SAEDNEWS: At least 25 countries have decided to suspend package deliveries to the United States, as concern grows over the impact of President Donald Trump’s looming tariffs, a UN body said on Tuesday.
The Trump administration said late last month that it would abolish a tax exemption on small packages entering the US from August 29.
The move has sparked a flurry of announcements from postal services, including in France, Britain, Germany, Italy, India, Australia and Japan, that most US-bound packages would no longer be accepted.
The United Nations’ Universal Postal Union (UPU) said it had already been advised by 25 member countries that their postal operators “have suspended their outbound postal services to the US, citing uncertainties specifically related to transit services”.
It said the suspensions would remain in place until there was more clarity on how US authorities planned to implement the announced measures.
The UPU did not provide a list of postal services it had heard from.
The organisation, which was established in 1874 and counts 192 member states, warned that the new US measures would “entail considerable operational changes for postal operators around the world”.
From Friday, the UPU said the measures would require postal carriers delivering packages to the US “to collect customs duties from senders in advance”, on behalf of the US Customs and Border Protection agency.
India’s communications ministry said at the weekend that Trump’s executive order issued last month required transport carriers or other “qualified parties” approved by US authorities to collect and remit the tariff duties.
But “several critical processes relating to the designation of ‘qualified parties’ and mechanisms for duty collection and remittance remain undefined,” it said in a statement.
Under the new US measures, individual customers will still be able to send documents and items worth up to $100 as presents to the country without being taxed.
But anything above that value is expected to be hit with the same tariff rates applied to other imports from the sending country.
That means 15 per cent for countries in the European Union and 50pc for India.
And Germany’s postal service DHL warned last week that even exempted items would be subject to extra checks to prevent the service from being used for commercial goods.
