February 5, 2025
It only took 12 hours for USPS to back down.
Early this morning they announced they would once again be accepting packages from China and Hong Kong after just last night I told you in this video they posted this notice saying they would not accept those packages “until further notice.”
I can’t.
So what was this all about? Why?
Well – it appears – USPS is just as confused about all this as we are.
In the statement posted early this morning USPS says effective today, the postal service will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong posts.
–but here’s the new part that they didn’t include last night–
The USPS 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.
So as I told you in this video last night – while the post office didn’t explicitly say the package refusal policy was about the new 10-percent tariffs across the board on all Chinese goods – but it was hardly a coincidence that the policy emerged on the same day that those tariffs took effect.
Look – president Trump announced those tariffs abruptly late last week. He said last weekend he was moving forward with them and they would take effect on Tuesday. But the thing is – with all executive orders – I don’t know if you’ve ever actually read one – but they’re about big policy and most of the time they’re pretty vague about implementation. And even in the fact sheet issued by the white house about tariffs on imports from China – it literally gives zero direction for the postal service and frankly zero direction for customs and border protection. So they are just left to figure it out.
Of course both of those agencies have experience with implementing tariffs on Chinese goods and getting the u-s importer to pay for those tariffs – but the difference is – this new order from trump is a 10% tariff across the board on all things coming into this thing from China with no exceptions. And nowadays China has a booming e-commerce business in the United States and lots of people order all kinds of things directly from that country from places like shein and temu and dh gate. So now the postal service and customs and border protection are trying to figure out a way to collect those brand new -no exception- tariffs on all those things. That means whoever is importing the item is going to have to pay it whether that’s the company in the u-s that’s distributing it to you – or you directly – that’s something you are going to have to figure out.
Read the notice from USPS here.
