De Minimis Threshold (United States)
The US low-value shipment exemption that once allowed duty-free entry below 800 dollars and has since been suspended and repealed.
Aliases: de minimis, Section 321, 800 dollar threshold, 美国小额免税, 最低限额
The rule and its history
Section 321 of the Tariff Act, codified at 19 U.S.C. 1321, allowed shipments valued at or below a threshold to enter the United States free of duty and tax. The threshold was raised to 800 dollars per consignee per day in 2016, and for a period it underpinned the direct-to-consumer model for imports from China and elsewhere.
What changed
In 2025 the exemption was suspended for all countries through executive action, after an earlier step that had removed it for China and Hong Kong. Low-value shipments then became dutiable, and the simplified clearance routes that depended on the exemption lost their legal basis.
Separately, legislation enacted in 2025 provides for permanent repeal of the de minimis authority with effect from 1 July 2027. The practical result is that the exemption is not available in the interim and will not return in its 2016 form.
What replaced it
Entries now require a formal or informal customs entry with duty assessment, and postal shipments are subject to duty collection through the postal operator. Carriers and brokers have built processes around duty prepayment, and marketplaces increasingly display duty-inclusive prices.
Sellers should treat landed cost as duty-inclusive for essentially every US-bound parcel, including low-value single-unit orders.
Downstream effects
- Pricing: the duty is now part of the unit economics of low-ticket items, which compresses margin on products under 50 dollars
- Fulfilment: consolidation into bulk shipments and US warehousing becomes relatively cheaper
- Compliance: classification accuracy matters more, because each entry is assessed
- Exposure: restricted goods and forced-labour risks are now examined at entry rather than bypassed
Relationship to other mechanisms
The now largely obsolete Entry Type 86 was the clearance route built for Section 321 shipments. Section 301 tariffs apply on top of the standard duty for Chinese-origin goods, and UFLPA detention can apply regardless of value.
Do not confuse this with the EU's 150 euro VAT threshold handled through IOSS. The US change concerns duty and tax exemption; the EU mechanism concerns where VAT is declared.
Primary source: 19 U.S.C. 1321; executive actions of 2025; CBP guidance on low-value shipments.