Chicago – February 07, 2025
Logistics firms are scrambling to adjust to President Donald Trump’s new rules that threaten to upend their booming business delivering small parcels from Chinese sellers to American buyers.
His decision to revoke a “de minimis” rule for China, effectively closing a loophole that allowed small packages under $800 to enter the US duty-free, took effect just after midnight Tuesday Washington time, affecting the billions in goods sold by retailers like Shein and Temu.
The initial impact has been confusion and hurried efforts by some logistics firms in China to raise prices to get in front of higher tariffs. But Trump’s move risks far-reaching consequences, including squeezing US consumers already struggling with cost-of-living stress.
While China officially reported about $23 billion worth of small parcel exports to the US last year, Nomura Holdings Inc. estimates as much as $46 billion of US-bound packages came from the country. The de minimis revocation could cut China’s export growth by 1.3 percentage points and reduce its gross domestic product expansion this year by 0.2 percentage point, the bank said, adding to existing challenges already weighing on the world’s second-biggest economy.
