#TrumpTariffs

The Trump administration has cut its tariff on “de minimis” packages, or shipments of goods worth $800 or less, coming in from China from 120% to 54% and slashed the rate from 145% to 30% for packages from commercial carriers. A $100 flat-fee option also won’t surge to $200 per postal item come June 1, as was previously planned, according to an executive order issued Monday and which goes into effect after midnight on Wednesday.

Monday’s executive order eases the 120% tariff on de minimis postal packages down. The new 54% rate only applies to shipments handled by postal services such as USPS. Deliveries from UPS, FedEx and other express courier companies will instead face the baseline tariff on Chinese goods, which the US lowered to 30%, still crippling for many businesses and consumers.

It’s a better scenario than the alternative, but ultimately still this is a tremendous disruption for basic household items, like clothing, etc, that are shipped using the de minimus exemption,” Clark Packard, a trade policy research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told CNN.