One day after US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese imports kicked into effect, shipping companies have already started charging higher import duties and processing fees, bewildering American consumers. Over the past 24 hours, US shoppers have reported receiving notices from UPS and DHL stating they owed between $20 to over $50. Some small business owners, meanwhile, say the new fees are forcing them to temporarily halt sending orders to the US completely.
“I am now stuck with $30,000 of items I can’t move across the border, the lifeblood of my business,” says Leslie Brown, the owner of a Canadian second-hand clothing company that sells to US shoppers on eBay and Poshmark. Yesterday, Brown published a blog post on Medium titled “Donald Trump Will Kill My Business.”
US customers who placed orders on shopping websites like the popular Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein have been particularly impacted, even if they made their purchases long before the tariffs were announced. They are now forced to either pay the hefty fees—in some cases, more than the cost of the actual items—or have their packages sent back.
Chardonnay Love, an artist from Pennsylvania, says she received a text message from DHL on Tuesday explaining she needed to pay $26.20 in import duties to get a Shein order that already cost her $267.14. The package was shipped from Guangzhou, China and arrived at a customs office in Cincinnati on Tuesday, according to DHL tracking records she shared with WIRED. They show Love’s order was put on hold for several hours, during which she received the notice asking her to pay the import duties. DHL also noted the package would be returned in 5 days if she declined to do so.
Love bought the items from Shein back on January 27, days before Trump signed an executive order placing a new 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods sent to the US. “If I don’t get the items, this would ruin my Valentine’s Day. But being that I already paid shipping and for the items, I’m kind of stubbornly unwilling to pay this weak ass tariff,” she tells WIRED.
Other people in the US have reported having similar experiences. On Facebook, Reddit, and other social media sites, users shared they were being charged similar amounts to receive their Shein purchases or those from other retailers. One person shared screenshots of DHL’s breakdown of the costs, which showed that the majority of the fees they were being asked to pay were going toward processing costs, rather than tariffs themselves.
Shein, DHL, FedEx, UPS, and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment from WIRED.
Trump’s executive order not only raised tariffs on Chinese goods, but also eliminated a longstanding trade exemption that allowed smaller packages to be sent from China to the US duty-free, as long as their value was less than $800. As of Tuesday, shoppers, small businesses, and ecommerce websites now need to account for the 10 percent additional tariff as well as routine import duties applied to different categories of items, plus processing and brokering fees. The abrupt changes have thrown the online shopping industry into chaos as sellers, shipping companies, customs brokers, and consumers scramble to figure out how to absorb the new costs.
Adhering to the new rules is also proving to be a major lift for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the US Postal Service, the latter of which briefly stopped accepting packages from China and Hong Kong altogether on Tuesday as it scrambled to manage the deluge of packages from China that were suddenly subjected to more thorough inspections.
CBP published guidance on Wednesday warning the public that packages sent from China to the US must now be submitted for “formal entry,” a process that involves providing extensive documentation, including about the value of the parcel’s contents and comes with higher processing fees.
Got a Tip?
Do you work at Shein, Temu, or another ecommerce company and have insight into what’s going on? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter via email at zeyi_yang@wired.com or on Signal at @zeyiyang.06.
