Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend.

Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are.

There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries have invented sunscreens that feel better on your skin than the old styles, but aren't yet approved in the US. Motorcycle helmets are another. You may have seen the MIPS system - the yellow slipliner that's become popular in bicycle helmets. Scientists have realized that rotational impact leads to concussions and similar brain damage, but prior helmets only protected against naive impacts. Europe now requires helmets to protect against rotational damage. The US requires that manufacturers self-assert that they meet a very old standard that ignores rotational impact. They do not recognize Europe's new standard.

Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now. Protectionists are going to see this as a win.

More background on helmet standards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUyp3HX8cY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo

> Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now.

Everything has a trade-off.

On the other hand, it also prevents companies from dumping artificially cheap and crappy goods (TEMU) on US markets and making it nearly impossible for others to compete.

Unsuspecting consumers buy a super cheap (subsidized) crap product on Amazon or Temu or Shien or wherever - probably a knock-off of an American product, have it shipped to the US, then it disintegrates after a couple of uses or stops working, and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country all so we can help a certain country whose name starts with a C keep the lights on and keep factories running so that they don't see unemployment numbers tick up.

Legitimate businesses selling higher quality products where they exist will be able to figure it out. Or not. It's not a big deal if your sunscreen is slightly worse than the Korean version (which I use). Maybe it just hasn't been approved because they haven't done the work to apply because they can get around working with our government and making sure their product meets our safety standards because of the de minimus loophole?

There's also safety concerns, which I think the CBP did a good job of overviewing here: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploi... . Send drugs or guns or illegal animal products to the US, get caught, who cares you live in (not the US) so you can just spin up another sham company and do it again.

My counterexample is that I sell mid-high end vintage bicycle parts.

There’s about a 0% chance of Shimano or Campagnolo bringing that production to the US because they haven’t made this stuff in several decades.

I’ve now jacked my US shipping prices to account for tariffs. I’ll probably lose all US sales.

US buyers probably won’t realize that ~5-10% of its supply has disappeared for these parts. They also may not recognize that US sellers can/will raise their prices accordingly but they will have that increase in price.

Heck, I know some Canadian sellers that set up their supply chain well enough that they put down a US location and buyers think they’re buying domestic. Those will be toast (or have to vastly inflate their pricing).