As is well known, starting from August 29th, the United States has abolished the duty-free quota for all imported parcels from various countries. That is to say, the $800 duty-free allowance is no longer available. All parcels imported into the United States must go through formal customs declaration or informal customs declaration. The logic of overseas direct mail parcels has undergone a fundamental transformation, which has a huge impact on cross-border e-commerce, especially B2C import parcels from the United States. It can be said that the advantages of the overseas direct mail model for cross-border e-commerce are gone, and many small and medium-sized enterprises are destined to be eliminated due to policy adjustments.
The core logic is that the US government does not want cross-border e-commerce parcels to be imported into the US through postal channels or commercial express channels using tax-free policies. Therefore, in the future, if we want to develop cross-border e-commerce business to the United States on a large scale, we need to adopt the B2B2C model, which is the current model of Apple's product imports to the United States. It must be B2B customs clearance combined with B2C logistics. This also creates new opportunities for brand owners and factories. For future cross-border e-commerce imports to the United States, the first step must be to check the customs code of the goods. Understand the tariffs and regulatory conditions for importing to the United States, then sell, and finally ship. Only in this way can we fundamentally meet the requirements of the US customs and achieve perfect compliance. In the future, the competition will be about the supply chain capabilities from factories to consumers and the adaptability to the consumer supply chain.
We believe that in the future, sea transportation will become the main mode of transportation in cross-border supply chains. After all, sea transportation is much cheaper than air transportation. Companies that have high value-added products like Apple's products are still in the minority. The domestic distribution warehouse model in the United States will explode, and the volume of domestic parcels will continue to increase. New parcel delivery companies will definitely emerge, with completely different employment and business models from UPS, FedEx, and USPS. These enterprises may become the main channels for parcel delivery in the United States in the future (depending on the regulatory policies of the US government).
In addition, let's talk about the postal channel. Currently, according to the policy of the US customs, the US Postal Service has effectively withdrawn from the Universal Postal Union, and traditional postal customs clearance has vanished. According to the current supervision and declaration requirements of the US customs for imported mail, the postal service is basically equivalent to the commercial express customs clearance model, which requires airlines or shipping companies to purchase US bonds and pay taxes on their behalf. Although several third-party companies have been authorized to assist overseas postal services in collecting tariffs on their behalf, we believe that the competitiveness of the postal channel in cross-border e-commerce will be significantly weakened. Compared with commercial channels, it is not competitive in terms of both cost and timeliness.
We also believe that the postal channel should become the main channel for non-trade channels and be used for personal items, such as person-to-person gifts. Personal used luggage has a special customs clearance advantage. That is to say, the postal service has returned to 30 years ago, providing a channel for people all over the world to communicate. However, at present, we have not yet received the declaration and supervision model of personal items in the postal channel from the US customs. The customs only said that the duty-free allowance of 100 US dollars for gifts is still retained.
Lucas Zheng is the founder of SameZip and senior consultant of Piggyexpress, and loves the US Postal Service and logistics industry. He has spent 16 years researching and studying the US Postal Service, US logistics, and US package delivery. He is familiar with all e-commerce delivery channels in the United States, China to the United States, the United States to China, and domestic China.
