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

Posted by alsetmusic 1 day ago

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Comments

Comment by t0mpr1c3 1 day ago

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.

Comment by veeti 1 day ago

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.

Comment by graemep 1 day ago

Its a barrier to competition (what people here like to call a moat) that favours big business and mainstream products over small business and niche products.

Comment by anewhnaccount2 21 hours ago

Exactly. I live in Finland bought an educational English grammar for kids book for my son 2nd hand from a private seller for 4 euros with 4 euros shipping from the UK. The final cost after all fees was was around 25 euros. It's not just for junk it's for everything. It's an Amazon subsidy (should have used amazon.de).

Comment by account42 12 hours ago

eBay? For some reason the customs fee they quote for shipments from the UK is ridiculously high - often over 10€ for a similarly priced item and not just the 3€ line item minimum plus change. It's ridiculous when UK->Germany shipments are often more than twice the price of US->Germany shipments.

Comment by gucci-on-fleek 22 hours ago

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

Comment by jleyank 1 day ago

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.

Comment by tetromino_ 1 day ago

The US idiocy was to whiplash de minimis regulations. The US gov't suddenly raised the de minimis threshold to $800; with the easily foreseeable effect that the country got flooded with crap from Temu; and then reacted by eliminating de minimis completely.

If they'd just kept the threshold at $200, all the chaos could have been avoided...

Comment by account42 12 hours ago

The EU also got rid of customs minimums and (at least in germany) has been letting delivery companies charge highway robbery fees to pay the couple of euros and cents for you at the border. The $3 per linie item that is on top of that mess.

Comment by t0mpr1c3 1 day ago

To my mind, the increase from $200 to $800 was more of a pragmatic policy tweak than a change of course. It was a recognition that US customs had limited capacity to check the value of small packages.

Comment by thehappypm 1 day ago

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

Comment by Arodex 1 day ago

It is not a tariff issue because there are no tariffs.

The author says so, if you take the time to read the actual article:

>I say this isn’t a tariff issue, and it’s not—these are existing customs charges that were waived for these low-cost shipments.

It is US companies having to pay VAT just like EU companies (the author seems surprised EU member states have varying VAT rates, but it is the same across the US), and private shipment companies deciding to push administrative costs to the customers. And inflation and energy costs soaring, due to a certain (US) administration going all-in on AI and foreign wars (which also affect intra-EU shipping).

But guess what: it costs less to ship something between two neighbouring European countries than across the Atlantic ocean. That's still not a tariff.

Comment by gucci-on-fleek 21 hours ago

> It is US companies having to pay VAT just like EU companies

I volunteer with a small US-based non-profit, and we only mail really inexpensive items ($4.50 each). We've been prepaying the VAT for a few years now [0], but our printer still informed us that we need to pay this new €3 fee, on top of the VAT and shipping fees that we're already paying [1].

We have no problem at all with paying taxes (even 30% of $4.50 is still really cheap), but a fixed €3 fee per item is brutal on an item that we're selling for less than €4. And the typical methods to reduce the impact of this fee like shipping in bulk don't really work for us, because timeliness is important for a periodical and most people only want a single copy of each issue.

> and private shipment companies deciding to push administrative costs to the customers

Our printer was rather evasive when we asked about this, but as far as I can tell, the €3 fee is imposed by the government, and then the shipping intermediaries will charge some undisclosed additional amount on top of this fee.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246014

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49796808

Comment by nemomarx 1 day ago

> 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?

Comment by tempestn 1 day ago

Yes, the US started this scrapping of de minimis exemptions.

Comment by readthenotes1 1 day ago

Well, if they're too small to trifle with, it would be irrational to trifle with them, wouldn't it?

Comment by torlok 1 day ago

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.

Comment by olivergregory 18 hours ago

Living in Belgium, my country has people producing stuff. But does it have a small business producing that one specific item I absolutely require for my project? It’s very likely it doesn’t. If I extend my search to the whole of EU, yes, probably one or two small businesses make those. Are there sufficient people in Belgium to buy this item if I wanted to create a small business to do so? No.

This tax is probably closing a loophole, but it’s badly designed and hurts small businesses more than anything because small businesses are the most likely to send to other countries to build their initial base. This tax reduces the discovery of what people do in ways no other tax did before.

Comment by account42 12 hours ago

No this even further consolidates international shipping to big e-commerce platforms while adding yet another tax to EU residents for items even where no local producer exists or can exist.

Comment by Ekaros 18 hours ago

I am not happy to pay to any retailer big or small multiple times the price for same item they ordered in bulk...

