@yetesdghdh Everything has been tariffed for a long time, yes. But the rapid, hectic changes to the percentages and, particularly in this situation, getting rid of the de minimus exemption has caused massive issues and upheaval for anyone doing business with us in the US.
How are businesses like this supposed to be able to smoothly adapt to a new situation when A) that situation was changing on a near daily basis, and B) as a result of those haphazard changes in policy, pretty much every major international package service had to pause US-bound operations to completely reorganize how they handled bringing in even the most insignificantly low-value packages? It was not just DHL or Royal Mail. The global shipping system as a whole is having to figure out how to work with and around our absurdities.
There is nothing “small” about this change, logistically or financially. You scoff at 10% as if it’s something trivial, but fail to take into account that the overwhelming majority of orders from companies such as these fall well below $800, and for a very long time, the de minimus rule was a part of their business models. There were no duties on those shipments, no costs beyond the actual shipping. Now, thanks to our big orange embarrassment of a president, every tiny little thing has to be meticulously coded, calculated, and paid for. These businesses that opt to cover it for their customers have to pay the tariff plus the extra fees their shippers charge as customs brokers to facilitate clearance when the packages get here.
None of it is as simple and clean as you seem to think it is, none of it was necessary, and none of it is doing any of us a damn bit of good.