Postal traffic into the United States plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.
The Universal Postal Union says it has started rolling out new measures that can help postal operators around the world calculate and collect duties, or taxes, after the U.S. eliminated the so-called “de minimis exemption” for lower-value parcels.
Eighty-eight postal operators have told the UPU that they have suspended some or all postal services to the United States until a solution is implemented with regard to U.S.-bound parcels valued at $800 or less, which had been the cutoff for imported goods to escape customs charges.
“The global network saw postal traffic to the U.S. come to a near-halt after the implementation of the new rules on Aug. 29, 2025, which for the first time placed the burden of customs duty collection and remittance on transportation carriers or U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency-approved qualified parties,” the UPU said in a statement.
The UPU said information exchanged between postal operators through its electronic network showed traffic from its 192 member countries — nearly all the world countries — had fallen 81% on Aug. 29, compared to a week earlier.
All part of their plan to gut and strip America and take whatever money they can before Donny and his friends die.
So what if they ruin America for the next 50 years? They will be dead and the people they hate will suffer. Remember to thank your GOP neighbor for this.
It’s what 77 million wanted. So, fuck them.
Putin is doing a good job of destroying America from within.
My American GE dishwasher just broke and I ordered a part from their US based site. The 17$ part ships from China, I have no idea what’s going to happen. Guessing I’ll be handwashing dishes from here on.
To me, this is one of the largest issues. I don’t know – or historically have needed to know – where my goods actually come from. I buy a thing for a price and it is delivered to me. When I buy common goods, I probably go to a store, but for anything that is uncommon, like a machine part, I’ll find it online.
The internet and internet commerce has done wonders to allow us to buy a type 34 widget from ACME without having to spend hours finding a store that carries it or can custom-order it.
The de minimis exemption revocation does two things in the short term: increase the price of a type 34 widget due to tariffs, and add uncertainly as to whether it will come with unexpected overhead like a flat customs fee (sorry, reddit link), delays, or paperwork. People will choose to not buy items, from anywhere, when the rules are both constantly changing and unclear.
The rest applies to tariffs in general, and not the de minimis exemption.
In the long term, we’re also fucked. Orange-D’s policies have been struck down multiple times. In this case, I think he’s asked the Supreme Court to rule on a tariff appeal in the last few days. Almost regardless of the outcome of that, our goods prices will rise, since the companies that sell them will never reduce the price just because the tariffs are removed.
This is the scam: If you are in on the timing, you can buy-low-sell-high when news hits about tariffs and make a ton of money off stocks. We don’t have that info, so we can’t act on it without guessing. Instead, the regular citizen just has to eat the added price of goods.
When my large appliances broke under warranty I’d sometimes find replacement parts on Amazon or eBay, install myself, and keep the replacement that inevitably shows up 90 days later as a spare.
Better than washing dishes by hand
Of course they push tariffs through but raising taxes on the ruling class is never mentioned.
Hot take: ending Chinese drop-shipping for cheap junk from Temu, etc. might actually be a good thing.
We’ve thrown out the baby, but atleast we got rid of that awful bathwater.
The thing is that not every idea they have is bad. No one wants an overflow of cheap junk from China, but the problem is obviously how they’re going about it - basically halting trade in general rather than having a logical and pragmatic way of working; but then again their end goal isn’t actually to improve USA or to help regular Americans in any way so it figures.
Hot take almost everything you own was partially or fully made in China or other Asian countries
Ending all parcels from 88 countries is not,
Yeah cheap temu crap is one thing. Localised products from other nations just won’t happen on the individual level and will require a USA company to act as a middle man. In Australian news, we keep hearing about companies that are losing a large chunk of trade because of this. Most are small businesses with niche products; emu leather, kangaroo products, eucalyptus oil, etc. All things that are only made in Australia.
Even having a middle man won’t help. The postal services are not engaging until there is a system in places and clarity.
Sure, mass shipping can work, but is cost prohibitive for all niche products, like you’ve mentioned unless they have a giant distribution deal.
They don’t want to get the ultimate bill for the duties owed. They don’t usually keep customer information, so it needs to be collected up front or not at all.
Millions of small retail or craft businesses now out of busiy: “haha so true bestie!”
not everyone buys from temu, some chinese products for asian business owners need the other stuff especially around asian related foods ingredients.
Yeah, we’ve had a problem for a very long time. The tariffs should have been in place years to decades ago. We let US companies purchase from other countries and then resell in the US for easy profit. We allowed it to the point where U.S. manufacturing atrophied to the brink of non-existence.
We need a massive federal program to bring manufacturing back through small companies. Giant incentives to start manufacturing businesses. Create infrastructure to provide raw materials at cost to these companies by taxing the piss out big companies.
Once you can source plastic and metal goods in the US again, then start running tariffs, and only run it on goods that we can affordably manufacture here.
None of these manufacturing companies need to have yacht owners running them. Engineer it to keep it small. Force them to put the profits back into the people. Hell, maybe force them to be employee owned to get the grant.
If I can ask, have you spent any time in the Rust Belt? Because I grew up there, and I can tell you that Americans don’t actually want plastics manufacturing in their backyard, nor will they appreciate the lung cancer and COPD rates skyrocketing because some dipshit has misplaced nostalgia for a time you most likely didn’t even live through.