Comment by oliwarner 18 hours ago

Small businesses in the EU can't ship to the EU.

These new waste charges require administration that put a de facto floor on minimum monthly sales of €300-1500 per-country just to cover PPWR costs. It's insanity.

Comment by ginko 18 hours ago

The PPWD is a terrible law and should have never been adopted in that form. FWIW the commission is rushing to fix it.[1] Their general guidance is also to ignore this for now but I can see small business being squeamish.

[1] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...

Comment by 3stacks 1 day ago

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.

Comment by account42 12 hours ago

As someone who buys a lot internationally (because fuck localized media), this has been really annoying. Already had packages that the seller either couldn't ship or which returned all the way around the world. All this ends sup doing is consoldating international commerce even further as eBay and Amazon happily handle this mess for the seller (for a fee and/or cut of the sale price of course).

> VAT: EU member states have varying VAT rates, which surprised me when I learned this a few years ago, particularly for books—some charge 0%, some 40%. For a long time, as a small seller, you could ship DDU (deliver duty unpaid) to an EU customer with the correct price and tariff code declarations, and the customs office or shipper would collect the necessary VAT. Customers didn’t love this, as they’d like to see the final price at checkout, but most understand that the intricacy of VAT (or GST) would overwhelm a small business. Some shippers add agent fees, though, which bumped costs up—sometimes around US$5, sometimes much higher.

It used to be that those packages ended up at a customs depot but I guess it wasn't cost effective for them so they decided to let the shipping companies handle it. Of course they use it as an excuse to extort exhorbitant feeds for a "service" that you never agreed to in the first place and which would be straight up illegal for any other money lender.

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

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

Comment by Pragmata 1 day ago

>First of all, it addresses the issue of people in the EU importing things we really do not need.

What right do you have to tell me what i do or do not need?

What an absolutely evil stance to have.

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

I want to reduce the amount of trash being shipped straight from China to our landfills. And yes, that will come at the expense of some things. Is that evil? In my opinion it is a necessary solution to a problem

Comment by bromuro 1 day ago

I think you are missing the big picture. The ones importing “trash” (as you call it) in relevant quantities are bigger businesses and companies.

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

Sure, you are in part correct. Fast fashion, cheap electronic that breaks in a few years, and are also problems.

But there can be more problems than one. I'm discussing the one that the article mentioned.

Comment by account42 12 hours ago

Ok, so yet another misguided eco-terrorism motivation that does nothing except reduce our quality of life.

Comment by qubex 1 day ago

No right at all, nor do I, and indeed nobody is asserting or exerting that right: market forces will adjust prices accordingly in order to ensure that customers will be able to make purchases at the market rate (through reshipping companies, for example).

Comment by all_factz 1 day ago

This sort of ad hom attack is a bad look. If OP’s stance is so evil, say why.

It’s ironic to see free trade maximalists, who are often associated with anti-woke, anti-DEI positions, be so “triggered” by protectionist stances. You’re not the first person I’ve seen react like this.

As always, an intelligent, measured rebuttal will go miles further than an emotional outburst. And I say this as someone who (mostly) agrees that tariffs are bad.

Comment by blargey 23 hours ago

Ad hominem is "you're evil therefore your statement is wrong", not "that statement is the mark of an evildoer". And they do "say why": "What right do you have to tell me what i do or do not need?"

Either way, it's no lower in quality of argument than the wild assertion that everyone affected is just "importing things we really do not need" (what does that even really argue or justify?)

Comment by all_factz 11 hours ago

They don’t explain why that is evil, it’s just asserted, and in a hysterical fashion at that.

Comment by nozzlegear 1 day ago

> It’s ironic to see free trade maximalists, who are often associated with anti-woke, anti-DEI positions

Goomba fallacy, these are not the same people

Comment by all_factz 11 hours ago

Plenty of overlap.

Comment by nozzlegear 10 hours ago

Not what I'm seeing in my woke, pro-DEI, pro-free-trade circles. But I suppose if you generalize enough, anything will overlap with anything else, much in the same way that humans overlap with mammals.

Comment by ragall 1 day ago

He has he right, as I do, as you do, the same right as any other citizen.

Comment by tygon 1 day ago

You can feel how you wish. Few dispute one should be free to express themselves in a way that does not impact others. You can do whatever you want in your own head. It is when your views butt against others that issues inevitably arise.

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

I do not get your point. Is it an issue that I have an opinion on policies that impact other people? Are you against the concept of causing issues?

