I really hope this doesn’t devolve into political poop-flinging. No one wants to hear it.
But I have been reading some reports of delays due to the removal of the previous exemptions on small shipments from China (to the U.S.).
I need some more (probably Aqara) temp/hum sensors, but I have not ordered anything from AliExpress since Trump took office and started making some changes.
I searched the forums but (to my surprise) did not find any discussion of recent shipping experiences nor the impact on our hobby (there are some on r/homeassistant however, which was probably where I first heard about it).
Which is where I would like to keep the discussion, please!
I’m in the eastern US and received an order from Aliexpress last week, the shipping time was within the 10-15 days range I have experienced with most other orders… but who knows if that will hold.
I get a couple of AliExpress a month so far this year. Average about 2 weeks.
My Bambu took about a Month, but I think there was a supply problem there as well.
(Flyover country)
I guess it depends how easy the US administration makes it for Aliexpress to implement, or even if they have to.
e.g. Australia has a flat rate tax of 10% on most goods and services. Services includes shipping.
There used to be an exemption on overseas purchases of less than $500 (inc. shipping). This exemption was removed and it is the vendor’s responsibility to collect the taxes. So companies like Aliexpress and Ebay now have these systems set up already.
If the taxes/tariffs are collected on entering the US then that is another story and will be probably be more difficult to implement as they will require new systems and personnel in the US.
Aliexpress is pretty flexible in this way. When similar happened in EU (no-tax&customs under 20€ was cancelled) aliexpress quickly solved it by creating big logistic center in Hungary (and in Netherlands also, i think) so all shipments to EU now go to that center where they do all imports, pay taxes, customs etc… after that they send items to destination country via local EU post or shipping company (GLS, DPD…) so we still receive our good directly without additional payment.
So, i guess something similar could happen for US, too.
Might be no bad thing. We’ve all become far too accustomed to ordering cheap stuff from the other side of the world at the click of a button. The bubble was bound to burst some time.
Well I ordered about $15 of stuff and it hit US Customs on the 10th, still there. In the past customs was in and out in a day so it seems something has changed.
I did another on Feb 19th and it was delivered Feb 26th so then it seems business was normal.
So around the time I made OP, it seemed like nothing had changed. I even ordered some stuff and it got here in the usual times and with the usual prices.
However more recently I see things listed on AliExpress with outrageous “additional fees” if not already reflected in the base price itself. We are talking like double the price on many items I have looked at.
So I guess that whatever changes were mentioned have finally gone into effect.
Your country’s longstanding de minimis exemption (USD$800) has been eliminated. In the past, if the value of the imported item was less than the de minimis threshold, it wasn’t processed by customs agents.
This allowed for the development of a lucrative market for offshore retailers. Instead of shipping umpteen thousands of dollars of merchandise to US warehouses for distribution, and incurring various import fees, they could ship directly to individuals without incurring import fees.
Eliminating de minimis is relatively easy compared to the task of now processing the hundreds of thousands of small shipments received daily. The existing infrastructure and manpower weren’t equipped for the task. It’s likely to gradually improve so, in the near future, US customers will eventually experience the difference (in cost/timeliness).
FWIW, Canada’s version of de minimis has always been significantly lower than in the US. If the shipment is under CAD$20 it usually doesn’t incur fees.
