At the end of August new rules came into force regarding importing goods to the USA.
These changes revolve around the end of the “De Minimis” rule that allowed goods under the value of $800 to enter the US effectively unchecked and without tariffs or extra charges, but more importantly for us without additional information being required on the products supplied.
It’s become increasingly difficult dealing with US customs for us over the last couple of years, and we have been constantly battling requests for information that we simply cannot supply. This has resulted in a lot of time and money being spent both trying to provide information, and also changing our systems in an attempt to comply.
Frustratingly when these changes have been implemented then another change comes that means the initial changes weren’t necessary or that we have to jump through even more hoops to comply.
We sell a lot of old stock parts which, wiith the best will in the world we aren’t going to be able to supply information such as where the steel was smelted or what the composition of each tiny component used in manufacture is.
We’re not going to be able to confirm that each product on an order does or doesn’t contain whatever it is that US customs have a “bee in their bonnet” about today, and we’re not going to be able to provide precise details of the manufacture or parts that were made 30yrs ago and nobody even knew still existed until they were found in a dusty warehouse in South America somewhere. And frankly we don’t see what it matters.
Before the end of the “De Minimis” ruling we could avoid having to provide that information by keeping order values under the limit. That’s the main reason for the suspension.
Sadly for a small business for who realistically the US market is relatively small, it’s become a big strain on our resources trying to keep up with every change, so when we learned that after the end of August the end of the above rule would mean that any goods we ship would potentially be refused entry and returned (at our cost) unless customs clearance was processed and paid in advance, we decided that actually we’re not playing this game any more.
We took the decision to suspend shipping until such a time where trade with the US is a little more balanced and we’re not seeing frequent moving of the goalposts on what appear to be a whim.
There are other factors involved, such as insurance costs but for the time being at least and until things settle down a bit we’ve turned off shipping to the US.
Canada is still good, so if you have Canadian friends, maybe thats an option.