As per the title.
Due to the imminent introduction of tariffs on imports into the US and the removal of the $800 de minimis limit, it is about to become more difficult to sell into the USA.
According to Royal Mail, if using the postal service the US is demanding collection and payment of the duty up front. This is not a simple thing to implement, as the duty is based on the country of origin of the product. So off the top of my head, in my case that’s UK, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, China, Taiwan I need to know the rates for at minimum. My website doesn’t have the facility to do this automatically so would require extensive code writing to implement it, which just isn’t feasible.
Royal Mail and DHL (my 2 carriers) have suspended shipping to the USA until they can get systems in place. Initially Royal Mail contacted business customers to say that they would add USA to the DDP (deliver duty paid) service. It would appear there is now a problem with that implementation.
Forcing the collection/remittance on to the seller is the issue here, not the actual addition of duties. The entirety of world trade works just fine with duties being charged and paid upon import by the importer/purchaser. I couldn’t begin to guess at why the current US administration sees an issue with that.
Once the dust settles and we know how things are going to be handled I will still not be able to reinstate taking orders to USA on my site. At that point I will have to go old school and USA based customers will have to email with a shopping list which I will produce an invoice for, with all relevant duties included.
Free trade, ay?
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