De Minimis Rules Are Changing: How It Affects E-Commerce Brands In 2026

De minimis rules are (or were) the thresholds that allow low-value imported goods to enter a country without paying customs duties. For years, they were one of the quiet mechanisms that made cross-border e-commerce work: ship a parcel under the threshold, skip the delays and duties, keep things moving.

If you’ve been selling internationally, there’s a good chance you’ve taken advantage of de minimis at some stage. Some business empires were even built around it, which has spoiled the party for everyone.

The most prominent examples are Shein and Temu, two Chinese fast-fashion and general merchandise platforms that exploited the de minimis loophole beyond what anyone ever imagined. By shipping every order as a low-value parcel directly from Chinese warehouses, they bypassed import duties entirely.

As a result, most major markets have responded by taking de minimis off the table. Not just for Chinese companies gaming the system. For all of us. The US eliminated its $800 threshold in August 2025, the EU will remove its €150 exemption from July 2026, and the UK has confirmed its £135 threshold will be gone by March 2029.

In this piece, we cover what’s changed in each major market, what it means for your costs, and what businesses are actually doing to adapt.

How are de minimis rule changes affecting e-commerce businesses? TL;DR:

• De minimis rules set a value threshold below which imported goods enter a country duty-free. They became the backbone of cross-border direct-to-consumer e-commerce.
• The US eliminated its $800 threshold for all countries on August 29, 2025. Every import now pays duties, regardless of value.
• The EU is removing its €150 threshold from July 1, 2026, replacing it with a €3 interim flat-rate duty per item category on small parcels.
• The UK has confirmed its £135 threshold will be removed by March 2029, following a consultation period.
• If you ship every order internationally, and de minimis was part of your cost structure, you’ll need to rethink your strategy.
• One approach is to establish inventory in each key market, importing in bulk. That way, you pay duties once, at wholesale prices, and fulfil orders locally. This is known as B2B2C. You can skip straight to that section if you want to learn more.

Read about Wayfindr’s Trade Strategy Consultancy Services

What Are De Minimis Exemptions, and Why Did They Matter So Much to E-Commerce?

A de minimis rule is simply a threshold below which imported goods enter a country without paying customs duties. The idea dates back to the 1930s and was designed to avoid the administrative cost of collecting tiny amounts of duty on low-value goods, where the paperwork would cost more to process than the duty was worth.

That was fine when it applied to one or two low-value commercial shipments. What the good folks of the 1930s didn’t expect was e-commerce, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. With no duties and minimal customs scrutiny, de minimis was like a gift that kept on giving for companies selling internationally, and you can be sure they took advantage of it.

According to US Customs and Border Protection, 2025, de minimis packages entering the US grew from 134 million in 2015 to 1.36 billion in FY2024. At times, they were processing over 4 million parcels a day!

In the EU, according to the European Commission, 4.6 billion low-value parcels arrived in 2024 alone. The volume had been doubling every year since 2022. At that scale, governments started paying very close attention.

How Did Shein and Temu Make De Minimis a Political Issue?

Shein, a fast-fashion retailer, and Temu, a general merchandise marketplace owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, are separate companies and fierce competitors.

But they built their businesses on the same playbook: instead of warehousing stock in local markets and fulfilling from there, both shipped individual orders straight from Chinese warehouses.

Every order came in under the local duty-free threshold. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic noticed, and neither was happy about it.

What Was the Political Reaction in the US?

According to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party interim report, Shein and Temu together were likely responsible for more than 30% of all US de minimis imports at their peak, shipping around 600,000 packages a day to US customers.

The backlash came from several directions at once:

• Democrats focused on the near-impossibility of enforcing a law banning goods made with forced labour when that many parcels were moving through customs with almost no scrutiny.
• Republicans pointed to fentanyl and counterfeit goods using the same channel.
• Retailers across the political spectrum had been complaining for years that Chinese platforms were undercutting them on price by avoiding duties that everyone else had already absorbed.

We could spend hours debating which argument was more important, but the net result was the same. Bye-bye to de minimis.

Read more: B2B2C Fulfillment Strategy for E-Commerce

What Drove the Crackdown in Europe?

The forced labour arguments that drove some US lawmakers carried less political weight in Brussels, but European retailers had been making the competitive fairness case loudly for years, and product safety complaints added more fuel.

French authorities launched legal action against Shein over unsafe products on its platform. Then, when the US closed its loophole in 2025, European officials flagged an obvious problem: if cheap Chinese parcels could no longer enter the US duty-free, they’d simply divert to Europe instead.

The EU had already planned to act by 2028, but once the US changed its laws in late 2025, European countries also acted, bringing the date forward to 2026.

How Have De Minimis Rules Changed, and What’s Coming?

This is the section worth reading carefully, because the changes across the three major markets (US, EU and UK) are at different stages, and the details matter. The short version: the US has already moved, the EU is about to, and the UK is on its way, just taking the scenic route.

United States De Minimis Rules as of 2026

The US moved in two steps, partly because the first attempt was chaotic. China and Hong Kong lost de minimis eligibility on May 2, 2025.

Then, on July 30, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14324, eliminating the exemption for all remaining countries with effect from August 29, 2025.

Some confusion now exists over Trump’s use of IEEPA to underpin his executive order, but a separate Act of Congress (The One Big Beautiful Bill Act) permanently repeals de minimis by July 1, 2027, at the latest.

At the time of writing, the $800 exemption is gone, and there’s no serious political appetite to bring it back. Every shipment entering the US now faces duties, calculated based on where the goods came from and what they’re worth.

