I had to delete my Insta account completely. Definitely helped with the temptations and really helped me learn which makers I care about the most. Recommended!
Wish I could but I use IG for travel and connections for my other hobby as well. Trying to make a contact in Taiwan through IG right now. Then, if I go there, I’ll use it to find toy stores too. Serves a lot of purposes, even local food finds.
Most likely scenario is TACO, but it really sucks because if this sticks around it could absolutely slaughter the sofubi scene in the U.S, and it's already rough out here IMO
Per Mandarake: Therefore, starting August 27 (Wed.), in line with other national postal operators, we will temporarily suspend the acceptance of postal items (small packets, parcels, and EMS (goods)) to the United States that contain the following items: Individual gifts with a content value exceeding 100 US dollars Goods intended for sale for consumption The above DOES NOT have any impact on DHL Express which is still being utilized for shipping to the US. They will send you an email/text notifying you that tariff payment is due
I have a package from Japan coming via EMS en route, so we'll see how that ends up! I guess my options right now are $80 tariff charge, 3 weeks in customs limbo, all of the above, or none of the above. Tune in to see what happens!
I don't understand the logic of stopping shipping TO the US. Tariffs, Custom Duties, are payable by the importer, or the recipient. In other words, the shipping service, USPS or DHL or UPS, is the one responsible for evaluating and collecting the tariff/duties monies at the time of delivery. In fact, they have legal requirements to establish a CBP bond fund to satisfy such requirements. The shipment flow should be: Shipper.to => USA => Customer; in country, the US warehouse or holding facitlity for shipping service, a customs evaluation is assigned and fees to be collected from recipient are attached to delivery conditions. But none of this is unique to the US, many countries may have duties on postal items. Canada has 5% GST on items shipped to Canada, unless otherwise excepted. fer instance.. In other words, once Japan Post accepts your package and it gets to the US, it's USPS' business to collect fees and duties. No reason for JP to stop service to the US. In fact, shipping to anywhere from any country has always been like this: RECIPIENT MAY HAVE TO PAY CUSTOMS FEES BEFORE DELIVERY!
https://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/information/2025/0825_01_en.html Sounds like none of the other national postal operators trusts that US CBP has their act together and they would rather just hold off on sending packages to the US than deal with the inevitable dumpster fire that is going to be packages in limbo and ludicrous tariff calculations.
I don't think it's just a matter of trust. This press release from the European postal operators says that the US defined a different set of rules for handling these tarriffs than is commonly used, and those new rules have insufficient clarity in terms of what the originating country postal system has to do. Also, they were only given two weeks to make changes: Aug 15th - Aug 29th. https://www.posteurop.org/blog/u-s-...-global-postal-shipments-from-29-august-2025/ It sounds like the US figured out a way to make it unique!
[QUOTE="timmyummy, post: 1038208, member: 110121 ...Sounds like none of the other national postal operators trusts that US CBP has their act together[/QUOTE] In fact, the July 30th EO explicitly states that: Also, a point of reference {again}, the tariffs or duties to be paid by US importers or buyers is on the product's origin of manufacture. The confusion is about how to evaluate a product's tariff if it's made of 50% Chinese plastic, 25% Canadian steel, etc. or some such combination of stuff. Yet again, this should be relevant to complex, high volume items and their US importers. So, pertinent to our domain, Chinese made toys shipped from the UK or Japan might carry 30%(?) duty, Japanese made toys only15%. Again, I'm only watching the dumpster fire, not condoning it..
I can't fault non-US retailers if they don't want to throw their American customers' packages into a dumpster fire.
I imagine that the companies dont want to bother with the hassle of the situation of the customer not receiving the package with the customer then blaming the shipper. The the customer, especially a US one where we are overly litigious, doing a charge back or something along those lines. Then the shipper losing money and the product while the customer in the end after months, still receiving the package. In fact, the July 30th EO explicitly states that: Also, a point of reference {again}, the tariffs or duties to be paid by US importers or buyers is on the product's origin of manufacture. The confusion is about how to evaluate a product's tariff if it's made of 50% Chinese plastic, 25% Canadian steel, etc. or some such combination of stuff. Yet again, this should be relevant to complex, high volume items and their US importers. So, pertinent to our domain, Chinese made toys shipped from the UK or Japan might carry 30%(?) duty, Japanese made toys only15%. Again, I'm only watching the dumpster fire, not condoning it..[/QUOTE]
Playing Devil's advocate a bit here so I'm sure there are examples that better compare to the US because I don't really know much, But: A flat 5% in Canada vs X% depending on where/what/how much $ in the US, is different. I wonder how much capacity shipping companies have to capture all this info from the sender and how liable they would be if they didn't check that the contents match the senders description. When I send from the UK I have had to describe what the item is and it's value, but never its country of origin. And, if they do all this work; updating current systems to adapt to the new system, capturing and checking package contents, collecting tax or passing information to the US to collect tax, are they working at a loss? How much could they be fined if the US government decided they weren't checking contents thoroughly enough? How much is the work costing them and how would they need to charge to not be delivering at a cost to them? Maybe they're waiting to know the answer to some of these questions before resuming.