I think we cause issues all the time. For example, by importing trash that we do not need. It is a part of living. But the we need to address these issues, like a tax on imports. This will inevitable lead to other issues, such as the small scale import of books not being economically viable. But the fact that it causes issues is, in my mind, not a good enough argument against it. Because all things that impact other people cause issues.

Comment by xnx 1 day ago

> it addresses the issue of people in the EU importing things we really do not need.

How do you determine what someone does not really need?

Comment by guywithahat 1 day ago

The determining factor seems to be if customers are willing to pay more for it. I can only imagine in time they’ll find rich people need many things, while the poor could have done without all along. Who knew

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

Well yeah that's classic wealth inequality for you. A fee for import can only fix part of the problem.

Are you arguing for a cap on the amount of stuff a private individual can import instead of a fee? I suppose it would be a bit more invasive, but it could work and be more equal.

Comment by iamnothere 1 day ago

“Democracy” — the same way they decide what you don’t need to say or think.

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

Well we (as private consumers) need things such as: food, clothes, entertainment, a place to live, energy.

Things we do not need: kickstarter passion projects, temu trash, a very cool custom built split keyboard that broke after a few days. I'm not against the idea of small scale importing, I bought the super cool split keyboard afterall. But the unnecesary pleasures of life are a sometimes thing and deserves to be treated as such

Comment by graemep 1 day ago

Why do you need entertsinment? Make your own. I think commercial entertainment us harmful to society as it competes with community involement for people's time. Passion projects are good for personal fulfilment and innovation.

Basic food and shelter are necessities. Luxuries are not. You can survive in a hut eating gruel. I known nudists who think we would be better off without clothes.

Comment by xnx 1 day ago

Who is to judge "needs" from "unnecessary pleasures"? EU bureaucrats?

Comment by gammalost 1 day ago

I think you're just splitting hairs. Are you denying the fact that most of the stuff private indivduals buy from outside the eu is not a necessity?

It is an issue and it needs to be addressed.

Comment by graemep 1 day ago

Most of the stuff private individuals buy from within the EU is nit a necessity Most of the stuff private individuals buy is not a nescessity.

Comment by pixl97 1 day ago

Ah, let's overthrow capitalism day.

Comment by graemep 16 hours ago

Are you commenting on me or someone further up the thread?

I am favouring consumer choice which broadly pro-capitalist.

I interpret gammalost as favouring more heavily regulated capitalism. For one thing, the EU is very much pro-capitalist. For another many undoubtedly pro-capitalist governments do tax necessities at lower rates so its an extension of something that happens. The argument is whether it is desirable to extend it

Comment by nozzlegear 1 day ago

> It is an issue and it needs to be addressed.

You haven't addressed how it's an issue outside of handwaving at China and landfills. Are European landfills particularly overflowing with items purchased from small businesses and made in China?

Comment by account42 11 hours ago

If you regret some past purchases you have made then do some introspection instead of everyone else pay a fee for your mistakes.

Comment by nozzlegear 1 day ago

Is this an appeal to degrowth?

Comment by ndkdkdkdmdkd 1 day ago

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Comment by keoneflick 1 day ago

> First of all, it addresses the issue of people in the EU importing things we really do not need.

I just don't understand this point at all.

So it's easier for big companies to import rather than individuals.

So niche products are more difficult and mass consumer products are easy to import.

Why would that mean that "things we don't need" are less likely to be imported. It doesn't follow at all.

Comment by vrganj 1 day ago

I think in general, the 3 euro thing is fine. However, it seems like there should be exceptions.

I like to do some electronics as a hobby and learning project. I was gonna try to build a thing to make my old timey doorbell intercom smart with an esp32, an audio codec and a circuit to safely read the signals.

Lots of cheap little parts I would usually get on Aliexpress. A lot of them around 50 cents or so. Now, each of them has a 3 euro fee added to it. The cost of this project would go from like 25 to like 75 euros. That seems super unacceptable to me and like it discourages experimenting with electronics, and with that a type of innovation Europe should try to encourage instead.

Comment by probably_wrong 1 day ago

It is my understanding that you pay per product category. If you get all your electronics in one sending then you pay only 3€ total and not per part.

Comment by account42 11 hours ago

Your understanding is wrong. You pay per item.

Comment by probably_wrong 11 hours ago

From this article [1] published by the European Commission:

> The 3 € fee is applied per declared item, where ‘item’ means each unit of a product that is declared on a separate line. Specifically, the Commission defines "item" as one or more goods in a consignment sharing the same tariff classification, description and, where applicable, origin.

