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| ▲ | pj_mukh 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Wait, ARE “personal packages” exempt? Doesn’t say that in the press release. If I buy a Swiss watch (<$800) I’ll have to use DHL or UPS (though AFAIK, they also use national post in places) so I’m SOL. But if my Swiss friend mails me a watch they can use Swiss Post still? Unclear. | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Nothing has changed wrt the personal exemption. Imports under $800 are exempt (i.e. you always had to pay tariffs on an expensive watch). I don't know how many commenters here actually realize it, but the de minimis exemption changes only apply to commercial import, which is how Temu and others could send a $10 piece of crap from China to your doorstep. I don't know if the Swiss post office has realized this, but it's true. Edit: one bit of nuance (see my comment downthread with some of the actual laws and the EO) is that if you buy a watch from Chrono24 or something then it's more like the Temu use-case, and I think the personal exemption probably doesn't apply? But if you go to Switzerland and pick up a $799 watch and post it back or carry it on a plane, then there's no problem. | | |
| ▲ | lxgr 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > the de minimis exemption changes only apply to commercial import What exactly distinguishes a commercial import from a personal gift? How on Earth would the USPS adjudicate the difference? | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Well, I'm not a customs agent, but I'd imagine they do it in the same way they adjudicate anything else: inspection. Some things get through by chance, of course, but not at a rate you'd want to rely on if you're a business. In particular, if I walk into a random post office and send a one-off shipment internationally, the paperwork, origin, packaging, manifest, etc. is vastly different than what, say, Temu was doing to ship a $10 widget to US consumers at scale. The rule you're talking about is not new, so presumably they've figured it out. | | |
| ▲ | lxgr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The $100 rule might not be new, but given that it was by far exceeded by the $800 de minimis exemption until now, it just didn’t matter. | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This has nothing to do with the value threshold. US customs had to know the difference between personal packages and commercial packages before the change. You asked me what distinguishes a commercial package from a personal gift. | | |
| ▲ | lxgr a day ago | parent [-] | | > US customs had to know the difference between personal packages and commercial packages before the change. Presumably for things like import restrictions (I could imagine somebody sending homemade cookies is treated differently than a large-scale food importer), but not for a decision on whether to charge or not levy duties though, right? |
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| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > how Temu and others could send a $10 piece of crap from China to your doorstep. The postal union treaty also externalized shipping costs. | |
| ▲ | pj_mukh 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yea I was asking really about what the various post offices are actually doing, as opposed to what the Trump admins hopes they would do. I have to actually deal with the former. |
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| ▲ | MandieD 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Postal services (including the one I'm in) are going with the $100 gift limit, not the previous $800 de minimus. | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | If so, they're wrong. | | |
| ▲ | MandieD 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | None of them wants to have a whole bunch of consumer/small business shipments stuck in US customs for who knows how long it will take for the US to figure out exactly what tariffs it wishes to charge and how exactly it plans to collect them, so are leaving it to the higher-priced experts like DHL (who will only do it if you’re willing to pay for their Express service, not their Standard parcel service from Germany), UPS, or FedEx. I doubt they’re conspiring to leave money on the table just to make Trump look bad. | |
| ▲ | fzeroracer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you're saying post offices around the world are wrong, it might be time to reevaluate your own statement for truthiness. There's multiple countries that are now suspending shipments over $100 to the US. So either there is a huge fuckup in communications from the US to every other country or there's a fuckup in the process itself. | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > If you're saying post offices around the world are wrong, it might be time to reevaluate your own statement for truthiness. ...or you could read the actual changes? Accusing people of lying is not cool when you clearly haven't even read the source material. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/susp... Here's a summary by a law firm: https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/united-states-suspen... Specifically: > The executive order declares that “[t]he duty-free de minimis exemption provided under 19 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(2)(C) shall no longer apply to any shipment of articles not covered by 50 U.S.C. § 1702(b) [enumerating narrow exceptions, such as for donations, informational materials and transactions ordinarily incident to travel] regardless of value, country of origin, mode of transportation, or method of entry.” 