IF YOU'RE IN THE US AND ORDERING FROM CHINA SOON YOU SHOULD ASK THE VENDOR IF THEY'RE GOING TO HANDLE CUSTOM'S DUTIES OR WILL THAT BE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
DELAYS OR RESHIPS MAY RESULT IN ARRIVAL AFTER DE MINIMUS ENDS ON 5/2.
THE ISSUE ISN'T THE MONEY, BUT WHETHER YOU WANT TO HAVE TO PAY CBP TO GET YOUR PACKAGE RELEASED, WHICH MEANS YOU'RE ACKNOWLEDGING YOU'RE THE "IMPORTER".
Starting May 2nd, someone, either you the recipient, or the Chinese logistics company will have to take responsibility as the "importer" of record for packages coming in from China.
Besides being liable for paying duties, the "importer", will take on much more legal responsibility for the contents of the package.
If you become the "importer", and scheduled drugs are found it's going to be hard to deny you knew what was in the package. This is a big change from the way things were previously where you had plausible deniability "I didn't order that'".
If a shipping company takes on that role, and scheduled drugs are found, the fines will be very heavy. Under the new requirements, the shipper is expected to positively identify who exactly is shipping that pack. If violations are repeatedly found the logistics/shipping company will be suspended costing them millions. They will do everything they can to prevent contraband from being shipped in their loads, so I expect shipping will become much more of a challenge for UGL vendors.
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Since every package will required to provide much more data now, this will fuel AI systems that will target specific packs for inspection. For instance, "trusted sellers" like Temu and Shein will not have their packs routinely inspected, Packs coming from unrecognized sellers or sellers who were previously found to ship contraband, packs going to Americans with previous seizures or criminal records, names that don't match addresses, or suspicious patterns will be selected,
Logistics companies have been given previews of this by CBP, as a warning not to deal with packs from suspicious sellers. For at least the last 2 years, these systems have been fed training data so they can identify packages with a high probability of containing contraband.
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Logistics firms that focus on ecommerce are bracing themselves for a rocky May, after the US raised duties again on de minimis from China.
theloadstar.com
If you can wait, it might be preferable to hold off until we see how this shakes out and how vendors deal with this, I think the risk of many taking the opportunity to disappear with your money during this chaos is high.