Now, the type of declaration matters [2] - if you're filling an H1 (standard customs) then you pay per item but if you're filling an H6 (postal declaration) or an H7 (Courier or low-value consignment declaration) then you pay per category. So anyone saying that it's always one or the other is, at the very least, oversimplifying.

[1] https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/news/eu-appl...

[2] https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/europe/2026/07/eu-customs-h1...

Comment by vrganj 18 hours ago

So in theory, that would be fine as well. In reality though, the categories aren't coarse like "electronic component", they're more like "resistor, 10K, 1/4W, carbon film".

Comment by cr1895 13 hours ago

>the categories

In theory it should be based on the HS code, no?

Comment by spwa4 1 day ago

Then why does it not apply to large companies? (if you can maintain stock inside the EU, and due to shipping charges you need like 7 locations, you can avoid to pay most of these fees, so they do not apply to Apple for example)

Comment by iamheretoo 1 day ago

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Comment by ChrisArchitect 1 day ago

Related:

Suspension of the de minimis administrative exemption for imports $800 or less

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49793322

Comment by readthenotes1 1 day ago

Less shipping should mean less CO2 right?

Comment by t0mpr1c3 1 day ago

Buying local is not necessarily less polluting because of the economics of scale. Driving 5 miles to a farm stall to buy a kilo of fresh tomatoes can generate more pollution per unit than walking to a supermarket that shipped a refrigerated container of produce from a greenhouse in the Netherlands.

Comment by NullPrefix 10 hours ago

It's on the shipping agency to optimize the shipping methods to be affordable and non polutant

Comment by iamheretoo 1 day ago

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Comment by scotty79 1 day ago

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

Comment by t0mpr1c3 1 day ago

Yes, if you are shipping a tankerload of crude oil. For small packages, administrative and compliance costs can easily outweigh the cost of physically moving the goods.

Comment by scotty79 16 hours ago

> administrative and compliance costs

Aren't those also increasing with weakening dollar?

Comment by perrohunter 1 day ago

European innovation

Comment by Berniek 1 day ago

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

Comment by t0mpr1c3 1 day ago

Good luck trying to rationalize US tariff policy. Shit-flinging chaos monkey gonna fling shit.

Comment by tempestn 1 day ago

The current round of tariff wars are all about Donald Trump and his obsession with bilateral trade imbalances. Long-term bond rates would be better addressed through the balance of production and taxation in the domestic economy.

Edit: do those downvoting disagree that a focus on bilateral trade imbalances and tariffs is an idiosyncrasy of Trump, and that we would not be seeing similar trade wars with a different president? If so, please make your case. He has repeatedly stated that that is what he feels is important, and has shared explicit motivation for broad tariffs based on facile derivations from bilateral trade imbalances. So it's pretty difficult to see it instead as a reasoned response to long-term bond rates.

Comment by Berniek 1 day ago

The trouble with running a trade deficit is that you have to "borrow" to finance it, so you issue bonds. But once the bonds become due you need to issue more bonds to replace those that expired. BUT the new issue is the original bond + its interest rate. So the deficit you are financing with bonds is growing effectively at the interest rate of the bond. It gets to the point where the debt is self sustaining, regardless of what you do in the "real" economy. The only way to stop the spiral is devalue the currency (the market wont let the fed do that they just bid up the dollar - its has become a global currency) so the next way to do it is force interest rates down...but that causes inflation because people can borrow and waste more without the increase in productivity, that normal investment should produce. Someone has to pay for all this political stupidity and it will almost certainly be the poorest in society and the small businesses.

Comment by tempestn 23 hours ago

That's true in a sense of the overall trade deficit, but not in terms of specific trade deficits with individual countries, which seems to be Trump's focus.

Even looking at the overall case though, there is an alternate way of looking at it, which is that the trade imbalance must be equal to the imbalance between domestic savings and investment. There was a NY Fed article last year that was discussed on HN and covered this well: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/05/why-do... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44040407

So again, I think the domestic imbalance plays a larger part than this analysis gives credit. (And per my original comment, the government portion of national saving is made up of, basically, taxes minus government spending, so - while the effect is complicated because taxation also affects private spending and investment - increased taxation could be expected to reduce trade deficits.)

Basically I don't think there's an economic justification for tariffs as a solution to trade imbalances, overall or (especially) bilateral. (Bilateral trade imbalances really shouldn't be seen as a problem at all. As the saying goes, I have a trade deficit with my grocery store, but that's not a bad thing.) There are situations where they can make sense in order to strategically protect specific industries for security or long-term growth reasons, but that's a separate issue, and the key word there is strategically, something I'm not seeing a lot of.