For a time, I was quite close to manufacturing workforce development in the US. The dirty little secret that nobody who kvetches about American manufacturing will ever acknowledge out loud is that we have plenty of manufacturing in the US, but manufacturers have the plants in places where people cannot affordably travel, nor do natural American workers seem to want to actually do factory work.
They all say they do, by I can tell you from looking at actual jobs data that only 1/10 American workers who start at a factory job actually remain there longer than a month. To fix any of this, we all need to first acknowledge that maybe manufacturing doesn’t exist as much because it’s a shitty job with low pay, low security, and carries a high risk of on-the-job injury. None of y’all are gonna be lining up to be the guy who agitates the molten steel while it’s being transported from the forge to the smelter. Do you know how many people were just encased in molten steel? Do you know how often we just sorta moved on without even compensating the family? Enough so that the American labor union practically began in Pittsburgh.
People yearn for the time when a man could work 40 hours a week and afford to support an entire family, and buy a home, and buy some nice appliances, while still getting vacation time.
That time was factory work in the 50s. But it wasn’t the factory work they want, it’s the wages. They don’t realize that factory work now is the conditions you mentioned plus less wages than McDonald’s.
Next Up: “Hey, do we even NEED a postal service?”
They’re going to privatize it
And then we get to hear the endless litany of “hey why is shipping 20x more expensive now here in Bumfuck Montana?” And blaming Biden for it
yea he wants dejoys company to takeover, hes been angling for it for years. Although its wierd that dejoy barely did anything under biden.
I think he just wanted to fly under the radar when Biden was in charge. Biden couldn’t remove him personally, but I think there were mechanisms for his removal in there somewhere…
Biden stupidly appointed some corporate shit bags who sided with the Republicans on the board to keep DeJoy in the head position. If you’re going to run to protect the country from that shitbag, you have to actually protect it once you win, not contitenabling his bullshit
That’s what these assholes have been saying ever since they got on AOL in the mid-90s - “hey, email and FedEx can do everything USPS does, why don’t we just get rid of it?”
USA will soon be Americas equivalent to North Korea…
Trump got 11 holes in one the last time he played golf.
This comment has me wondering: does the average NK citizen believe the bullshit their government says about the Kims, or do they know it’s bullshit too?
Look at Christians; the idea of an invisible sky daddy is laughable but being taught that one exists since you were a child is a powerful drug.
My guess is that a good half of North Koreans would defend the regime regardless of how unbelievable it is just like in most other countries.
Look at Christians; the idea of an invisible sky daddy is laughable but being taught that one exists since you were a child is a powerful drug.
Exactly this - and these people are steeped in options, were they so to choose to make use of them to educate themselves, but they absolutely will not.
Same goes for conservatives in the West - they are surrounded by plenty of options if they have an Internet connection or a local library and a willingness to break the spell. But they sure as fuck won’t; they’ll listen to endless hours of hate radio and Faux News.
Imagine being somewhere where those options for truth are actively policed and shut down and punished quite harshly for…
24/7 propaganda not just fox, younger people wants more heavy drugs like OAN, NEWSMAX, and right wing podcasters.
Straight to jail
Do you think Trump supporters believe his bs?
YES, they voted for him 3 times. plus farmers voted for him, despite his tariffs had permantly ruined them in his first term , and its happening again. they will double down, or say they never voted for him.
Some of them, maybe not all, but some of them 100% believe everything coming from Trump and his administration. That’s how cults and a lot of organized religion work, people are literally groomed into this style of belief where they must prove they have true, unwavering faith in it despite the contradictions and evidence otherwise.
There is generational brainwashing in North Korea. Those people have no access to other information and are punished for questioning any information the state provides. So most likely they do believe it, they have no other information.
The ruling elite has access to more information so they most likely know it;s bullshit but it’s benefiting them so why say otherwise.
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They do have some access to external info, people smuggle media into the country from South Korea, of course there will be blind believers but there are probably a lot of them putting up an act so they don’t get killed. If they were all brainwashed, none of them would risk their lives to cross their border and escape NK
A generation is a very short time and it starts by meddling with education. Russia has done it and USA is seemingly well at it
Some. A good portion know it’s bullshit, but play along lest they get sent for reeducation.
THEY ARE TOTally brainwashed by the DEAR leader, so yes. only the ones that defect, if they can might see better horizons.
Taco is so great he doesn’t even defecate since he’s a perfect being.
America has been closer to being north Korea for longer than most people think.
russia actually. texas is mostly there , and florida is closing in second.
without being propped up by china, so a worst version of north korea. i think more like hybrid of russia and NK.
What’s interesting is I believe the postal service was losing money on Chinese Epackets.
Isn’t it misleading to say they are losing money when they are funded by taxpayer dollars?
USPS is self funded, and only until a couple years ago now were we losing money. Once retirement prefunding was repealed we started making money again
USPS is self funded
Cool. It doesn’t mean we start giving a shit about profit margins. It’s a public service. Sometimes it’s gonna cost us money.
The Epackets problem isn’t about profit margins, it’s about one country saddling part of the shipping cost on another. They also come in these awful plastic bags called “china sacks” and they are made from like a multitude of different shredded plastics so they can’t be recycled. They get like literally tons and tons of these bags each month and China won’t take them back.
Why isn’t it on the consumers themselves to stop buying the products?
no wonder the gop was pissed, they had been planning for decades for it to cripple the USPS, and why dejoy probably wasnt doing much under biden.
The USPS has been self funded for quite some time
I thought the USPS was funded through usage fees/stamps.
