For years, the $800 de minimis threshold was the quiet mechanism that made direct-to-consumer parcel shipping from China to US buyers commercially viable. That mechanism no longer exists, and the timeline of how it disappeared — along with the concrete duty costs that replaced it — matters for anyone still planning around it.
How the Exemption Was Removed — And What Replaced It
Executive Order 14256, signed April 2, 2025 and effective May 2, 2025, eliminated de minimis treatment for goods of Chinese and Hong Kong origin. Effective August 29, 2025, the exemption was suspended globally, closing the obvious workaround of rerouting China-origin goods through a third country.
What replaced duty-free treatment for China/Hong Kong-origin parcels has itself moved through several stages, and the specific numbers are worth tracking if you’re pricing landed cost:
- May 14 – August 28, 2025: a 54% ad valorem duty, or a flat $100 per parcel — shipper’s choice of method.
- August 29, 2025 – February 2026: the effective IEEPA tariff rate (30% during this window), or a flat $200 per parcel.
- From March 1, 2026: the flat per-parcel fee option was removed entirely — duty is now calculated strictly as declared value times the applicable IEEPA rate, with no alternative flat-fee path. (Whether the rate remains at 30% going forward depends on the broader US-China tariff negotiation track, which moves independently of this schedule.)
Historically, roughly 60% of the 1.3-billion-plus annual de minimis parcels entering the US originated in China — which is the scale of volume this restructuring affects.
2026: Further Tightening, Not Reversal
The T86 informal entry channel closed May 2, 2026, and CBP made the suspension indefinite through formal federal regulation effective June 24, 2026, rather than leaving it as an executive-order status. Chinese trade media also reported a further action in early June 2026 aimed specifically at closing remaining transshipment gray channels — arrangements where China-origin goods were still being routed through third countries to obscure origin. Details of this specific measure are less consistently reported than the earlier, better-documented steps, so treat the exact mechanics with some caution, but the direction is consistent: enforcement has tightened at every step, not loosened.
A separate US-China tariff rollback agreement reached in late 2025 lowered some general tariff rates on Chinese goods but did not restore de minimis — the two tracks move independently.
The EU Is Following, Not Holding the Line
An earlier version of this piece noted the EU still maintained a full duty-free threshold for low-value parcels. That’s changed: the EU Council has set July 1, 2026 as the date a fixed duty applies to e-commerce parcels valued under €150 entering the EU — meaning the EU is now moving in the same direction as the US, just later and via a different mechanism (a flat duty rather than full exemption removal). The UK’s separate £135 VAT-at-point-of-sale mechanism remains unchanged for now, but the overall global trend among major markets is toward tightening low-value parcel exemptions, not preserving them.
How Chinese Platforms and Sellers Have Actually Responded
Beyond individual sellers switching to DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) arrangements — where a logistics partner prepays duty so the end buyer sees no surprise charge at delivery — the platform-level response has been structural. Chinese trade press reporting on AliExpress and Temu describes both platforms significantly accelerating investment in overseas warehouses through 2026, and pushing a “semi-managed” (半托管) model that lets sellers with their own overseas warehouse capability set their own pricing and ship from local stock, rather than relying purely on the low-price, direct-from-China model that depended on de minimis to work.
For sellers, the practical options now are largely: bulk import plus overseas-warehouse fulfillment (paying duty once on the bulk shipment), DDP arrangements handled by a logistics partner, or continuing direct-from-China shipping with duty now built into landed cost and pricing — a model that works for higher-margin goods but compresses badly for low-price, high-volume categories that depended on the exemption to be viable at all.