Felicia Pullam, executive director of trade relations at CBP, defended the administration's proposal to end de minimis eligibility for goods subject to Section 301 tariffs as workable, arguing that charging a $2 fee per de minimis package will allow the agency to hire more staff to screen for contraband, and pushing back on industry arguments that collecting tariffs on low-value packages costs the agency more than that revenue.
321 de minimis
De minimis is a policy described in Section 321, 19 USC 1321. It allows the import of articles duty and tax free, provided their aggregate fair retail value does not exceed $800 in the country from which the articles are imported. Additionally, the articles must be imported by only one person on one day. The previous de minimis threshold was $200, but the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act increased it to $800.
CBP is clarifying how the ACE Entry Type 86 Test governing de minimis shipments applies to customer returns under Chapter 98 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the U.S., according to an Oct. 4 cargo systems message. The agency said a Chapter 98 classification is not applicable if using the Section 321 duty exemption under Type 86. The merchandise would still enter duty-free under Type 86, but the consignee will be subject to the $800/day de minimis limit, CBP said. "Filers should assess whether filing under the Entry Type 86 or filing a formal or informal entry under Chapter 98 is more advantageous when processing returns, as both are permissible," it said.
Sandler Travis managing partner Lenny Feldman said that CBP decided to delay an ACE validation for de minimis shipments to a recipient that would exceed $800 a day, because "they realized when this hits, there's going to be a significant amount of cargo that's going to be above the threshold."
The administration rebranded two pending rulemaking processes and revived one that was abandoned in 2021 to address the compliance risks of de minimis shipments as well as shrink the volume of direct-to-consumer imports.
CBP will delay the scheduled Sept. 28 deployment of automating the $800 de minimis threshold in ACE following feedback from the trade community (see 2407240038), the agency said in a Sept. 3 CSMS message.
The second release of the Section 321 -- Does Not Exceed $800 in Aggregated Shipments deployment is now fully available in the ACE certification environment for testing, CBP said in an Aug. 20 update.
CBP unveiled Aug, 2 a list of proposals further defining just how President Joe Biden expects the agency to implement Biden’s "Detect and Defeat" legislation (see 2407310030) aimed at thwarting fentanyl and other illicit drugs from entering the U.S. via the millions of de minimis shipments or imports that are worth less than $800.
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
CBP plans to enforce the $800 daily aggregated limit for de minimis shipments as a new functionality of the ACE platform.
CBP will deploy on Sept. 29 a new ACE functionality to enforce the $800 daily aggregated limit for de minimis shipments, it said in a CSMS message. The “enhancement will automate the enforcement of the Section 321 requirements by implementing a validation in ACE to ensure that an appropriate party does not receive Section 321 clearance for more than an aggregated value of $800 in shipments on a given day,” CBP said in its most recent ACE development schedule (see 2407020007). “CBP will publish an information notice with more details soon,” it said.