The Trump administration on Friday officially eliminated a loophole that had allowed American shoppers to buy cheap goods from China without paying tariffs. The move will help U.S. manufacturers that have struggled to compete with a wave of low-cost Chinese products, but it has already resulted in higher prices for Americans who shop online.
The loophole, called the de minimis rule, allowed products up to $800 to avoid tariffs and other red tape as long as they were shipped directly to U.S. consumers or small businesses. It resulted in a surge of individually addressed packages to the United States, many shipped by air and ordered from rapidly growing e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu.
A growing number of companies used the loophole in recent years to get their products into the United States without facing tariffs. After President Trump imposed duties on Chinese goods during his first term, companies started using the exemption to bypass those tariffs and continue to sell their products more cheaply to the United States. Use of the loophole ramped up in Mr. Trump’s second term as he hit Chinese goods with a minimum 145 percent tariff.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection processed a billion such packages in 2023, the average value of which was $54.
In a cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Trump referred to the loophole as “a scam.”
“It’s a big scam going on against our country, against really small businesses,” he said. “And we’ve ended, we put an end to it.”
