Thread

Suspension of the de minimis administrative exemption for imports $800 or less

161 points · 154 comments · burnt-resistor

downrightmike · 1790027914 · focus · HN ↗
What does this actually mean?
1. motionlessveloc · 1790028606 · focus · HN ↗
  Means you can no longer legally^W practically buy far cheaper prescription medicines from Canada, Mexico, India, China etc and ship them to the US.
  Their own primer on the topic: <a href="https://www.personalimportation.org/understand-the-issue" rel="nofollow">https://www.personalimportation.org/understand-the-issue
  1. dawnerd · 1790031188 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s not what it says. It’s still legal. You just have to pay duties. It’s also not just on medication. They shared these rules a while ago too.
    matthewdgreen · 1790032111 · focus · HN ↗
    Canadian pharmacies already pay tariffs. What does this actually change?
    reddozen · 1790032472 · focus · HN ↗
    Your comment is nonsense.
    Canadian pharmacies pay Canadian tariffs. Americans pay American tariffs. American importers are no longer exempted from paying American tariffs applied by the US government for goods de minimis goods they import from Canada.
    This post is about American importers no longer having exemption on tariffs they would have otherwise paid to the US government.
    At no point has Canadian pharmacies ever paid American tariffs. This is fiction you invented.
    CosmicShadow · 1790040183 · focus · HN ↗
    As a Canadian that sells products to the US I can say that we absolutely pay tariffs to the US government in place of our customers who should be paying it, depending on what shipping provider you use. USPS doesn't have the infrastructure or care to collect tariffs, so they won't, meaning the shipper has to just pay them up front and either jack the shipping cost by an arm-and-a-leg or just eat the cost. Canada Post even requires you as the shipper to pay them. If I ship UPS I can have the buyer pay upon delivery. It's 100% bullshit. I'm luckily under CUSMA, but the first month of tariffs when no one knew what was going on I paid out the ass on shipping and never got any refunds for it like Americans supposedly did, I just got fucked. In Canada and most other places it's normal to pay tariffs and duties when you order anything international (upon delivery) and all carriers know how to collect at delivery (or collect ahead of time online), but the US does not and it's alien to them (as seen by many customers screaming bloody murder over a $4 duty fee that anyone else in the world would kill to only have to pay).
    reddozen · 1790158783 · focus · HN ↗
    > I can say that we absolutely pay tariffs to the US government in place of our customers who should be paying it
    To be ultra pedantic, you're paying American import tariffs to the American shipping carrier or American broker not CBP itself.
    > refunds for it like Americans supposedly did
    No one's getting those refunds, if they do get a portion back and not at the rate at which they increased prices on American consumers.
    But more to your point, you can certainly pay American import tariffs on behalf of Americans, but your response is to raise prices on American consumers commensurate to the tariffs you're paying. Your margins are necessarily lower to sell to Americans, so you must raise prices for American consumers.
    If your margins were high enough that you can absorb American import tariffs, then you're lucky the market hadn't provided a relevant market substitute.

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