US Customs tightens enforcement on low-value e-commerce trade

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has suspended several customs brokers from a program that was designed to speed entry for low-value shipments but has paved the way for an explosion of e-commerce imports from China and India that the agency is struggling to police.

CBP didn’t spell out specifics in Friday's suspension announcement but implied the intermediaries were penalized because filings for cargo release repeatedly failed to comply with requirements that the importer use “reasonable care” to properly classify and value goods, and for late filing of required data.

Under a 2016 update to U.S. trade regulations, the aggregate retail value of articles that a single person in one day can import free of duty and taxes — and without a detailed, formal customs declaration — was raised to $800. The previous threshold to qualify for an import duty exemption was $200. 

The de minimis — or minimum — threshold was changed to accommodate the growing appetite for purchases made online and shipped directly to the consumer’s door and because the duties on low-dollar imports were so small it wasn’t worth the expenditure of CBP resources to collect them, according to trade compliance experts. The rule changes led to a wave of just-in-time packages from companies such as Shein and Temu, overwhelming CBP’s ability to identify suspicious parcels and raising alarm that smugglers of fentanyl, counterfeits and other illicit products are exploiting the process.

A November 2023 report from the International Trade Commission found that so-called Section 321 shipments account for a substantial share of all U.S. e-commerce imports by quantity and that China is the leading source of de minimis imports by a large margin.