U.S. Small Biz Can't Ship to the EU Anymore
glog.glennf.com
glog.glennf.com
We're now prepaying the duties, which seems to have solved that problem, but a few months ago our printer informed us that we will now have to pay this additional €3 fee per copy, plus some undisclosed additional markup charged by the shipping intermediary. But at least they'll handle everything for us without any paperwork, so this is just expensive rather than a bureaucratic nightmare.
But unfortunately this fee seems unavoidable for us—we only mail ~300 copies to Europe per issue, so having multiple printing locations is infeasible; I've checked with a few other printers and they all quoted me double what our current printer charges, so it would be way too expensive to print everything in Europe; and timeliness is important for a periodical, so people can't just order in bulk. So it seems like we'll probably just have to raise our subscription rates again to cover these fees.
If they'd just kept the threshold at $200, all the chaos could have been avoided...
I’m not sure I’m following the argument here, because tariffs are all about protectionism, which is a form of reducing external competition
The author says so, if you take the time to read the actual article:
>I say this isn’t a tariff issue, and it’s not—these are existing customs charges that were waived for these low-cost shipments.
It is US companies having to pay VAT just like EU companies (the author seems surprised EU member states have varying VAT rates, but it is the same across the US), and private shipment companies deciding to push administrative costs to the customers. And inflation and energy costs soaring, due to a certain (US) administration going all-in on AI and foreign wars (which also affect intra-EU shipping).
But guess what: it costs less to ship something between two neighbouring European countries than across the Atlantic ocean. That's still not a tariff.
I volunteer with a small US-based non-profit, and we only mail really inexpensive items ($4.50 each). We've been prepaying the VAT for a few years now [0], but our printer still informed us that we need to pay this new €3 fee, on top of the VAT and shipping fees that we're already paying [1].
We have no problem at all with paying taxes (even 30% of $4.50 is still really cheap), but a fixed €3 fee per item is brutal on an item that we're selling for less than €4. And the typical methods to reduce the impact of this fee like shipping in bulk don't really work for us, because timeliness is important for a periodical and most people only want a single copy of each issue.
> and private shipment companies deciding to push administrative costs to the customers
Our printer was rather evasive when we asked about this, but as far as I can tell, the €3 fee is imposed by the government, and then the shipping intermediaries will charge some undisclosed additional amount on top of this fee.
Didn't the US also end de minimis exceptions recently? Can we really expect other countries and economic zones to keep them if we don't?
This tax is probably closing a loophole, but it’s badly designed and hurts small businesses more than anything because small businesses are the most likely to send to other countries to build their initial base. This tax reduces the discovery of what people do in ways no other tax did before.
These new waste charges require administration that put a de facto floor on minimum monthly sales of €300-1500 per-country just to cover PPWR costs. It's insanity.
[1] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
It's such a mess of a situation.
Suspension of the de minimis administrative exemption for imports $800 or less
I like to do some electronics as a hobby and learning project. I was gonna try to build a thing to make my old timey doorbell intercom smart with an esp32, an audio codec and a circuit to safely read the signals.
Lots of cheap little parts I would usually get on Aliexpress. A lot of them around 50 cents or so. Now, each of them has a 3 euro fee added to it. The cost of this project would go from like 25 to like 75 euros. That seems super unacceptable to me and like it discourages experimenting with electronics, and with that a type of innovation Europe should try to encourage instead.
In theory it should be based on the HS code, no?
> The 3 € fee is applied per declared item, where ‘item’ means each unit of a product that is declared on a separate line. Specifically, the Commission defines "item" as one or more goods in a consignment sharing the same tariff classification, description and, where applicable, origin.
Now, the type of declaration matters [2] - if you're filling an H1 (standard customs) then you pay per item but if you're filling an H6 (postal declaration) or an H7 (Courier or low-value consignment declaration) then you pay per category. So anyone saying that it's always one or the other is, at the very least, oversimplifying.
[1] https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/news/eu-appl...
[2] https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/europe/2026/07/eu-customs-h1...
How do you determine what someone does not really need?
Are you arguing for a cap on the amount of stuff a private individual can import instead of a fee? I suppose it would be a bit more invasive, but it could work and be more equal.
Things we do not need: kickstarter passion projects, temu trash, a very cool custom built split keyboard that broke after a few days. I'm not against the idea of small scale importing, I bought the super cool split keyboard afterall. But the unnecesary pleasures of life are a sometimes thing and deserves to be treated as such
It is an issue and it needs to be addressed.
