The US will suspend the de minimis exemption for all low-value imports to the US from 29 August 2025. As a result, all goods valued at $US800 or less will be subject to country-specific tariff rates.
I have signed contracts with a carrier who offers Duty Paid (DDP) shipping.
Next steps are:
- Integrate their rates with Shopify
- Check all products have a country of origin and HS Tariff code (with over 3000 active products ...)
- Setup Shopify to automatically calculate tariffs for US shoppers and add to checkout
- With DDP - when I purchase shipping labels - I need to send the Country of Origin (COO) and HS Tariff to the new carrier - it will then calculate the duties again - add processing fees (at the moment $0.45 per shipment) plus pickup fees to collect parcels. The duties will then be paid by the carrier to US customs and I will get an invoice for these to pay.
- Once I have sorted this out, I need to work on both Etsy and eBay. Neither of these platforms have a mechanism for calculating tariffs for a specific country. They are recommending we increase shipping costs by the amount of the tariffs and any additional costs on each and every item! How we calculate bundles (where a customer buys more than one item and doesn't get overcharged/undercharged has not even been considered by these platforms). Another issue is that Etsy and eBay will charge fees on the tariffs of 12% minimum. Gouging at it's best!
This is a huge impost on small businesses who are not customs/IT system experts. I am lucky that I work in the field and can negotiate this mess - but I feel really sorry for all small businesses world-wide who have had their businesses impacted in a very negative way by the timing of these tariffs. If there was sufficient time for international postal services AND USPS to put in place methods to collect and remit (pay) these tariffs electronically - we wouldn't be in this mess.
Anyway, I hope to at least be able to offer shipping to the US again from Shopify in the next few weeks and then will work on how to solve shipping on Etsy then eBay. I will update my blog as I go.