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MandieD 2 days ago

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.

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.

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.