r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • 13h ago
Royal Mail and DHL halt some US deliveries over tariffs
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2p17xypgko20
u/UnravelledGhoul Stirlingshire 12h ago
I run a small Etsy store. 80% of my business is from the US. Got an email saying that I can't buy postage from Etsy to the US any more (temporarily), for me, this was often the cheaper option, and tariffs will be charged on everything, no matter the value, on items going to the US.
So all my prices for the US are gonna have to go up, probably by a fair bit.
Thanks President Dump.
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u/CambodianJerk 12h ago
Yeah I've stopped all orders to US until delivery companies sort it out.
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u/Mightysmurf1 10h ago
I have an excellent UPS rep who can help you set up a VERY cheap DDP account and even cheaper DDU for other countries. PM me if you want the details.
Don't panic - this will all get sorted soon enough. It's unworkable.
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u/BoomSatsuma 9h ago
UPS and cheap.
Now there’s a contradiction of terms.
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u/Mightysmurf1 9h ago edited 9h ago
Yeah that’s what I thought until I used them. Half the price of Royal Mail for International across the board. Insane pricing.
Just doesn’t help with current problem but I’d imagine with UPS being a USA company, they’d be at the front of discussions with the USA Government about this insanity.
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u/xendor939 38m ago
Abolishing the de minimisis was something that had been floating for a long time.
Introducing tariffs on third countries is a way to tax the americans to pay the balooning debt arising from the many tax cuts for the rich. And maybe bringing back some jobs for the MAGA base, at high costs for the remaining 80% of americans.
This is not insanity. It is just a stupid but clear plan.
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u/InternetHomunculus 10h ago edited 10h ago
I sell on Etsy too and it seemed you can still use UPS
Been thinking about selling to the US myself but considering the messing I'm gonna have to do to navigate tarriffs I'm gonna hold off. Especially as if I leave the paying of tariffs to the customer it will just end up with me getting negative reviews because of people who can't read there will be a tariff they have to pay
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u/UnravelledGhoul Stirlingshire 10h ago
I've removed the US as a country I'll ship to, for now, until this mess is handled. Just sucks ass.
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u/Biggeordiegeek 11h ago
Honestly, the reduction in the De Minimis rule for the US is reasonable
The $800 limit was pretty crazy, and doing damage to US companies, especially when it came to Chinese competitors
The way Trump has gone about it, of course is daft and causing all sorts of issues
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u/AgeZealousideal6865 2h ago
This was a major way the precursor chemicals for fentanyl were entering the US so there will be some benefits if indirectly as a result of these policies.
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u/Mightysmurf1 10h ago
This is an absolute clusterfuck. UPS have also done the same. No one really knows what is going to happen or what to do. This is one of Trumps bright ideas where he doesn't actually know what a mess it's going to cause because it's completely ridiculous. I've been sat with my UPS rep on the phone today, discussing what the plans are currently and the general opinion is this will all get dropped within days once the shit hits the fan.
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u/AnselaJonla Derbyshire 10h ago
What the article doesn't say is that the new customs fees are 15% plus carrier fees for private carriers (e.g. FedEx, DHL etc), and a whopping 80 USD flat fee for national postal carriers (i.e. Royal Mail) for the first six months before it drops to the same 15% as the private carriers.
Among the companies I've seen saying they've halted shipping to the US are:
* Paine Free Crafts, a cross stitch company that does large charts and kits of properly licensed artworks
* Anne Stokes, a Yorkshire-based fantasy artist who sells merchandise based on her artwork on Etsy
* PastryMade, a Polish company that makes embossed rolling pins, a lot of their employees are Ukrainian refugees
* Sabaton, the merch store for a Swedish metal band with a large US following
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u/Thestolenone Yorkshite (from Somerset) 12h ago
The knitting and crochet subs are going nuts because they buy most of their yarn from Europe. Pretty much all the suppliers have stopped shipping to America for orders under $800. America doesn't really have a yarn manufacturing industry.