Also, I haven't mailed anything from Canada other than a document to the US lately, but the Canada Post Customs Form have always included Origin of Manufacture and HST {Harmonized Sales Tariff} code, which I never cared about, but a commercial seller would. As well, postal items, whether through Canadian Post/UPS/Fedex, were always inspected by US Customs, tracking shows Sent to Customs and released by Customs. With De Minimis gone, now all items are evaluated for tariff value by US Customs. The shipping agent, USPS/Fedex/UPS/etc have CBP bonds from which the duties are paid at the time of inspection and assessment {I think}, or periodically more likely. It's up to the shipping agent to recover duties and whatever other fees they see fit from the recipient upon delivery. I think the difference now is that CBP can look at all items, actually open packages that are deemed worth closer inspection. Because of drugs. So, none of this processing is new, but now they'll be busier than before and capturing extra monies from previously non-dutiable stuff. Whether this actually solves the drug problem is anybody's guess. But likely nobody cares.. small time sellers/buyers will adjust to it. Apologies for my uninformed nonsense. I don't sleep well..
No, that does make sense. HST is what Royal Mail ask me for but not Origin of Manufacture. And thinking about it yeah, content inspection, raising tax invoices falls on the US not the shipping agent, so I guess that's not a cost to them. But if duties are paid by the shipping agent at the time of inspection (or periodically) then they could be sweating about how quickly that money is going out vs. coming in, can they stomach the bill from US customs, can they collect it back from recipients quickly/effectively enough? Really it doesn't seem unique to the US, but there must be a reason I'm too daft to understand.
What's not to understand. Decisions have been made hastily without much thought into them and the proper infrastructure does not exist on the EMS / USPS side to collect duties on basically every single package. The guidelines are unclear and causing confusion. If many countries stop shipping to the USA, it puts the pressure on USA to have robust duty collection methods in place, otherwise nobody is getting their packages anymore. Other companies like DHL may simply be supporting the initiative.
Here's what the Xpresspost International Canada Post form looks like: #7 detailed description: "The country of origin or manufacture and Harmonized System (HS) code (if applicable)" from this page. On a different note: follow the Biden Administration's proposal to eliminate De Minimis from Sep '24 here. Nothing new. Trump admin's EO is originally from February, the July version explains the CBP is ready logistically, they just moved up the deadline. I recall having to go down to the USPS Post Office to pay Customs Fees on some packages back in the day. The retail customer facing money collection practices have been in place forever for items above $800. Again, while it's all stupid, nothing new under the sun..
The "Global Guidance for International Mail" has only been issued on August 15. Not even two weeks ago. I'd call this new, but maybe you have a different definition for what qualifies as new. https://content.govdelivery.com/att...uidance for International Mail - 8.15.25 .pdf "The Administration also calls on Congress to pass legislation this year to reform the de minimis exemption comprehensively to further protect American consumers, workers, and businesses." Not sure why you chose to emphasize Biden but let me emphasize this: No legislation was passed by congress. If CBP is truly ready to process the duties as prescribed in the above, then why have they announced that they are using the simpler Methodology (Methodology 2) until they can prepare to charge people the "new normal rates" under Methodology 1? Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/tariff-exemption-for-small-packages-ends-this-week I can only assume you are referring to this, but you'll have to excuse me for not taking everything said by this administration at face value. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presiden...-free-de-minimis-treatment-for-all-countries/ Four million packages have been processed per day under de minimis. This works out to about 1.5 billion packages per year. 92% of all packages were using the de minimis exemption. You are implying that because they did something for 8% of packages, they can magically increase their capacity to process by 12 times the amount. Source: https://redstagfulfillment.com/how-many-packages-are-sent-under-de-minimis/
It is ALL new. No amount of data you provide above can rewrite the past. First off, the de minis exception was consistently renewed by previous administrations. Secondly, anybody living in the United States who regularly bought expensive toys exceeding $800 will tell you they NEVER received Customs Fees - I've been purchasing multiple times from Mandarake for years with hundreds of orders and not one time did DHL or EMS charge me customs fees. Not once before this nonsense. Twice I got charged customs fees for large clothing purchases from Canada (using EMS only). Aside from the customs fees, we now have to pay the administrative costs of these carriers. They basically find another way to make MORE money while we foot the bill.
Had a quick look at what Royal Mail advises, they say: So I can understand why anyone relying on Royal Mail to send stuff to the US would be pausing. Paying duties as the sender is pretty off-putting. But again, I don't know if that's part of the US Order or bad implementation by Royal Mail.
Well, probably received my last Japan package for a while. Small toy that was sent a while back via 1st class International just squeaked in ahead of the de minimis elimination. HLJ ended up cancelling my shipment and refunding the shipping cost.
