cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35098148
At least 25 countries have decided to suspend package deliveries to the United States, as concern grows over the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s looming tariffs, a UN body said Tuesday.
The Trump administration said late last month that it will abolish a tax exemption on small packages entering the United States from August 29.
The move has sparked a flurry of announcements from postal services, including in France, Britain, Germany, Italy, India, Australia and Japan, that most U.S.-bound packages would no longer be accepted.
The United Nations’ Universal Postal Union said it had already been advised by 25 member countries that their postal operators “have suspended their outbound postal services to the U.S., citing uncertainties specifically related to transit services”.
It said the suspensions will remain in place until there is more clarity on how U.S. authorities plan to implement the announced measures.
The UPU did not provide a list of postal services it had heard from.
As someone in logistics software… it ain’t pretty
Even if we KNEW all the details, no way do we have enough manpower and system capacity to clear the additional dozens of thousands of shipments that would switch from automatic 86/03 to needing additional clearance details (but we’re prepping for it! Only time will tell)
Buckle up America, this week gon be a bumpy ride, and give a lil leeway to the people getting your Temu packages to you, it ain’t their choice this is all happening. You know who to blame.
The White House needs to host a tariff API with all the current rates for all the countries for all the things.
I mean… LOL but it would be the sane way to carry out their insane clown show.
DHL, UPS, FedEx are still shipping from what I’ve read.
It’s the now age old Trump-Tariff faux-paradox …
Country A has a package to ship to the US …
The US tells Country A: 'aha tariffs need to be paid"…
Country A says “okay, tell the recipient to pay the tariffs and give us the ok when they did so we can deliver it past your border”.
The US gets angry: “no no someone else pays tariffs not us! How dare you put the tariffs on us! Others are supposed to pay!”
Country A mumbles “ok, be that way”, returns the package to sender, sender might refund but keeps shipping costs… and the US customer loses out twice.
Trump is why America can’t have nice things
The root cause is a profound anti-intellectual bent.
Americans are why Americans can’t have nice things.
Ya know, I just had a $100 part shipped to me from the US to French Polynesia through a broker I paid. Package is delivered by DHL and customs sits on it for 10 days. Then they charge me a “tax” equal to 100% and they included the shipping price I paid in the calculation.
If it’s okay for other countries to charge this BS, the US should be able to as well.
Oh, and don’t even think about over staying your visa in FP!
Things have gotten so bad that we’re having to find tiny island clusters in the South Pacific to compare the US to in order to make their import logistics seem reasonable.
I don’t even disagree that there’s plenty of other countries that make importing a pain, but the free market was supposed to be the US’s whole thing. Like, the US can’t even America properly any more.
Its not just tiny countries. This is common most places. Travel and import things and report back.
A one-way free market isn’t good for the US.
Travel and import things and report back
If you’re going to be condescending, at least check your facts first. De minimis import exceptions are extremely common, especially in developed countries (including the whole EU, Japan, Australia, NZ to name a few): https://zonos.com/docs/guides/de-minimis-values
EU de minimis does not apply to US imports. Japan is about $70, Australian non resident businesses over $75k of sales need to register and pay GST (10%) regardless of the de minimis, for NZ, the threshold is about $30k and the GST is 15%
Facts.
Yes, all of which mean that you can send stuff of low value in the regular postal system to those countries.
You seem to be arguing the whole thing from a trade deficit position or a Trumpist “waaaah, it’s not fair how we’re importing so much stuff”, when that’s not what the story is about at all. Several other posters have already explained this to you.
My argument is to remove your self imposed limit of “regular postal system” and this is a non issue. You as a business absolutely can send packages to US customers. The costs have gone up but you can still ship.
You seem to be arguing from a point of orange man is bad and trade should be free (except for US businesses).
All countries should remove all barriers to trade!
I never voted for Trump and have never in my life voted Republican. I do have a history as a business owner dealing with unfair trade practices from other countries though.
And will you continue to do that for the next item? No. And if you can’t find a local supplier, you’ll stop doing that business. It hurts the economy. And this is what will happen in the U.S.
Seems unlikely it will hurt much.
Also, what I did the next time was purchase a RT ticket to LA from Tahiti purchased the part and returned with it. This was less expensive than paying the import duties and when I declared it at customs, they said I owed nothing.
Nazi Germany gassed people in death camps. Therefore everyone should do the same thing.
(Please tell me how this logic is any different than yours?)
My dude, this is technically correct but a bad metaphor; there’s a lot of important differences between death camps and postal bans that make the comparison absurd.
What a dumb comparison. So many haters of anything US here. Yet, more people want to live here than anywhere else. 😂
Try illegally moving to any other country, try importing duty free anywhere else.
Yeah i really don’t think the majority of the population realizes how delicate the global trade system is.
