USPS resumes accepting Chinese packages

The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday halted an order to suspend incoming shipments from China that threatened to disrupt trade between the two major economies.

A day after announcing the suspension in the wake of U.S. President Trump’s 10% tariffs on China, the postal service said in an online update that it would “continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China.”

It added it was working to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

Letters and flats were not included in the suspension, the postal service said.

Trump’s tariff increase also eliminated a duty-free exemption for low-value packages coming from China. The “de minimis” exemption allows goods valued at US$800 or below to come into the United States without paying duties or certain taxes.

According to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, the move will impact more than one billion low-value items shipped directly to individual U.S. consumers from China.

China slammed the U.S. suspension Wednesday as another unfair treatment targeting Chinese companies. “We urge the United States to stop politicizing trade and economic issues and using them as tools, and to stop the unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a press briefing when asked about the development.

Meanwhile, several Chinese companies engaged in cross-border e-commerce have raised prices to cover the extra costs incurred by the tariffs.

Yiwu Canyuan Import and Export on Wednesday hiked the prices of its products on cross-border e-commerce sites by 25% due to changes in the U.S. tariff policy, said Feng Junfeng, the Chinese small goods trading company’s general manager.

YunExpress started charging U.S. customers additional 20 yuan (US$3) per parcel to U.S. residents for customs clearance. The Chinese cross-border logistics services provider explained that the adjustments in the U.S. tariff policy led to a significant increase in customs clearance costs.

Chinese cross-border e-commerce merchants need to change the way they deliver goods from directly to consumers to through general trading, which will likely increase costs and the delivery time by one to two days, said Wang Sijie, vice president of Chinese cross-border supply chain services provider Winit, as quoted by Yicai.

In the short term, more merchants will rely on overseas warehouses to deliver their goods, Wang noted. To save delivery costs and time, cross-border e-commerce merchants can transport goods in bulk to overseas warehouses to deliver them to overseas customers directly from there.