Tariffs and US shipping update

Righty, so I'm at the coo's tail as always with updates on this and I'll be posting on social media too because I know this won't reach everyone that might need to know about it.

I know there's been a lot of posts about the US shipping and tariffs in the past few weeks and a lot of maybes and could be's with no clear way forward for a lot of businesses and I didn't want to be another one adding to it before I know for sure what was happening.

Last week I joined a webinar hosted by the brilliant Andrea Collins from Global Trade Department and it changed my mindset from one of despondency to hopeful optimism surrounding the whole new tariff shake up. The whole tariff thing put simply for anyone not in the loop... Right now, when shipping from the UK to the US, there aren't any fees for anything under $800 so us UK sellers could post off our items and they'd arrive at their destination no problem with no extra charges. This is now being scrapped and from the 29th of August the de minimis will end and goods under $800 will no longer be exempt. So everything that enters the US from the UK will be subject to 10% tariffs. This is calculated on what you paid for item plus the postage costs. A lot of the worry about it all was who was going to pay and when, and what would happen if it wasn't paid or refused. The US postal service have had this flung on them as well and know there's no way all systems can possibly be updated to implement everything in time so in the interim period of 6 months, a 'hedging all bets' charge of $80 was going to be added to all imports from the UK regardless of value of the item. Devastating for anyone selling lower cost items, knowing full well nobody is going to pay that for something they purchased for say $20. Now the good news. Royal Mail has worked hard to get their systems set up so the 10% will be paid in advance, negating the need for the whopping $80 charge at the other side. So on your $20 item plus $6 shipping for example, you'd pay $2.60 in tariff duties, total $28.60. Massive different from the initial $106 that we were all fearing! This brings me to the changes I'll be making to accomodate all this. I didn't think it was possible but whatever part of my neurodivergent brain decided it wasn't giving up on this, I've bloomin' well cracked it today! I don't need to bore you with the details of how, but after the 29th, any US buyers will see their checkout looking a little like this (for experimentation purposes, I pretended I live in Alabama. Also, edit as this has now changed and you can now read the good news in the more recent update!). I didn't think it was possible yesterday when looking into it but I'm so glad I persevered because that's one less barrier to think about.

Screenshot of My Cart order summary showing additional fees covering the 10% tariff on both items and shipping with text in bold over it UPDATE IN NEXT POST

I'm under no illusions that any of this will be hassle free when it does start. There's going to be a lot of confusion and hold ups while this new way of doing things finds its feet. Personally, I'm feeling frustrated and hella sad about it all. Like brexit wasn't enough of a kick in the pants, now there are more barriers to US shipping too. But it is what it is and I'm keeping up to date with it all as much as I can so I can let you all know what's going on. Take care and big love to you all! 💚