Just recently on August 19th, ALL parts with steel or aluminum in them are tariffed an additional 50%. This covers hundreds of thousands of products we all purchase, and there is ZERO chance of them being manufactured in the USA. This will ruin most of the US economy for those parts as prices skyrocket.
Make sure to buy your car parts NOW before the warehouses are empty and they have to reorder at a 50% higher cost. The tariff covers all car parts including oil filters.
The media is very quiet about this, and we all know why.
Your claims are exaggerated
- Bloomberg Economics estimates the tariffs will reduce U.S. GDP by 0.15% and increase consumer prices by 0.1% over three years.
- The expanded tariffs cover 407 specific product categories—but “hundreds of thousands” overstates the scope.
- The U.S. has domestic steel and aluminum production. Nucor and Cleveland-Cliffs have seen stock price increases, and Minnesota’s iron ore industry has benefited from past tariffs.
- The media isn’t quiet about these issues, you may not understand the issues so you aren’t seeing reports to back up your misunderstanding
Bloomberg can’t make estimates because they don’t know where tariffs will end up. No one does, hence the uncertainty that is hurting the market.
407 product categories. Read that again. Not 407 products, categories.
The US imports 44% of its Aluminum and cannot supply that itself within the next decade even with increased investments.
The media is dead silent on thousands of small businesses that have already folded. Thousands more will go out of business in the next year.
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart
Average US tariffs on Chinese exports now stand at 57.6 percent and cover 100 percent of all goods.
As a result of numerous Trump administration actions, the average US tariff on all goods imports from the rest of the world increased from 3.0 percent to 20.8 percent between January 20, 2025, and August 27. This includes the 10 percent tariff imposed on April 5 that did not simply increase the average tariff by 10 percentage points due to sectoral carveouts. (Notes: On March 4, 2025, the United States imposed new tariffs on certain imports from Canada and Mexico that ultimately did not “claim and qualify for” preferences under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). That tariff change is not reflected here. Furthermore, the US tariff on all goods imports from the rest of the world temporarily increased to 16.2 percent for one day—on April 9—before President Trump, on that same day, reversed some of his tariffs and paused their increase for 90 days. The current average tariff on imports from the rest of the world is now higher than that April 9 peak.
The first Trump administration-imposed tariffs on thousands of products valued at approximately $380 billion in 2018 and 2019, affecting approximately 15 percent of US goods imports. The second Trump administration tariffs threaten all United States goods imports excluding a few categories, mainly USMCA trade (valued at $405 billion of imports in 2024) and certain energy-related and other imports under the April 2 tariffs (valued at $644 billion of imports in 2024, or $459 billion excluding Canada and Mexico).
Sidestepping how incompetent it is to be changing tariff policy daily, yes I would say America imports “hundreds of thousands” of products containing steel/aluminum
Altogether, Trump’s imposed tariffs would raise $2.3 trillion in revenue over the next decade on a conventional basis ($1.5 trillion on a dynamic basis) and reduce US GDP by 0.9 percent, all before foreign retaliation. However, if the IEEPA tariffs are permanently enjoined, it would reduce the total revenue raised by Trump’s tariffs on a conventional basis by $1.8 trillion to $574 billion over 10 years and reduce the negative GDP effect to 0.2 percent.
which is probably where Bloomberg pulled .15% from, and again this doesn’t factor in the foreign retaliation to this idiocy,
As of April 4, China, Canada, and the European Union have announced or imposed retaliatory tariffs altogether affecting $330 billion of US exports. Imposed and threatened retaliation as of April 10 will reduce US GDP by another 0.2 percent and 10-year revenue by $132 billion on a dynamic basis.
but also
The US Court of International Trade ruled in May 2025 that the IEEPA tariffs are illegal, but they have been allowed to continue while the case is in appeal.
so a linchpin of this economic ‘plan’ will be tossed if/when the appeal is up
Trump’s imposed and scheduled tariffs will increase federal tax revenues by $172.1 billion, or 0.57 percent of GDP, making the tariffs the largest tax hike since 1993. The tariffs are larger than the tax increases enacted under President Barack Obama and President George H.W. Bush.
so with all imports being taxed a minimum 10% (from direct consumer to those foreign raw materials those Nucor and Cleveland-Cliffs plants need) I don’t see who would defend this money-losing system, unless you’re really excited for the federal government to have a larger operating budget for some reason, or you own a Nucor/Cleveland-Cliffs plant where you can push increased costs onto the consumer and ride the stock price up alongside it.
From the article:
Full list of countries suspending U.S. parcel shipments
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- China
- Czechia
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- India
- Italy
- Japan
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Russia
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- Thailand
- United Kingdom
Portugal as well
Sanctions? On my country?
more likely than you think, scan now
Moar!!!
Expected and actually surprised it happened
I got a notification from bpost saying it’s suspended because they don’t know how much the cost will be, so they don’t know how much to charge.
