The De Minimis Aftershock, One Year On
Just over a year ago — on August 29, 2025 — the United States suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for imports worldwide. The $800 exemption that had quietly underwritten a decade of cross-border eCommerce growth stopped applying to any parcel entering the US, and one of the largest natural experiments in modern trade policy began.
A year later, the results are in. They are bigger, stranger, and more permanent than most of the industry expected — and the regime is still tightening: CBP's next-generation electronic mail entry process starts testing on September 22, and the statutory end of de minimis arrives, by act of Congress, in under ten months.
The First Shock Was Postal
The most visible early casualty wasn't a retailer — it was the mail. In the days around the August 29 deadline, postal operators across Europe and Asia — including Japan Post, Australia Post, Taiwan's Chunghwa Post, and France's La Poste — halted or sharply restricted US-bound parcel services rather than ship into a customs regime they had no infrastructure to comply with, per reporting by CEP Research at the time [1].
The recovery took months and split the field into leaders and laggards. Royal Mail moved first, launching a Postal Delivered Duties Paid (PDDP) service on August 28, 2025 — one day before the deadline — calculating and remitting US duties in advance so parcels could clear frictionlessly [1]. Deutsche Post/DHL resumed Germany-to-US postal parcels only after a customs-compliance overhaul [2]. India Post restored US-bound services on October 15, 2025, six weeks after suspending them [3].
The lesson of the postal shock generalized: in the post-de minimis world, the ability to ship is downstream of the ability to comply.
The Numbers a Year Later
The scale of what changed is easiest to see in three datasets.
Duties that used to not exist. By late 2025, US Customs and Border Protection announced it had collected over $1 billion in duties on more than 246 million low-value shipments since the phaseout began in May 2025 — revenue that previously went uncollected entirely. CBP also reported an 82% increase in seizures of unsafe and non-compliant low-value goods since de minimis ended for China and Hong Kong [4].
A firehose, throttled. To understand what was interrupted: de minimis shipments into the US had grown from 134 million in 2015 to 1.36 billion in 2024 — more than 4 million packages a day, per Brookings [5]. That flow did not stop, but it fundamentally rerouted: away from single-parcel air express and postal channels, toward consolidated freight, US-domiciled inventory, and duties-paid models.
Airfreight still repricing, a year on. The e-commerce airfreight lanes built on de minimis economics are still adjusting — now on both sides of the Atlantic. WorldACD's weekly data for late August 2026 (week 35) shows Hong Kong-to-Europe tonnage down 30% year on year in August, with mainland China-to-Europe down 5% — a decline WorldACD attributes to "e-commerce stakeholders recalibrating their use of air logistics to deliver relatively low-value cross-border shipments" since the EU's own de minimis exemption ended on July 1 [6].
The Rules Kept Tightening — and Still Are
Anyone who treated August 2025 as a one-time compliance event got a second surprise in 2026. In June, CBP published interim final rules making the suspension indefinite across all modes of transportation [7] — and, for postal shipments, replacing the temporary flat-fee workaround with a formal postal informal entry process, effective July 24, 2026. Under the new process, postal imports valued at $2,500 or less require a customs bond and a detailed data set: 10-digit HTSUS classification, country of origin, declared value, duty owed, carrier and tracking details [8]. CBP estimates the new postal entry process alone will increase duties collected by more than $100 million per year [8].
The machinery is still being built out this month: on September 22, 2026, CBP begins live testing of Entry Type 13 — a new voluntary electronic informal entry process in its ACE system for international mail shipments valued at $2,500 or less, announced alongside the June rules and running indefinitely [9]. The direction is unambiguous: low-value imports are converging on the same structured, data-complete electronic entry discipline as commercial freight.
And the endpoint is already fixed in statute: legislation enacted on July 4, 2025 terminates the de minimis exemption entirely, effective July 1, 2027 — an act of Congress, not an executive order a court can unwind [10]. From this week, that hard stop is less than ten months away.
Then the Rest of the World Followed
The second half of the year's story is that the US turned out to be the leading edge, not an outlier.
On July 1, 2026, the EU ended its own €150 customs duty exemption under Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382, applying an interim flat duty of €3 per item, grouped by tariff classification within a consignment, until its Customs Data Hub arrives in July 2028, when standard tariffs will apply [11]. The scale is enormous: the EU processed 4.6 billion low-value parcels in 2024, 91% of them from China — and the flow rose to nearly 5.9 billion items in 2025 before the rule change [11][12]. The airfreight market reaction has echoed the US pattern — WorldACD data shows the Hong Kong- and China-to-Europe e-commerce lanes contracting sharply through July and August 2026 [6].
Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam have ended or curtailed their own de minimis regimes, and the UK has confirmed it will remove its £135 low-value import relief by October 2028 [13]. The direction of travel is one-way: the duty-free small parcel is going extinct globally.
How Brands Actually Adapted
A year of live experience has sorted cross-border sellers into recognizable strategies.
Price pass-through. The platforms most exposed moved fastest and most visibly: Shein and Temu announced US price increases effective April 25, 2025, ahead of the China/Hong Kong phaseout, per CNN and Axios reporting [14]. A year on, import charges appearing at checkout are a routine part of the low-cost cross-border experience.
Inventory migration. Temu shifted a meaningful share of its US business to domestic warehouse fulfillment — pre-positioning bulk inventory that clears customs once, then ships domestically — with US warehouses projected to handle 20–25% of its US volume in 2026, per supply-chain analysis by Portless [15]. Shein has expanded European warehouse capacity — including a large logistics hub near Wrocław, Poland, opened in December 2025 — in response to the EU change [15].
Consolidation and bulk-break. For brands that keep fulfilling from origin, the economics now favor consolidating orders into a single customs entry, clearing once, and breaking bulk for domestic last-mile injection — because the binding cost is the fixed per-entry filing, not only the duty itself.
Duties-paid as the default. The Royal Mail PDDP pattern became the template: the surviving cross-border proposition is Delivered Duties Paid, with landed cost computed before the parcel moves — not a surprise invoice at the door.
What the First Year Actually Taught
Strip away the headlines and the year's real lesson is operational: compliance became an operating capability, and customs data became the gating asset.
Every adaptation that worked — PDDP postal services, consolidated entries, pre-positioned inventory, honest checkout-time landed costs — depends on the same underlying inputs: accurate tariff classification for every SKU, country of origin on record, complete commercial documentation generated at shipment creation, and carrier connections that can transmit all of it in the format each customs regime demands. The brands that industrialized those inputs kept shipping through every rule change of the past year. The brands that handled them manually got to relive the postal operators' August 2025 week — repeatedly, at every tightening.
One year on, the aftershock is still propagating: the US rules hardened in June, the EU joined in July, CBP's electronic mail entry test goes live this month, and the statutory endpoint arrives in July 2027. The window for treating cross-border compliance as an edge case has closed. It is now core infrastructure — as fundamental to international eCommerce as the payment gateway.
On Friday, we'll look at the operational side: what shipping through the post-de minimis world takes in practice, one year in.
Carriyo — The Intelligent Commerce Platform — powers cross-border operations from checkout to doorstep for 100+ brands, with shipments spanning 200 countries. If the US market is on your cross-border map, so are we: find Carriyo at DELIVER America 2026 in Las Vegas, October 7–8.
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Sources
1. CEP Research. "Royal Mail rolls out new PDDP service for US parcels" (August 28, 2025 — PDDP launch ahead of the August 29 deadline; Japan Post, Australia Post, Chunghwa Post, La Poste among operators halting US-bound services). https://www.cep-research.com/2025/08/28/royal-mail-rolls-out-new-pddp-service-for-us-parcels/ — see also PostEurop, "Royal Mail first international postal operator to launch new services to send goods to the USA" (https://www.posteurop.org/blog/royal-mail-first-international-postal-operator-to-launch-new-services-to-send-goods-to-the-usa/) 2. Yahoo Finance. "DHL Resumes Germany-to-U.S. Postal Parcels After Customs Compliance Overhaul." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dhl-resumes-germany-u-postal-110000251.html 3. Deccan Herald. "India to resume postal services to US from October 15" (2025). https://www.deccanherald.com/india/india-to-resume-postal-services-to-us-from-october-15-3763905 4. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "CBP collects $1 billion since end of de minimis loophole" ($1B+ in duties on 246M+ low-value shipments since the May 2025 phaseout; 82% increase in seizures of unsafe/non-compliant low-value goods; announced December 2025). https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-collects-1-billion-end-de-minimis-loophole — mirrored by SupplyChainBrain, "CBP Collects $1B in Duties Since End of De Minimis" (https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/43038-cbp-collects-1b-in-duties-since-end-of-de-minimis) and CBP's official X post (https://x.com/CBP/status/2001742105375342684) 5. Brookings Institution. "Small parcels, big problems: Modernizing de minimis in a global economy" (de minimis shipments grew from 134 million in 2015 to 1.36 billion in 2024). https://www.brookings.edu/articles/small-parcels-big-problems-modernizing-de-minimis-in-a-global-economy/ 6. WorldACD Market Data, weekly trends 2026 week 35 (August 24–30, 2026). "WorldACD Weekly Air Cargo Trends — week 35" (Hong Kong→Europe tonnage -30% YoY; mainland China→Europe -5% YoY for August as a whole; e-commerce recalibration quote re: 1 July EU de minimis end). https://www.worldacd.com/trend-reports/weekly/worldacd-weekly-air-cargo-trends-2026-week-35/ — see also AJOT, "Weekly Air Cargo Trends — August 17 to 23, 2026 (week 34)" (https://www.ajot.com/news/weekly-air-cargo-trends-34-august-17-to-23-2026) 7. Federal Register. "Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Merchandise Arriving Through All Modes Other Than the International Postal Network" (CBP interim final rule, published June 24, 2026). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12670/indefinite-suspension-of-the-de-minimis-exemption-for-merchandise-arriving-through-all-modes-other 8. Federal Register. "Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments and New Postal Informal Entry Process" (June 24, 2026 — postal informal entry for imports ≤$2,500 effective July 24, 2026; customs bond and full data set incl. 10-digit HTSUS required; CBP estimates duties increase of $100M+/year). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12669/indefinite-suspension-of-the-de-minimis-exemption-for-mail-shipments-and-new-postal-informal-entry — analysis: BDO, "CBP Suspends De Minimis Exemption and Introduces New Postal Entry Requirements" (https://www.bdo.com/insights/tax/cbp-suspends-de-minimis-exemption-and-introduces-new-postal-entry-requirements) 9. Federal Register. "Test of the New Electronic Informal Entry Process for Mail" (June 24, 2026 — Entry Type 13 test for international mail shipments ≤$2,500, voluntary participation, commences September 22, 2026 and continues until concluded by Federal Register announcement). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12668/test-of-the-new-electronic-informal-entry-process-for-mail — see also CBP CSMS #69289734 (ACE PROD deployment September 22, 2026: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/4214706) and GHY, "CBP to Deploy Entry Type 13 Test for U.S. Mail Processing in ACE" (https://www.ghy.com/trade-compliance/cbp-entry-type-13-test-ace-us-mail-processing/) 10. Dedola Global Logistics. "Life After De Minimis 2026" (One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted July 4, 2025, terminates the de minimis exemption effective July 1, 2027). https://dedola.com/blog/life-after-de-minimis-navigating-ecommerce-freight-forwarding-in-2026/ 11. Avalara. "EU €150 customs duty exemption ended July 2026: What to know" (exemption ended July 1, 2026; interim €3 flat duty on sub-€150 items until the EU Customs Data Hub, expected ~2028; EU processed 4.6 billion low-value parcels in 2024, 91% from China). https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/europe/2025/11/eu-end-150-customs-duty-exemption-2026.html — see also Gerlach Customs, "EU Ends €150 Customs Exemption: €3 Duty on Small Parcels" (Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382; https://gerlach-customs.com/knowledge-base/eu-parcel-duty-150-exemption/) 12. ShipperHQ. "De Minimis Is Ending in the EU: What Ecommerce Brands Need to Know" (low-value consignments entering the EU rose to almost 5.9 billion items in 2025). https://shipperhq.com/blog/de-minimis-is-ending-in-the-eu-what-ecommerce-brands-need-to-know 13. Swap Commerce. "Selling After De Minimis: New Rules of Cross-Border Commerce" (Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam ended de minimis; UK working to remove £135 customs duty relief). https://www.swap-commerce.com/blog/new-rules-cross-border-commerce-post-de-minimis 14. CNN Business. "Shein and Temu just started raising prices ahead of new tariffs" (April 25, 2025). https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/business/shein-temu-price-increase — see also Axios, "Temu and Shein are raising prices after Trump tariff crackdown" (https://www.axios.com/2025/04/16/shein-temu-price-increase-trump-tariffs-de-minimis) 15. Portless. "China Direct to Consumer: The Fulfillment Model Behind Shein and Temu" (Temu shift to US warehouse fulfillment, projected 20–25% of US volume in 2026; Shein expanding Polish warehouse capacity). https://www.portless.com/blogs/china-direct-to-consumer-shein-temu