Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway7394 | Hacker News Reader

There's a minimum charge, as well a percentage.

> Washington will also increase the per postal item fee on goods entering after May 2 and before June 1 to $100 from the planned $75. Parcels entering after June 1 will pay a fee of $200 per item instead of $150 announced previously, according to the Wednesday order.

ref. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-aga...

View on HN

As far as I know, the way it works is shipping companies can do the % package value (ad valorem duty) or the flat rate per package (specific duty) but have to do the same method for all packages and can only change their method once a month.[1]

My speculation is the ad valorem duty requires more manpower to implement and so that's why there's the specific duty option. Especially because they originally temporarily halted the de minimis changes due to USPS not being able to handle it.

Executive order 14266 is the most recent rates with 120% ad valorem or $100 / $200 specific (gated by date as noted above). [2]

[1] EO 14256: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/furt...

[2] EO 14266: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/modi...

Wait, what?

So I can buy my carton of 120 iphones if I pay a $100 package fee, instead of $200,000 at the 120% rate?

Alternately: My Chinese excavator only costs $100 in tariffs?

Can someone give me pseudocode here?

Neither of those are going to be postal service packages with a De Minimis value (<$800).

Could you unpack the idea further?

There are plenty of things where Temu charges $2.00 and I would be fine paying a 120% tariff on that to bring it to $4.40, because Amazon is charging $8.99 and retailers are selling a seventy pack for $30.

But I would not be fine paying a $100 tariff to bring it to $102.

You did a great job explaining it, what more do you need to unpack?

Am I, in fact, going to be hit with a $100 tariff on a $2 item ($2+$100=$102) or a $2.40 tariff ($2*1.2=$4.40) ?

I am looking for language like "Whichever is greater" in the announcement and I'm not seeing it. Do importers choose which to go with? Do customs? It looks like before, shipments below $800 were exempt of all tariffs under the "De Minimis exemption", and that exemption is going away, but I'm still not clear on how the rest of this works.

Ah, I see what you're asking.

I just did some digging and cannot find an answer. Everything just says "X% or $Y flat fee".

Maybe it's up to the discretion of the administration. How much did you donate to Trump's campaign?

Back when the tariff was first announced I remember seeing a whitehouse.gov announcement saying it was 30% with a $25 minimum per package. I can't find that but the [newest Fact sheet](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...) dated 4/2/25 just has the vaguely worded "either / or".

Then there's [avalara.com](https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/north-america/2025/02/how-to...) saying on 4/10 that it's 120% OR $100, but not clear if filer gets to choose.

The latest I can find is from today (4/15/25) from [metro.global](https://metro.global/news/new-tariffs-and-the-end-of-de-mini...) that says 120% AND $100 per package (rising to $200 June 1st).

Your question is so simply put it seems like there should be an easy answer but it seems like there's a lot of interpretations on what's going to happen. It's possible that all of these sources were true on the day they were posted but the rules are continuously changing.

In the EO language there is no "whichever is greater", the shipping company picks (note this all specifically for de minimis, <$800 value, packages).

In EO 14256:

> Transportation carriers delivering shipments to the United States from the PRC or Hong Kong sent through the international postal network must collect and remit duties to CBP under the approach outlined in either subsection (c)(i) or subsection (c)(ii) of this section. Transportation carriers must apply the same duty collection methodology to all shipments; however, transportation carriers may change their collection methodology once a month or on such other periodic timeframe as CBP determines appropriate, upon providing 24-hour notice to CBP.

(c)(i) is Ad Valorem Duty and (c)(ii) is Specific Duty

Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.

Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.

They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.

If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing.

disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.

And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh...

"Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...

> Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population.

One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.

My theory is that all our modern junk doesn't necessarily cause depression, but it allows us to take on more chronic depression and other mental problems (distraction, dopamine hits, etc.) Like the way added safety features to cars just caused drivers to drive worse to compensate.

>under diagnosis

Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow up products and services!

What would happen if everyone lived like the Amish though? I’m assuming they are still profiting from modern science they wouldn’t be able to come up with, right? Or are they refusing MRI scans and Chemotherapy too?

A lot of people would starve without industrialized agriculture.

But you could build the hell out of a barn

I think the point wasn't that that specific example scales to the whole nation but more that if that specific example works as well as it does at the scale that it does than surely some middle ground between "import basically every consumer good" and "the amish" would scale to the entire nation with acceptable tradeoffs.

"ignorance is bliss"

> buy local

I suspect for many imported items there is no local manufacturing and there won't be one. Oh well we'll see soon how the voters react to that.

Ok - so here's an example I can provide input on.

I have a bunch of white oak from a tree I cut down and had milled into lumber.

I wanted to make a bunch of benches for friends/family, etc. I have the lumber so all I needed was the bench ends/legs.

I looked at the domestic options and it was going to cost. I couldn't find anyone that would sell a set of legs for under $300 a piece or wanted me to "contact them for pricing." and that's all BEFORE shipping.

Keep in mind that your local bigbox store sells an almost exact replica of the made in China bench legs with crap lumber for $99. It'd be cheaper for me to buy those, junk the lumber and use my own.

