The United States Postal Service made an about-turn on Wednesday and said it would continue to accept packages from mainland China and Hong Kong, reversing a decision to temporarily halt those deliveries after an order by President Trump that ended duty-free handling of many smaller parcels.
The Postal Service’s halt and reversal just hours later show how crucial parts of global delivery systems are grappling with sudden changes in U.S. trade policy, sowing confusion among businesses and potentially delaying shipments.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump ordered that all Chinese imports would be subject to tariffs starting Tuesday. Until the change, parcels worth up to $800 apiece were not required to include detailed information about their contents and were not subject to levies. That was because they were allowed to take advantage of a provision, known as the de minimis exception, that many e-commerce companies have used to send goods to the United States from China without having to pay taxes on them.
As of Wednesday, the Postal Service “will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong posts,” a spokesman for the service said. “The U.S.P.S. and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”
The United States imports close to four million of these lower-value parcels a day, most of them from China, with little or no customs inspection and no duties collected.
The Trump administration and other critics have contended that allowing these packages into the United States has created a conduit for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, and materials needed to make the drug. But many e-commerce companies have used the de minimis rule to bring regular consumer items from China into the United States without paying tariffs on them.
Private shipping companies including FedEx and UPS are also affected by the change in customs rules, as they bring millions of packages from China to the United States on their own chartered flights, separate from the Postal Service.
Unlike the Postal Service, FedEx didn’t stop handling deliveries from China.
FedEx said in a statement that it was focused on working with customers “to adapt to the substantial changes resulting from the recent tariff announcements,” and that its clearance and compliance experts were working around the clock to continue enabling shipments.
“We can confirm that shipments continue to move through our network between the U.S. and China as we adapt to compliance changes,” the company said, adding that this includes shipments that were previously under the de minimis exemption.
UPS did not provide a comment.
The de minimis provision was included in a broader order by Mr. Trump that imposed an extra 10 percent tariff on all imports from China. On Tuesday, China filed a dispute at the World Trade Organization, claiming that the tariffs went against global trade rules.
Lower-value parcels from China now face not only the 10 percent tariff but also the many complex tariffs on every category of goods that they previously skirted.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which is responsible for inspecting imports and assessing tariffs, did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not provide comment.
Trade lawyers said the postal stoppage had been caused by Mr. Trump’s order, which required all mail shipments from China to be sent as what’s called a “formal entry,” with more documentation and fees.
The rapid rollout of Mr. Trump’s trade orders left little time for postal and customs officials to prepare to scrutinize so many packages. Mr. Trump said on Jan. 22 that he would put tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1.
He added China to the list on Jan. 23, but did not say then that he would include a ban on duty-free handling of shipments under $800 from any of the three countries. He signed the executive orders on Feb. 1, including the de minimis ban for all three countries, to take effect just three days later. On Monday, he suspended the orders on Canada and Mexico, but left in place the tariffs and de minimis rule on China.
Representative Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat of California, said that there was bipartisan support in Congress to address China’s exploitation of U.S. trade policy, including de minimis, but that the president’s choice to bypass Congress had left “U.S.P.S. and Customs scrambling to fix the mess he created.”
“This is yet another example of the chaos President Trump continues to create,” she said. “He loves signing executive orders to show off for the cameras but fails to consider their long-term implications or how they’ll be carried out.”
Supporters of de minimis have long said eliminating the provision would increase the burden on U.S. customs officials. Customs and Border Protection is also the primary agency responsible for carrying out much of Mr. Trump’s enforcement actions at the border.
In an online event in October, Ralph Carter, the vice president of regulatory affairs at FedEx, observed that resources were stretched for U.S. customs officials and that a change to de minimis rules could lead to bottlenecks for shippers.
“If we convert these millions of shipments from de minimis into formal, informal clearances, we’re going to have serious supply chain backups, because there simply isn’t the resources to manage that,” he said. “And so that’s going to affect all importers, not just importers of de minimis.”
DHL, a global logistics company, said on Monday that applying tariffs to lower-value shipments into the United States would require it to assess how it processed packages. The company said it was in discussions with U.S. customs officials.
John Pickel, the senior director of international supply chain policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, a trade group that has lobbied in favor of keeping de minimis, said the shipping method was used to move a wide variety of products, including inputs for U.S. factories.
“We’re not just talking about $5 dresses and other types of clothing,” he said. “We’re talking about inputs that power U.S. manufacturing and really move the U.S. economy.”
Shein and Temu are two of the largest e-commerce companies that connect low-cost Chinese factories to millions of American households. Shein declined on Tuesday to comment on the new rules on small packages, while Temu has not responded to questions sent on Monday. Amazon also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The rapid expansion of e-commerce has for years posed a dilemma for Customs and Border Protection. Customs officials were already starting to be overwhelmed by small e-commerce parcels in 2016, when they persuaded Congress and the Obama administration to raise the minimum value for customs inspection and tariff collection to $800, from $200.
Raising the duty-free minimum allowed millions of American households to buy low-cost goods from China. But U.S. manufacturers in sectors like textiles and apparel have contended that the imports of small parcels undermined their ability to stay in business.
With the increase in the limit, the number of duty-free parcels has risen tenfold since 2016. Congress has been debating for the past year how to change the rule on duty-free parcels.
Proposals in Congress had tended to focus on matching the policies of China, which restricts de minimis imports to a few kinds of products, closely checks what is imported and sets very low limits on the value of each parcel — for many products, less than $100.
It remains to be seen if Mr. Trump strikes a deal with Chinese officials that could pause the measure.
The end of the American de minimis rule for goods from China could particularly complicate American imports of clothing. American law bars the import of any goods produced with forced labor in Xinjiang, a region of northwest China where Beijing has ordered a far-reaching crackdown on Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities.
The law requires importers to prove that goods with any content from Xinjiang did not involve forced labor — a hard legal standard to meet because China does not allow independent labor inspections there. And Xinjiang produces much of China’s cotton.
The de minimis imports skirted those rules. The suspension may make it harder for companies to ship such goods from China.
Traditional retailers with stores, like Gap, ship their merchandise in bulk from overseas, submit more documentation to the government and pay tariffs. So they may be affected much less by the rule change than e-commerce companies.