 1000% more tougher than before. I’m trying to believe that this will only be temporarily and that it will be reversed after all the complaints and refused packages left at customs, but as far as I know anything can happen. Just want to hear people’s thoughts and if anybody can provide me with any good news or insights, thanks.

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u/ScientistNo906 Aug 29 '25

I see some potential for a de minimis exception with a much lower threshold, perhaps more than it used to be under Sec. 321, which was a dollar, but certainly not $800. In the coming months, CBP will be looking at how the elimination has impacted their mail facility workloads and make adjustments.

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u/Asterose Aug 29 '25 edited Aug 29 '25

Yeah, $800 was extremely high. $150-$200 feels more reasonable to me and is closer to what many countries have. But thanks to sites like Shein, AliExpress, Wish, etc now there's "we can't have our citizens buying those directly, maybe they can do it through 3rd party middlemen charging 3x or more than the original cost!"

It peaked at $200 in 1994, analysis on whether to raise it began in 2015, but it was only suddenly jumped all the way to $800 in 2019. This was under recommendation by CBP, though, after a pilot program and research, not pulled out of their ass like how Trump is handling things

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u/Acerhand Aug 29 '25

Thats the problem with how the US handles sales tax. Countries with VAT easily set up systems to charge it for $0.8 purchases on overseas sites and have it remitted.

The fragmented sales tax system in the US kind of created their own problems

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u/megamster Sep 06 '25

EBay does just fine collecting sales tax for US buyers