President Donald Trump is sidestepping Congress to change trade policy — first with his global tariffs, and now with a different move that could push prices higher and slow hundreds of millions of small shipments on their way into the United States.
Trump plans to end a decade-old exemption from customs duties for shipments valued under $800, which has allowed Americans to easily purchase cheap items from other countries and receive them in a few days, or even faster.
Many members of Congress actually agree with the change, in theory.
“I’ve supported tightening the rules for low-value packages from China and other countries that game import regulations,” Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told NOTUS in a statement.
But Trump’s decision to end the “de minimis” exception for all packages at the end of this month is raising questions among lawmakers and forcing customs officials, importers and shipping companies to sort out the details much sooner than they’d expected. Some are also troubled by the fact that he is making the policy change as an emergency order rather than through Congress, which included a slower phase-out of the exception in its recent Republican policy bill.
“I’m concerned Trump’s move to unilaterally suspend de minimis with just 30 days’ notice will lead to big problems for consumers, small businesses and customs officials who don’t have time to plan for a new set of rules,” Wyden said.
Congress raised the threshold for exceptions from customs duties from $200 to $800 in 2015. That has made it easier for importers, small companies and American consumers to bring in low-value packages from abroad, facing less scrutiny and fees from Customs and Border Protection than larger shipments valued above the threshold. In fiscal year 2024, customs officials processed more than 1.36 billion de minimis shipments, according to CBP data.
Lawmakers created the exemption to help e-commerce platforms, shipping companies and small businesses. But they have debated ending the exemption in recent years, raising alarms about how foreign fast fashion companies have relied on it, sometimes to send in products potentially implicated in forced labor. They’ve also said it is an avenue for illicit substances to enter the country.
“Eliminating this provision on cheap imports will help crack down on overseas forced labor and make smuggling of illegal substances more difficult,” Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, told NOTUS in a statement.
This year’s Republican megabill rolls back de minimis for international shipments, but not until July 2027.
The two-year on-ramp would have given companies time to adjust in advance — and Republicans wouldn’t have had to answer for any related price hikes on the 2026 midterm campaign trail.
Trump’s order takes effect at the end of August instead. Moore said he doesn’t mind that Trump moved quicker than Congress.
“I appreciate President Trump’s fast-paced action to address the issue, and Congress’s efforts to make it permanent through the One Big, Beautiful Bill,” he said.
Democrats feel differently.
“Donald Trump is plainly violating the law by seizing trade powers which are expressly given to Congress under the Constitution without congressional authorization or even in direct opposition to congressional intent,” Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, another Ways and Means member, told NOTUS in a statement.
“I do believe that De Minimis needed adjustment,” Beyer added, “but that should be done in a careful, strategic way by an administration that is rational on trade.”
Trump’s emergency order may prompt legal challenges. In 2019, Wyden and Sen. Chuck Grassley, who was the top Republican on the Finance Committee at the time, wrote a letter arguing that only Congress has the power to change the de minimis threshold. (A spokesperson for Grassley did not respond Thursday when asked if he still holds that view.)
Some Republicans are worried about how it will affect consumers.
“It probably means the price of dolls will go up,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said when asked about Trump’s order.
Scott Lincicome, an economics and international trade expert with the libertarian Cato Institute, told NOTUS that “American consumers should be prepared for sticker shock.”
Lincicome said the de minimis provision isn’t just used by individual consumers buying cheap clothes on Amazon, but also by small companies like mechanics who may need to purchase a small part from another country to fix a vehicle.
“The big thing here is not simply tariff costs, it’s compliance costs,” he said. “Ending de minimis isn’t simply about adding tax. It’s about adding new customs procedures and formalities.”
The change also adds more administrative work for CBP while officials are rolling out Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
But one former senior CBP official who spoke with NOTUS this week, granted anonymity to be frank, said they believe ending de minimis could ease the agency’s burden in the long run. Bigger companies that have been sending packages directly to consumers will likely begin bundling imports into larger shipments, which are screened differently.
“Instead of 5,000 individual shipments, you would have one large shipment that would come in with all of these 5,000 parcels and packages and stuff in them,” the former official said. “CBP can adjust to that, because instead of having 5,000 X, they’ve actually divided the volume.”
“It’ll change the dynamic a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to be a major disruption,” this former official said.
The former CBP official said they were still concerned that Congress is deferring to Trump.
“We have a system of government that has a Congress, and congressional representatives are supposed to enact laws,” the former official said. “The way things have been going this year, it kind of invalidates our legislative branch of the government.”