De Minimis Repeal Sent U.S. Postal Traffic Down 81% as EU Follows

The day the parcels stopped

On August 29, 2025, the United States ended the "de minimis" exemption for every country. That exemption had let shipments worth $800 or less enter without tariffs. Mail headed for America almost stopped overnight. The Universal Postal Union (UPU), the U.N. agency that coordinates postal services between nations, reported that traffic from its member countries to the U.S. dropped 81% that day compared with the previous Friday.2326 In headlines the number was usually rounded to 80%, but the underlying figure is the same in every outlet: the UPU's 81% day-over-day comparison.2122

The exemption had been around in some form since 1938. A 2015 trade law raised the threshold from $200 to $800.23 After that, small parcels became one of the main ways goods reached American shoppers. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported that de minimis shipments rose from roughly 139 million in fiscal 2015 to more than 1 billion in fiscal 2023, then reached 1.36 billion in 2024.24

More than a year later, the August collapse looks like the opening move in a broader repricing of cross-border e-commerce. Europe has now copied it in its own way. This analysis covers what the original shock showed, how much of it lasted, and where the pressure on small parcels is moving next.

Why the mail froze

The 81% drop was not mainly a fall in consumer demand. It was a logistics failure. For the first time, the new rules made transport carriers, or third parties approved by CBP, responsible for collecting and remitting customs duties. Airlines said they would not or could not do this, and foreign postal operators had no connection yet to CBP's list of qualified parties.28 The UPU also said its members had too little time and too little guidance to comply with the July 30 executive order.27

The result was large. Eighty-eight postal operators told the UPU they had suspended some or all service to the U.S.24 The list of national posts that paused business parcel shipments included those of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, Japan, India, Mexico and Switzerland.25 The suspensions covered commercial shipments. Letters, documents and gifts under the gift allowance kept moving.2324

The UPU's fix was technical. Starting September 5, it gave postal operators access to a landed-cost calculator through an API, so they could collect duties from senders at the point of origin. It planned to add this to its Customs Declaration System, which 176 operators use.2228 Washington also allowed a transition period. Carriers could pay a temporary flat fee per package instead of calculating duty on each item's value, with full value-based collection required by February 28, 2026.23 Private carriers came back too. DHL, for example, scheduled a restart of U.S. parcel delivery in late September.28

The 81% figure was a one-day snapshot of a system that had seized up. It was never a measure of lasting demand. The more useful question is what happened after the backlog cleared.

The steady state: fewer parcels, not zero parcels

The longer-term data shows a smaller drop than 81%, though still a large one. According to CBP estimates, more than 940 million low-value packages arrived in the U.S. last year. That is about a quarter fewer than in 2024. Between May and December 2025, CBP collected more than $1 billion in duties on them.11 One analysis of Chinese customs data found low-value parcel exports from China to the U.S. fell about 30%. Other measures of sub-$800 shipment counts showed declines of more than half.9

The estimates differ, but they point the same way. The postal channel fell much further than the market overall, because large platforms moved their goods out of the mail and into bulk freight and U.S. warehouses. The White House had promised up to $10 billion a year in tariff revenue from ending the "loophole."23 The roughly $1 billion collected over eight months suggests that revenue estimate was optimistic. This is our own comparison, not an official reconciliation.

The policy is also more durable than the administration's other tariff actions. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the emergency-powers statute used for many of Trump's tariffs does not authorize them. Trump kept the de minimis suspension in place by separate order that same day. CBP then wrote it into its own regulations for non-mail shipments.11 Congress had already repealed the exemption for commercial shipments in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with the change scheduled for July 2027.1119 The duty-free $5 import is not likely to return.

Temu and Shein: what happened to prices

The price effects arrived before the global cutoff. The exemption ended for China and Hong Kong on May 2, 2025.11 In April 2025 CNN tracked a Shein swimsuit set whose price rose from $4.39 to $8.39 in one day. Just before the China cutoff, Temu added import charges of 130% to 150% on goods it still shipped directly.1112

Per-package charges hit cheap goods the hardest. Under the temporary flat-fee option, the smallest duty was $80 per package, which is 16 times the price of a $5 blouse.11 Economists writing in an NBER working paper estimated broker and processing fees at about $23.19 per package, equal to a 17% tax on the average shipment.12 The same research found that nearly three-quarters of goods shipped to the poorest ZIP codes had come in duty-free, compared with about half in the richest.11 The burden fell mostly on lower-income households.

Audience data showed a sudden drop. Measure Protocol's shopper panel showed Temu's U.S. audience falling as much as 62% and Shein's as much as 47% from their pre-change levels. By April 2026, both had recovered to about 30% below baseline.18

The two companies adapted. Temu moved U.S. sales to local sellers and domestic warehouses.1119 Shein moved inventory closer to its customers, but this has hurt its margins. Its delivery cost per order rose to $17.90, and in early 2026 fulfillment took almost 48 cents of every revenue dollar, up from about 43 cents.11 Shein's U.S. revenue fell roughly 14% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, while its business in Europe and elsewhere grew.11 That geographic shift is the connection to Europe.

The EU customs code: Europe's version

Europe did not move as abruptly as Washington. It did act faster than planned, partly because of fears that cheap Chinese goods turned away from the U.S. would flow to Europe instead.7 On July 1, 2026, the EU dropped its €150 duty-free threshold and introduced a temporary flat €3 duty on low-value consignments from outside the bloc.15 This stopgap is meant to last until July 2028, when the EU's Customs Data Hub is due to start applying product-specific duties.5

The scale explains the urgency. EU officials say low-value parcel imports more than quadrupled, from 1.3 billion in 2022 to 5.9 billion in 2025, with about 90% coming from China.1 Earlier figures from Reuters put the 2024 total at 4.6 billion.3 The two figures cover different years, and both show very fast growth.

A second charge is coming. The new EU Customs Code, published September 19, provides the legal basis for an e-commerce handling fee starting November 1, 2026.2 Reports differ on two points. First, the amount: some coverage treats €2 as settled, while tax specialists say the Commission still has to set it through a delegated act.28 Second, how it applies: one account describes it as a per-parcel charge, possibly reduced to €0.50 for traders certified under the "Trust and Check Trader" scheme. Another says it applies per product category, so a mixed order could pay several times.28 Those details will decide whether the fee is a minor cost or a real deterrent.

Early signs from Europe

The first numbers suggest a sharp effect. Dutch broadcaster RTL reported that low-value imports from outside the EU fell 60% year over year in July.8 French bank-transaction data showed Temu volumes down 50% between June and July, AliExpress down 37% and Shein down 15%.6

Skeptics expect the U.S. pattern to repeat: an early drop, followed by companies routing around the charge rather than retreating. One analysis argues that bulk imports into EU warehouses largely avoid the per-item duty. That would leave the biggest platforms protected and push the cost onto small cross-border sellers who cannot set up local fulfillment.9 Shein's distribution center in Poland supports that view.1

Our reading is that the skeptics are mostly right about the companies and wrong about the market. The U.S. experience shows that ending de minimis does not end ultra-cheap retail. It does change who pays for it and where the goods are stored. Prices rise and shipment counts fall. The parcel stream that once moved through national posts shrinks the most, and well-funded platforms move into the warehouse economy. The 81% drop in August 2025 was the clearest early sign of that shift, and Europe is now following a similar path.