Effects of De Minimus Ending?

Hey LL, glad it worked out. I have a pkg coming from Ukraine right now. So I am wondering......

Eric Craigwrote:

Hey LL, glad it worked out. I have a pkg coming from Ukraine right now. So I am wondering......

Yeah ... it was a gamble trying to fit an order under the wire ... then once I saw things moving with great sluggishness and the 8/29 deadline come and go, I was fully expecting $$xx in added duties.

So you might get lucky : )  

Report back ...

I recieved my beautiful vintage Mountain Equipment "Annapurna" down jacket from Ukraine today.

It went through customs  and no tariff was assessed. The price paid and declared, was $130. It was shipped on Sep 2nd.

Eric Craigwrote:

I recieved my beautiful vintage Mountain Equipment "Annapurna" down jacket from Ukraine today.

It went through customs  and no tariff was assessed. The price paid and declared, was $130. It was shipped on Sep 2nd.

Congratulations!

According to the shipping manifest/invoice was it sent as a gift or regular commercial goods?

I had to look. Yesterday all I looked at was the jacket. It was marked gift.

I made a $180 order for 3 pair of Ocun pants from Oliunid a couple weeks ago and got hit with a $132 charge from UPS. When I looked into it I couldn’t find any explanation other than “Government Fees & Tariffs” for around $110 and “Processing Fee” for like $20. The mail carrier had no idea and no way of checking and I called UPS and got no further explanation. Called Oliunid and they basically said sorry, can’t help ya, we have no way of knowing what kinds of fees your local government will place on the delivery. They said my 3 options were to pay the tariff and release my package, not pay the tariff and UPS would destroy the package, or return to sender and then they would refund me minus the fees + return shipping. So I could expect to get max $50 refunded but probably more like $10 or even $0.

Oliunid is dead for Americans :(

Nico Leiswrote:

I made a $180 order for 3 pair of Ocun pants from Oliunid a couple weeks ago and got hit with a $132 charge from UPS. When I looked into it I couldn’t find any explanation other than “Government Fees & Tariffs” for around $110 and “Processing Fee” for like $20. The mail carrier had no idea and no way of checking and I called UPS and got no further explanation. Called Oliunid and they basically said sorry, can’t help ya, we have no way of knowing what kinds of fees your local government will place on the delivery. They said my 3 options were to pay the tariff and release my package, not pay the tariff and UPS would destroy the package, or return to sender and then they would refund me minus the fees + return shipping. So I could expect to get max $50 refunded but probably more like $10 or even $0.

Oliunid is dead for Americans :(

Got to wonder why you ordered knowing the US government would slap you with a basically unknown tariff charge? 

Jim Tittwrote:

Got to wonder why you ordered knowing the US government would slap you with a basically unknown tariff charge? 

Curiosity. Which can lead to knowledge, which is not easy to come by. Particularly on this subject, in this country. 

This potentially is one of the more useful threads here on MP.

Oliunid has stopped shipping to the USA entirely. I expect many/most other European retailers to do the same. It's a huge hassle for them for no benefit.  

Are we Great yet?

de minimus has been abused by tons of businesses to evade taxes on imports

thats unfair to the legit actors 

evan freemanwrote:

Oliunid has stopped shipping to the USA entirely. I expect many/most other European retailers to do the same. It's a huge hassle for them for no benefit.  

Are we Great yet?

It's almost impossible at the moment even if you try to keep up with what's happening, at the moment I am shipping occasionally just to see what happens when it arrives in the US and accept it's going to be a disaster.

There are so many pitfalls waiting to catch one and for a mixed retailer it's almost impossible. Take a product which say 50% metal and 50% textile by some measure, for example a quickdraw. From Europe the textile part is at 15% tariff and the biners 50% so each part has to be seperately valued. That's relatively easy as the parts are also sold seperately, try valuing the plastic bits in a GriGri. To add to the fun the pour origin (country where the metal was originally made from ore) of the metal parts must be individually declared, so the aluminium and stainless parts which will be different, failure to do this leads to a penalty tariff. This is buried in a notice from US Customs from 16th August, the penalty tariff is 200%.

I'm a manufacturer using only one material but my deliveries may be from multiple countries, my last delivery of the same material in four different sizes came from five different countries because that's how global manufacture and trading works, it's madness.

Jim Tittwrote:

There are so many pitfalls waiting to catch one and for a mixed retailer it's almost impossible. Take a product which say 50% metal and 50% textile by some measure, for example a quickdraw. From Europe the textile part is at 15% tariff and the biners 50% so each part has to be seperately valued. That's relatively easy as the parts are also sold seperately, try valuing the plastic bits in a GriGri. To add to the fun the pour origin (country where the metal was originally made from ore) of the metal parts must be individually declared, so the aluminium and stainless parts which will be different, failure to do this leads to a penalty tariff. This is buried in a notice from US Customs from 16th August, the penalty tariff is 200%.

I'm a manufacturer using only one material but my deliveries may be from multiple countries, my last delivery of the same material in four different sizes came from five different countries because that's how global manufacture and trading works, it's madness.

My next door neighbor quite his job a couple weeks ago selling industrial parts, many of which are imported or manufactured at different locations across the world.  The tariffs created so much disruption with constantly changing prices that were hard to calculate. A lot of customers refused to accept orders and my neighbor said it made business impossible, especially since he was paid on commission. So much for America becoming great. The current regime is doing the opposite of that.

Jim Tittwrote:

Got to wonder why you ordered knowing the US government would slap you with a basically unknown tariff charge? 

Because I had no idea…too busy climbing and working, not paying attention to the media, and just made order from my favorite climbing store like I have many times in the past. Quite the surprise…

de minimus has been abused by tons of businesses to evade taxes on imports

Abused is the wrong word. Leveraged, is more proper. 

Nico Leiswrote:

Because I had no idea…too busy climbing and working, not paying attention to the media, and just made order from my favorite climbing store like I have many times in the past. Quite the surprise…

Funny how what happens in the world affects individuals! Who would have thought…

Jim Tittwrote:

It's almost impossible at the moment even if you try to keep up with what's happening, at the moment I am shipping occasionally just to see what happens when it arrives in the US and accept it's going to be a disaster.

There are so many pitfalls waiting to catch one and for a mixed retailer it's almost impossible. Take a product which say 50% metal and 50% textile by some measure, for example a quickdraw. From Europe the textile part is at 15% tariff and the biners 50% so each part has to be seperately valued. That's relatively easy as the parts are also sold seperately, try valuing the plastic bits in a GriGri. To add to the fun the pour origin (country where the metal was originally made from ore) of the metal parts must be individually declared, so the aluminium and stainless parts which will be different, failure to do this leads to a penalty tariff. This is buried in a notice from US Customs from 16th August, the penalty tariff is 200%.

I'm a manufacturer using only one material but my deliveries may be from multiple countries, my last delivery of the same material in four different sizes came from five different countries because that's how global manufacture and trading works, it's madness.

I read - somewhere - that an an additional layer of complexity was the country in which the metal was smelt needed to be declared so that appropriate tariffs could be assessed.

Wait until we need to tax where the material is mined/farmed... Global economy and all. We are definitely gonna win thought! /s

Duty Free is no longer

Update on the above. This specific Canadian manufacturer opened a warehouse in the States to get around this issue. I guess we'll see a lot more US-based distribution.