The end of the minimis rate means less purchasing power for Americans

Until Friday, American consumers could order up to $ 800 in goods per foreigner without paying prices or taxes. Now, this landscape is evolving, adding to inflationary pressures that will cause daily purchasing power, especially for low and medium Americans Fortune.

“It is a different shock for the system at a different level from what we have seen with the prices on major industrial goods,” said Rob Haworth, director of the senior investment strategy at US Bank, said Fortune. “It starts another short -term challenge for consumers and for businesses and expenses as a whole.”

The minimis exemption ended in May for imports from China, where approximately three -quarters of goods below $ 800 come, with a significant part from the Shein and TEMU electronic commercial companies. The suspension of minimis for packages from all other countries implemented on Friday now means that the US dollar will not buy as much as before, with regard to buyers of purchase of products made abroad.

“Categories such as shoes and clothing will see some of the highest impacts, estimated at 15% to 25% of final prices for end consumers, since manufacturing origin is often China,” said Sean Henry, CEO of Stord, an electronic and execution company, said Sean Henry Fortune.

A senior Trump administration official said that the American customs and border protection agency had received more than $ 492 million in additional tasks on the shipments shipped from China and Hong Kong since the end of the exemption.

And the prices on goods that had previously fallen under Minmis could raise up to $ 10 billion a year, US sales advisor Peter Navarro said on Thursday. By putting this in perspective, the 2024 commercial deficit in goods was 1.2 billion of dollars.

“The net number (pricing income without minis) is not so significant in terms of the size of the deficit,” said the Stratege of Baird Investment Ross Mayfield Fortune. “The biggest difference will be the extent to which the government takes these wider and wider tariffs.”

In the past decade, the number of shipments in the United States of minimis has increased by more than 600%, from around 139 million in 2015 to almost 1.4 billion, according to customs and the protection of American border. However, the amount of income generated by these new prices depends on the provision of consumers to continue to buy cheap products abroad.

“Almost 40% of online buyers abandon their carts in the face of these additional price and function supplements at the cash register,” said Stor Henry CEO.

Lee Klaskow, main transport and logistics analyst at the Bloomberg Intelligence, said Fortune He expects expenses to these largely “discretionary” purchases to decrease.

“That the shirt you really want it to cost $ 5 – maybe you will think twice before getting it because it will be more expensive,” said Klaskow.

Before the pandemic, consumers had a “huge appetite for cheap things”, but Klaskow expects consumer behavior to return to change.

US Bank Haworth said it was more focused on how the government will implement the change, as it will require new systems, investments and infrastructure to collect small purchases.

He added that De Minmis was to rationalize the process of introducing small imports into the country because they are more complex to follow. The government previously said that this allowed illegal substances like fentanyl to cross the United States more easily. However, the system will have to recalibrate to adhere to the new rules.

“Originally, the reason why you had a minimis exemption is so that you did not spend much time on small transactions that have done nothing,” said Haworth. “It is therefore an attractive or difficult cost that will enter the trade system.”