50 USC 1702(b)(4) lays it out explicitly: > (4) any transactions ordinarily incident to travel to or from any country, including importation of accompanied baggage for personal use, maintenance within any country including payment of living expenses and acquisition of goods or services for personal use, and arrangement or facilitation of such travel including nonscheduled air, sea, or land voyages. You don't need to go into this much detail, of course -- you could just Google it or ask an LLM -- Google's AI summary currently returns the correct answer. https://www.google.com/search?q=does+trump+de+minimis+tariff... | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Here's the thing, nobody trusts what the administration or statutes say any more so entities like postal services in other countries are interpreting everything as a worst case scenario, instead of relying on good faith and mutual cooperation as they would previously. Here's a summary by a law firm: Normally that would be sufficient, but now we have an executive branch that tries strategies like personally suing all the federal judges in a district because it dislikes some of their rulings on one of the president's signature issues. CEOs of major corporations are literally giving the president lumps of gold to decorate the oval office. So you'll have to forgive me for discounting the value of legal opinions in general nowadays. | |
| ▲ | lxgr 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How about another White House source explicitly listing a $100 personal gift exemption, from the same day as the one you quoted, one bullet point below one outlining how shipments under $800 would be subject to duties? https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-pr... | |
| ▲ | Symbiote 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://www.postnord.dk/nye-toldregler-i-usa/ > Som privatperson kan du fortsat toldfrit sende gaver med en maksimal værdi á $100 You can see the number and read the obvious words, it's not even necessary to translate it | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | OK. So what? I'm not saying that post offices around the world don't make mistakes, or even make decisions that have nothing to do with the actual rules. I'm telling you what the rules are, right now. | | |
| ▲ | Symbiote 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You claimed Swiss post will continue to accept gift packages over $100, contrary to their press release. Several people have explained that you are incorrect — Swiss and others are not accepting gift parcels over $100. You then changed tack and said Swiss Post etc have the law wrong. So what to you? It doesn't matter what details and uncertainties are in the law, it's resulted in most European countries setting a $100 limit, and at least Finland has suspended delivery entirely (even letters). | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > You claimed Swiss post will continue to accept gift packages over $100, contrary to their press release. I literally just quoted the statement, which was explicit that the change involved “goods consignments”. They are continuing to accept mail, in general, and are continuing to accept goods consignments via another service. In other posts I showed you that there’s no change to US policy for personal exemption. Neither fact is in tension with the other. |
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| ▲ | fzeroracer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | So again, to be clear: You're saying multiple post offices around the world are wrong? Are they acting in unison? Is this a conspiracy against Trump? Explain to me your process here. The EO doesn't mean shit as much as how things are enforced. | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > So again, to be clear: You're saying multiple post offices around the world are wrong? Are they acting in unison? Well, I don't keep track of what post offices around the world are doing, but if they're not following the rules that I just showed you, then yeah, they're wrong. It wouldn't be the first time that bureaucratic organizations get things wrong. > The EO doesn't mean shit as much as how things are enforced. You really need to step back from the keyboard. | | |
| ▲ | Symbiote 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You were writing about Japan's $100 limit yesterday. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017265 > I'd suggest something like: "Japan Post stops accepting US shipments over $100." | | |
| ▲ | timr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure what your point is? What Japan does or does not do has no bearing on the laws, which I just showed you. |
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| ▲ | gpvos 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I doubt you can interpret the rules better than the combined postal services of Europe and their legal departments, and so should you. |
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| ▲ | throwway120385 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's a tariff code and ways of labeling for US customs that should get you through customs with that. Customs is more about regulating commerce and secondarily about preventing contraband from getting through. Sending someone a gift Swiss Watch is probably still possible as long as you don't just YOLO it straight into the mail like it's going to a domestic address. |
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