India, Australia, many European nations suspend US postal deliveries

A US presidential order will end the de minimis regulation, which allowed individual packages worth less than $800 to enter the United States duty-free, beginning August 29. The regulation had already been eliminated for China and Hong Kong.

Letters are spared under the new rules, so are gifts worth less than $100 that are sent by an individual and not from a company. But packages from businesses will be significantly hit.

Removing the exemption raises costs for imported goods. But the reasons cited by postal companies and courier services are ambiguous policies and the need to establish brand-new logistics systems.

PostEurop, the association which represents European postal operators, and its members are closely following the developments around the US Executive Order.

“Critical issues and processes, such as customs duties collection, the data to be collected, and the interaction with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are not yet clearly defined. Select technical details were only released on 15 August, leaving an extremely short timeframe to prepare,” PostEurop said in a statement.

“At this time, if critical issues and processes are not defined and, thus, compliant solutions cannot be found before the regulations take effect on 29 August 2025, PostEurop members, in alignment with the competent national authorities, may be constrained to temporarily restrict or suspend the shipping of goods via the postal networks to the USA,” the statement added,

The French postal service La Poste is also suspending shipments of goods to the United States, saying European postal services were given ‘an extremely limited timeframe’ to prepare for the new rules, and that the policies require ‘further clarification’.

Spain's Correos postal service has taken the same decision, saying the new policies and their short timeframe for implementation are having a ‘significant impact’ on international postal logistics.

The Royal Mail, meanwhile, predicted only a brief disruption of 1-2 days as it establishes new services that will calculate and invoice companies for the tariffs.

The Indian department of posts has decided to temporarily suspend booking of all types of postal articles destined for the United States with effect from August 25, the country’s ministry of communications said in a release. These exclude letters/documents and gift items up to $100 in value.

Australia Post also announced it will temporarily partially suspend postal sending to the United States and Puerto Rico from today until further notice. It is working with Zonos, an authorised US CBP third-party provider, to offer a solution that will, once launched, allow services to resume for Business Contract and My Post Business customers, it said in a release.

Earlier, Norwegian postal group Posten Bring, Swedish-Danish group PostNord and Belgian group bpost had announced they would pause parcel shipments to the United States. The details surrounding this have not yet been clarified by the US customs authorities, and no system solutions have been developed that postal companies can use, Posten Bring had said.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (DS)