I am favouring consumer choice which broadly pro-capitalist.
I interpret gammalost as favouring more heavily regulated capitalism. For one thing, the EU is very much pro-capitalist. For another many undoubtedly pro-capitalist governments do tax necessities at lower rates so its an extension of something that happens. The argument is whether it is desirable to extend it
You haven't addressed how it's an issue outside of handwaving at China and landfills. Are European landfills particularly overflowing with items purchased from small businesses and made in China?
Basic food and shelter are necessities. Luxuries are not. You can survive in a hut eating gruel. I known nudists who think we would be better off without clothes.
What right do you have to tell me what i do or do not need?
What an absolutely evil stance to have.
I think we cause issues all the time. For example, by importing trash that we do not need. It is a part of living. But the we need to address these issues, like a tax on imports. This will inevitable lead to other issues, such as the small scale import of books not being economically viable. But the fact that it causes issues is, in my mind, not a good enough argument against it. Because all things that impact other people cause issues.
But there can be more problems than one. I'm discussing the one that the article mentioned.
There is no problem here other than your eco-neuroticism. Stop doing evil things.
It’s ironic to see free trade maximalists, who are often associated with anti-woke, anti-DEI positions, be so “triggered” by protectionist stances. You’re not the first person I’ve seen react like this.
As always, an intelligent, measured rebuttal will go miles further than an emotional outburst. And I say this as someone who (mostly) agrees that tariffs are bad.
Goomba fallacy, these are not the same people
Either way, it's no lower in quality of argument than the wild assertion that everyone affected is just "importing things we really do not need" (what does that even really argue or justify?)
He doesnt, and so forcing me to obey him is evil.
I just don't understand this point at all.
So it's easier for big companies to import rather than individuals.
So niche products are more difficult and mass consumer products are easy to import.
Why would that mean that "things we don't need" are less likely to be imported. It doesn't follow at all.
> VAT: EU member states have varying VAT rates, which surprised me when I learned this a few years ago, particularly for books—some charge 0%, some 40%. For a long time, as a small seller, you could ship DDU (deliver duty unpaid) to an EU customer with the correct price and tariff code declarations, and the customs office or shipper would collect the necessary VAT. Customers didn’t love this, as they’d like to see the final price at checkout, but most understand that the intricacy of VAT (or GST) would overwhelm a small business. Some shippers add agent fees, though, which bumped costs up—sometimes around US$5, sometimes much higher.
It used to be that those packages ended up at a customs depot but I guess it wasn't cost effective for them so they decided to let the shipping companies handle it. Of course they use it as an excuse to extort exhorbitant feeds for a "service" that you never agreed to in the first place and which would be straight up illegal for any other money lender.
Aren't those also increasing with weakening dollar?
In any case, FX fluctuations are a small factor compared to the direct costs of changes in the transport environment and the indirect costs of economic and regulatory uncertainty.
Edit: do those downvoting disagree that a focus on bilateral trade imbalances and tariffs is an idiosyncrasy of Trump, and that we would not be seeing similar trade wars with a different president? If so, please make your case. He has repeatedly stated that that is what he feels is important, and has shared explicit motivation for broad tariffs based on facile derivations from bilateral trade imbalances. So it's pretty difficult to see it instead as a reasoned response to long-term bond rates.
Even looking at the overall case though, there is an alternate way of looking at it, which is that the trade imbalance must be equal to the imbalance between domestic savings and investment. There was a NY Fed article last year that was discussed on HN and covered this well: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/05/why-do... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44040407
So again, I think the domestic imbalance plays a larger part than this analysis gives credit. (And per my original comment, the government portion of national saving is made up of, basically, taxes minus government spending, so - while the effect is complicated because taxation also affects private spending and investment - increased taxation could be expected to reduce trade deficits.)
Basically I don't think there's an economic justification for tariffs as a solution to trade imbalances, overall or (especially) bilateral. (Bilateral trade imbalances really shouldn't be seen as a problem at all. As the saying goes, I have a trade deficit with my grocery store, but that's not a bad thing.) There are situations where they can make sense in order to strategically protect specific industries for security or long-term growth reasons, but that's a separate issue, and the key word there is strategically, something I'm not seeing a lot of.