De minimis was Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930, and for about a decade it let a parcel worth 800 dollars or less enter the United States without duty and without a formal entry. The threshold had been 200 dollars until the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 raised it to 800. That is over, and it ended in stages, which is why so much of the advice still circulating online is out of date.
The sequence matters because each step changed what importers had to do. Executive Order 14256 of May 2, 2025 suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for goods of Chinese and Hong Kong origin. Executive Order 14324 of August 29, 2025 extended the suspension to every country of origin, which is the point where the exemption stopped functioning as a commercial strategy for anyone. The Supreme Court's February 20, 2026 decision in Learning Resources v. Trump ended the IEEPA tariff program, but the de minimis suspension was expressly continued. Then CBP published interim final rules on June 24, 2026, writing the suspension into its own regulations without an end date, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, repeals the statutory provision outright effective July 1, 2027, so the exemption cannot return without new legislation.
Every commercial shipment valued at 800 dollars or less that once qualified for Section 321 treatment now moves through formal or informal entry. The suspension reaches every transport mode, including the international postal network. Informal entry is generally available for shipments up to 2,500 dollars, subject to eligibility, and the new mail informal entry process, effective July 24, 2026, covers mailed goods up to 2,500 dollars that qualify. Entry Type 86, the electronic filing built specifically for Section 321 volumes, no longer exists.
The fee structure punishes parcel-by-parcel filing. The merchandise processing fee on a formal entry is 0.3464 percent of customs value, with a floor of 34.58 dollars for fiscal year 2027, re-indexed each October. A 150 dollar shipment entered alone now carries at least 34.58 dollars in merchandise processing fees, the same floor it would pay if it were a container load. That is the number that changes the economics of small-parcel importing: the duty may be small, but the fee floor is not, and it applies per entry.
First, stop pricing on the assumption that a parcel under 800 dollars clears duty-free. Any part of the process that still assumes that, a landed cost model, a supplier quote, a marketplace listing, needs to be corrected, because the exemption does not exist for any country of origin. Second, consolidate. The fee floor is per entry, so ten small parcels entered separately pay the floor ten times, while one consolidated entry pays it once. Third, check the October rule that narrowed the mail informal entry track: effective October 22, 2026, four categories are excluded, including merchandise claiming duty-free treatment under Chapter 98, merchandise subject to Chapter 98 or 99 duties, merchandise claiming free trade agreement treatment, and goods subject to partner government agency requirements.
The practical consequence is simple and worth stating plainly: every parcel entering the US now needs an entry and pays duty, whatever its value and whatever its origin. The importers who adapted early consolidated shipments, repriced, and moved on. The ones still waiting for the exemption to come back are waiting for a law that Congress has already repealed. For the bond that the new entries require, duty drawback on returned imports covers getting duties back when goods go home, and Section 301 exclusions explains how to check whether your product's extra duty can be lifted.
No. It was suspended for China and Hong Kong on May 2, 2025, for every country on August 29, 2025, and CBP's June 24, 2026 interim final rules made the suspension indefinite. Congress repeals the provision outright on July 1, 2027.
A formal or informal entry. Informal entry is generally available up to 2,500 dollars, including the new mail informal entry process effective July 24, 2026. Entry Type 86, the filing built for Section 321 volumes, no longer exists.
Duty based on the product's HTS classification, plus the merchandise processing fee, which on a formal entry is 0.3464 percent of customs value with a 34.58 dollar floor for fiscal year 2027. A 150 dollar shipment entered alone carries at least 34.58 dollars in fees.
The EU removed its 150 euro duty relief and, since July 1, 2026, applies a temporary flat customs duty of 3 euro per item on distance sales to consumers, charged by tariff heading. The measure runs until July 1, 2028.