U.S. Small Biz Can't Ship to the EU Anymore

thehappypm

This is not a tariff issue, unbelievably, but one about reducing competition. I’m not sure I’m following the argument here, because tariffs are all about protectionism, which is a form of reducing external competition

jleyank

Fwiw, non us businesses have the same problem trying to ship to the us. It’s how governments want to roll now and how they generate counter actions.

gammalost

I get that it is a shame for you personally. Despite this I think high processing fees are good. First of all, it addresses the issue of people in the EU importing things we really do not need. Secondly, if it is something you really want then it can be imported at a noticible (but managable) premium. If the set of die are special, then paying 3 (or even 10) euro extra would, in my opinion, be fine

veeti

These fees were sucessfully lobbied in the media as a "Temu tax", and even reputable state broadcasters continue to refer to it as a "junk fee". However, it applies indiscriminately to everything from a decades old vintage book purchased from the UK, or spare parts to restore electronics ordered from Japan.

nemomarx

> This is a story of the end of de minimis shipping, which figuratively means “too small to trifle with.” Didn't the US also end de minimis exceptions recently? Can we really expect other countries and economic zones to keep them if we don't?

Berniek

The de minimis system was in theory to allow developing countries to be able to take advantage of their very low labor costs and also to save the receiving country the inspection costs. Mostly countries ("third world") have time limited agreements. Tariffs were about originally about protection of local manufacturing. But both these changed with the politics and greed. China has cheap labor costs but superb management of manufacturing. Politics are now simple. China has 3 times as many consumers as the US. China refuses to float its currency, so the major currencies can't effectively export their inflation to them like they do with other trading partners by manipulating their interest rates. The US dollar is the defacto world currency but that means countries must have reserves of US dollars. Those reserves are not piles of US bank notes they are stocks, bonds real estate in the US. These foreign reserves mean influence in the economy. The current round of tariff wars are all about long term debt and attempting to reduce the long term bond rate. But countries wont wear that because their reserves are partly in bonds. So retaliation in the form of "custom fees" occur. More than likely, the EU fees and charges are aimed at China. Already China leads the world in production in many important areas (nuclear reactors, batteries, electric vehicles, solar panels). Countries can see China becoming (if not already) the worlds biggest economy with the political power that comes with it. Sadly, its the small manufactures & businesses that suffer the most, but thats democracy and capitalist system in action

scotty79

Don't increases in shippng costs just follow weakening dollar?

torlok

The EU closed a tax loophole, and I'm happy to support small local businesses over people shipping things from overseas. I'm sure there are edge cases, but overall I don't see an issue here.

readthenotes1

Less shipping should mean less CO2 right?

t0mpr1c3

I used to manufacture specialized consumer electronics in Shenzhen and sell them worldwide through Etsy. When Britain left the EU I stopped shipping to the UK rather than deal with VAT. I eventually stopped shipping outside the US altogether because shipping and administrative costs ate all the profit. When tariffs on Chinese goods went over 100% in 2024 I packed it in altogether. Bye bye side gig. The demand is still there. Maybe in 10 years I'll pick it up again.

perrohunter

European innovation

3stacks

Small datapoint for me as a non-business entity going the opposite direction. I sell vinyls on Discogs and the last time someone purchased a vinyl from the US I was told I am classed as a business so I had to sign up with some private business which was a customs clearing company. They charged a flat fee and then a daily $1 charge for the entire time the parcel was in flight. I also had to do extremely strict business identity verification, which I obviously couldn't do as an individual. It's such a mess of a situation.

ChrisArchitect

Related: Suspension of the de minimis administrative exemption for imports $800 or less https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793322

gucci-on-fleek

I volunteer with a small US-based non-profit publisher [0], and this all matches my experience. We publish black-and-white technical journals that are worth almost nothing, and our European subscribers have occasionally been charged 20€ per copy by their customs authorities [1]. We're now prepaying the duties, which seems to have solved that problem, but a few months ago our printer informed us that we will now have to pay this additional €3 fee per copy, plus some undisclosed additional markup charged by the shipping intermediary. But at least they'll handle everything for us without any paperwork, so this is just expensive rather than a bureaucratic nightmare. But unfortunately this fee seems unavoidable for us—we only mail ~300 copies to Europe per issue, so having multiple printing locations is infeasible; I've checked with a few other printers and they all quoted me double what our current printer charges, so it would be way too expensive to print everything in Europe; and timeliness is important for a periodical, so people can't just order in bulk. So it seems like we'll probably just have to raise our subscription rates again to cover these fees. [0]: https://tug.org/TUGboat/contents.html [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246014