I then checked alibaba and walked through the process of getting RFQ. The competent sellers who knew what I wanted and what to do were easy to work with and quick to check the various shipping costs - the per unit price would be pretty low($20ish even with my low volume order) but shipping would be $50-$70 a per set of legs due to the weight of the cast iron. BUT, now, even with tariffs, that leg would go from $~90 to $180ish AND I'd still be well below what the domestic cost is.

If I go forward at all, I'll still probably go with the Alibaba folks. I don't see how USA manufacturers will suddenly start producing these sort of bulky intermediary consumer products anytime soon.

No it won’t. It will be either 1) good or 2) somebody else’s fault.

I am going to miss getting free seeds from China.

Free seeds?

Sites like Amazon and probably aliexpress/temu require a documented shipment before you can write a review. Shippers sometimes send extremely inexpensive stuff like seeds to random US/overseas addresses and launder the shipping receipt into a fake review for something more expensive.

This sounds fake. Why send seeds, of all things? Why not some equally cheap item like electrical wire insulation off-cuts, a piece of scrap bubble wrap or just a note (or just nothing)? Seeds are likely to set off alarm bells for biosecurity at many borders for no benefit.

It is real, it's called brushing:

https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam

They send all sorts of things but there was a big wave of seeds that got a lot of news coverage because of biosecurity fears.

There's so much chaos being flooded out all at once that things that massively impact normal people don't have time to gain traction in the news. And the moment things do make the news, there's an even larger flood of people everywhere saying, "Fake news. Didn't happen." followed by "So what? How does this affect you personally?" and then ending with "This is actually a great thing and you're suspicious if you're against this."

"Firehose of falsehood" in action. :/

Truth be told, the status quo, with 5-dollar packages clogging the USPS, was a DoS on-going thing in real life/physical form, there had been many posts in here detailing that. Yes, it will most probably negatively affect a lot of people who were relying on that DoS thing to carry on, and, yes, most probably the proposed charges are too high, but it was obvious that something needed to change.

I don't agree with Tariffs, but the discounts some countries get on postage is BS. It should not be cheaper to have a parcel delivered from overseas than interstate in your own country.

https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866c...

I've seen countless interviews of Trump supporters who believe that China is the one paying for it. Which I can completely understand because if it is a cost on them it would be typically be called a tax.

That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but believe it's all just a negotiating tactic:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/

Some Chinese exporters are definitely splitting the cost of these tariffs with their American importer counterparts. While this isn't as significant as "China pays all the tariffs", it's also not "Americans pay all the tariffs".

Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.

Every tax, and tariff a tax, is shared between producer and consumer depending on elasticity of demand for the goods

Why is that the case? If an item (from every manufacturer) costs $5, and there's a new tax on it, making it cost $10, why would this be split between buyer and seller? The seller needs to make a certain margin on it, and it's not like the competition can sell any cheaper, or they already would have been.

The seller doesn't "need" to make any margin on it. Margins are set by the free market, and they are what they are, no more, no less.

Prices go down when demand goes down, right? Why's that, don't sellers need to make a certain margin?

If demand is elastic, then the seller has to lower prices (and their margin), otherwise people don’t buy their stuff (because they can do without). In this situation, the seller eats the tariffs, That’s the case for nice-to-have things like luxury goods and entertainment. If the seller cannot do that, e.g. because their margins become negative, they will just stop doing business (in the US or entirely).

The other end of the spectrum is stuff people cannot do without, in which case the seller has no incentive to lower their margins because their customers don’t have a choice. Then, tariffs are entirely paid by the buyer.

In reality, everything is in between and accurately estimating how much everyone will be paying is very difficult. What we can predict with certainty is that prices can only go up, and that some businesses will fold because they cannot absorb the loss.

Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense about the elastic demand.

A bunch of potential customers will buy at 5$ but not at 15$ so the seller will lose sales and hence money

+1 I feel like this point really doesn't get mentioned enough if at all unless someone did some level of economics at high school/uni.

The tariffs are not paid for by the foreign producer and domestic consumer alone unless PED=0 or PES is extremely large.

I've come across some other comments on Chinese forums. Some importers buy products for 10 RMB from China and then sell them in the U.S. for 10 USD. Later, they use tariffs as an excuse to raise prices to 15-20 USD. They couldn't care less whether you impose 100% or even 200% tariffs – they'd still profit unless the tariffs reach 1000%.

Also, check out this link[0] some people actually don't have many alternatives either.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCS-LS4LUXk

US "liberal" media is being extremely cagey about what and how it reports on this admin. They know they're in its crosshairs and are doing this clumsy balancing act of trying to retain their relatively left-leaning or centrist viewers while trying not to draw any more ire. It won't work, of course, and if we continue on this trajectory you can expect that they'll change over to apologia and ass-kissing or be dismantled.

> Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press

It's hard reporting on the current administration, it's the classic Russian flood style messaging, where you just flood as much (mis)information as you can, and people just can't follow.

How long will it take him to change his mind again? He has already exempted a bunch of stuff from tariffs, coincidentally the same stuff that is likely to be imported because the US doesn't make much of its own of.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com