The U.S. Postal Service announced late on Tuesday that it will “temporarily suspend” acceptance of international packages from China and Hong Kong “until further notice.”
Delivery of letters and flats—a term for large letters, newsletters and magazines—is unaffected.
The suspension comes just a day after the U.S. imposed an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports, the “opening salvo” of a new trade war between Washington and Beijing. Soon after, Beijing imposed a series of retaliatory measures, including a 15% tariff on U.S. coal and an anti-monopoly investigation into Google.
The new U.S. tariffs include an end to the “de minimis” rule—a loophole that exempts packages below $800 from being subject to tariffs—on imports from China. This means that packages from China are now subject to all U.S. duties—not just the new 10% tariff imposed yesterday.
"The USPS would require some time to sort out how to execute the new taxes before allowing Chinese packages to arrive in the U.S. again," says Chelsey Tam, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. She notes that "it will take time" to set something up, as the U.S. receives 4 million "de minimis" packages a day.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the number of packages that took the de minimis exemption surged from 153 million in 2015 to over a billion in 2023. The Customs and Border Protection Agency reports that just over 60% of those shipments come from China.
De minimis has come under increasing government scrutiny in recent years. U.S. politicians argue the exemption allows Chinese goods to evade U.S. tariffs, limiting their effect and denying tax revenue.
“The days of Chinese companies like Shein and Temu sending low-value packages to the United States that are not subject to taxes are numbered,” Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad told Fortune in January, before the tariff rules were announced.
Packages from Chinese e-commerce giants like Temu and Shein often qualify for the de minimis exemption, allowing them to bypass additional costs from tariffs. Small manufacturers throughout China—and the platforms that help them sell internationally—also tap the exemption to serve U.S. customers.
Still, shares in PDD Holdings—the company that owns the Temu platform—surged by more than 8% in U.S. trading Tuesday. Chinese tech stocks performed well yesterday amid optimism that the U.S. and China might reach an accommodation on tariffs, similar to what Trump reached with Mexico and Canada, which got a 30-day reprieve on 25% import duties.
Shein has also previously shrugged off concerns about de minimis, suggesting in statements last year that the rule needs “a complete makeover to create a more level, transparent playing field.”
Shein and Temu did not immediately respond to Fortune's requests for comment.
The end of de minimis won't "kill cross-border e-commerce, but it will be more inconvenient," Victor Gao, vice-president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Chinese think tank, told the South China Morning Post on Monday.
The Hang Seng Tech Index, which tracks technology companies traded in the Chinese city of Hong Kong, is up around 4.5% since Monday.
