Hot take: good

The de minimis treatment has been abused beyond original intent. Specifically by China, but you can't fix that without fixing the general case.

Fast fashion and other low-value drop air shipping across oceans is ecologically insane: as a planet we literally can't afford to keep doing this. And the US, by virtue of population + relative consumer wealth, is the biggest customer for this.

Furthermore, the inability to reliably screen low-value packages is a problem. To wit, I should not be able to order illegal drugs on the internet and have them delivered by the federal postal system to my door without inspection.

Unfortunately, the way to actually address this requires thoughtful regulation (Congress+customs), modernization and funding of enforcement at scale (Congress+customs), and doesn't produce a quick win... so isn't going to be done.

More likely, it's used as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, then the problem is declared "won", then it's back to business as usual.

On the general point about fast fashion etc. I don't disagree, but vague haphazard unclear regulation no one knows how to comply with is not "good" in any way. It's sloppy banana republic (McDonalds republic?) governance that's making a joke out of the entire country. I'm not American so I don't really care as such, but you know... it's not good. It's just bad governance on a very basic level.

Well this is how Chinese shippers on Amazon were able to sell goods so cheaply; in addition to the U.S. subsidizing Chinese mail costs. This will lead to a more fair and just system in the future. While the halt may seem like a bad thing, the dictation of global commerce means it's really symbolic. They can't withhold mail forever

This. It’s well past time to fix this. We can live without Temu for a little while.

Small D2C packages aren't necessarily worse ecologically than a big US retailer importing a bunch of junk to store in warehouses and maybe sell to customers (else landfill).

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