Christmas is fast approaching, and with it comes the enormous responsibility of buying gifts for everyone—only for them to be decluttered in late January. We’ve been buying online for quite a few years now; you have an incredible variety to choose from, it’s delivered to your door, and you can even find better prices than in your local stores. However, this year thousands of consumers in the United States have been met with an unexpected surprise when opening their email inbox.
Instead of a shipping notification, they found a customs invoice demanding payment before receiving their package. The U.S. government has eliminated the historic $800 de minimis exemption rule. Although this decision was made on August 29, 2025, many people did not find out about it until they had already purchased their Christmas gifts around this time of year. Tariffs have been applied to Temu packages, and it seems that this is the end of the ultra-cheap international shopping we have been enjoying for almost a decade.
What was the De Minimis Exemption?
If this is the first time you’ve heard the term “de minimis,” don’t worry, you’re not alone.
It comes from the Latin phrase de minimis non curat lex, which translates to “the law does not concern itself with trivial matters.” In the context of international trade, this meant that there was an exemption for low-value shipments. Until August 2025, any shipment addressed to a person in the United States and valued at US$800 or less was automatically exempt from duties, taxes, and formal customs paperwork.
This offered the perfect loophole that boosted global online trade for years: first, it guaranteed low costs, and massive retail platforms such as Shein and Temu could avoid tariffs altogether; it also provided unparalleled speed, as the customs process was simplified. There were no more hours of inspection and bureaucratic backlog; packages where shipped from China and arrived on the other side of planet Earth in less than a fortnight.
Thanks to this exemption, the volume of packages entering the country via this route skyrocketed: an estimated 1.4 billion packages entered the United States in the previous fiscal year alone. This meant that a product costing US$50 could arrive at a buyer’s doorstep duty-free in just a few days.
Why did this exemption end?
The de minimis exemption ended on August 2025… as shoppers, we just hadn’t noticed until now. For shipments from China and Hong Kong, it had already ended earlier, in May 2025. The government’s official reason is complex: first, they wanted to close the loopholes that the rule had created.
The exemption acted as a massive loophole that allowed large foreign retailers to avoid tariffs and thus undermine domestic companies. It also posed a threat to national security; the large volume of low-value packages with minimal shipping data complicated customs inspection, allowing illicit goods, counterfeits, or drugs such as fentanyl to enter the country.
Obviously, this measure seeks to promote fairer competition and protect the domestic economy. By requiring all shipments to pay tariffs, the government seeks to level the playing field between foreign and domestic retailers, who have always had to pay tariffs on their bulk imports. It was a “bread today, hunger tomorrow” situation in which the buyer got a bargain, but in the long run it hurt the U.S. economy.
The new importing costs without de minimis
The new import process is completely different. Now all international commercial shipments, regardless of their value—even if it is a five-dollar item—require formal or informal customs entry and are subject to taxation.
Most buyers have been surprised, as retailers often tell us the total cost at the time of purchase. If the seller uses the DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid) model, the responsibility for paying the fees falls entirely on the customer. That’s when you have to pay customs duties, sales tax, brokerage fees, and logistics company fees, which can add up to between $50 and $150 per package.
What a joke, right? Looks like we’ll have to be very careful when doing our Christmas shopping this year. Who knows, maybe it will be cheaper to head to our local thrift store and shop for that Secret Santa there… God knows it will end back on that very same shelf a couple of weeks later!