The administration of US President Joe Biden is taking steps to address an issue it says harms American manufacturers and consumers. On Friday, it announced a crackdown on online shopping platforms in China that exploit a trade exemption to flood the market with cheap goods.
Low-value e-commerce products are becoming increasingly popular in the US. Officials say the number of shipments claiming a special exemption known as “de minimis” jumped from about 140 million per year to more than one billion per year over the past decade.
Under the exemption, packages with a value of less than 800 dollars are permitted to enter the US free of duty and with less information about their contents.
Some lawmakers have called it a “loophole” that allows cheap imports to evade tariffs and lets unsafe products, such as narcotics, avoid scrutiny.
The new measures will require foreign sellers to disclose additional information about their shipments, and packages that are subject to a tariff classification known as Section 301 will no longer be eligible for the “de minimis” exemption. That accounts for about 70 percent of all textile and apparel imports from China.