The exact mechanics have evolved since August 2025, and CBP’s e-commerce guidance is the place to go if you need the current details. The headline fact is the one that matters: nothing gets in free anymore.

Related Reading: Five Trends Upending E-Commerce Logistics in 2026

European Union De Minimis Rules In 2026

The EU has been moving in the same direction, just on a slightly later timeline. The original plan was to sort all of this out by 2028 as part of a broader customs reform. Then they watched what happened in the US and decided that 2028 felt a bit relaxed given the circumstances.

The European Council formally approved the removal of the €150 threshold on February 11, 2026. From July 1, 2026, a transitional flat-rate duty of €3 per item category will apply to all small parcels entering the EU from non-EU countries.

That interim system runs until around 2028, when the EU’s new Customs Data Hub comes online, and standard tariff rates take over.

Several EU member states didn’t wait for the July date. Italy introduced a €2 handling fee from January 1, 2026, and Romania followed with a 25 RON fee (roughly €5 per parcel) from the same date. France introduced its own €2 flat fee from March 1, 2026. If you’re already shipping into Europe, you may have noticed some of these already.

United Kingdom De Minimis Rules as of 2026

The UK is taking more time about it, but their thinking is the same as the US and the EU. Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed in the Autumn Budget on November 26, 2025, that the £135 threshold will be removed by March 2029 at the latest.

A public consultation ran through to March 6, 2026, covering how the new arrangements will be designed.

The longer timeline is due to concerns that UK customs could be overwhelmed if the change happens too quickly, which is a fair point.

However, British retailers haven’t been patient about it: the British Retail Consortium warned that the delay leaves the UK exposed as something of an e-commerce dumping ground in the interim, which is a colourful way of saying that cheap parcels from overseas will keep flowing in duty-free.

De Minimis Rules In 2026: Major Markets Comparison

What Does The Elimination of De Minimis Rules Actually Cost You?

Start with the obvious one: duties. Every market is different, and rates vary by product, country of origin, and how goods are classified.

But for common e-commerce categories like apparel, accessories, beauty and home goods, you’re typically looking at additional costs of anywhere from a few euros to 20-30% of the product value per unit, on every order, every time.

The US tariff database, EU customs tariff, and UK global tariff are the places to check your specific product codes for each market. At any real volume, your finance team is going to notice.

Then there’s the paperwork. Every shipment now needs accurate product codes, correct country of origin, and full descriptions. Before, low-value parcels moved through with minimal documentation. That’s no longer the case.

Get the details wrong, and you’re looking at delays, held shipments, and potential fines. It’s worth getting specific advice for your product categories rather than assuming one approach fits everything.

The bigger strategic question is how you get products to customers. If you’ve been shipping direct from the point of origin to your customers, that might now be a lot more expensive.

In addition, customs officials are now scrutinizing every parcel more closely. So, your shipping times could change significantly. Longer delivery times can lead to unhappy customers.

What Should You Do Now De Minimis Rules Have Ended?

First, do the maths. Work out which products are affected, in which markets, and by how much. Duty rates vary by product category and country of origin, so a blanket assumption will get you into trouble. Do the actual calculation before panicking, or assuming it’ll all be fine.

The smarter way to structure imports: B2B2C

If you ship a parcel directly from your factory to a customer in the US, duties are calculated on the retail price of that item. But if you ship a bulk consignment into the US as a wholesale import first, duties are calculated on the wholesale value instead. Then you fulfill to customers domestically from there.

That’s the B2B2C model, and the maths are straightforward. Say your product retails at $100 and you paid $50 for it wholesale. There’s a 30% tariff. Ship it directly to the customer: you pay $30 in duty. Import it in bulk at wholesale value and fulfill locally: you pay $15. Same product, same customer, half the duty cost.

Your goods land at a domestic facility, get their labels applied, and you ship to customers from inside the market. You not only reduce your costs, but your customers receive their orders on a much faster timeframe.

The B2B2C model doesn’t suit every business. You need enough volume to make regular bulk shipments worthwhile, and a meaningful gap between your wholesale and retail prices. But if you’re shipping at scale into a tariff-heavy market, it’s worth running the numbers.

What else needs attention?

Get your customs data right. Every market now requires accurate product codes, complete origin information, and proper descriptions on every shipment. Sloppy data gets flagged, which means delays and potential fines. If you’re working with a logistics partner, make sure they can handle compliance, not just freight.

And don’t sleep on the UK timeline. March 2029 might feel like a long way away, but it really isn’t. US experience shows what happens when businesses get caught off guard: rushed warehouse setups, temporary price hikes, unhappy customers. The UK’s longer timeline is only useful if you actually use it.

Final Thoughts

De minimis rules were a useful loophole, but all good things must come to an end. In reality, they were designed for a different era of trade, and e-commerce scaled it far beyond anything its architects imagined. Governments noticed. Then they acted, and for once, they acted together.

The US has already moved. The EU follows in July 2026. The UK has confirmed 2029. Whatever you think of the policy rationale, the direction is settled.

The businesses that come through this well won’t be the ones who waited to see what happened. They’ll be the ones who did the maths early, restructured where it made sense, and treated customs compliance as a core part of their operation rather than someone else’s problem. The tools exist: B2B2C models, regional inventory, smarter import structures. None of them are complicated once you understand them.

Wayfindr is the tech-enabled 4PL logistics partner helping global brands scale effortlessly. If you’re working through what this means for your supply chain, talk to the team about building a setup that works in the new environment.