the temporary suspension is the result of recent trade developments and changes in US customs procedures, which has to do with the omission of the so-called "de minimis clause"

at the moment, US customs does not seem to have the required systems in place to properly process international packages sent via postal services, which is why postal services, including PostNL have temporarily suspended shipping until this is resolved

the "de minimis" clause is a customs rule that allows low-value shipments to enter a country without paying import duties or taxes.

• in the United States, this threshold is $800.
• this means that normally, packages valued below $800 can be imported without extra charges or complicated customs procedures.

because of recent trade developments, this clause is currently not being applied to postal shipments from the EU.

without it, all packages - no matter how small in value - require customs processing. therefor, US customs needs to have the proper systems in place to handle this for international postal shipments

• suspended: all parcels and packages containing goods, including letterbox parcels
• not affected: regular mail (letters, documents, ...)

as we understand it, the outcome of recent US–EU trade talks is that imports of goods from the EU into the US are now subject to a 15% tariff.

If the omission of the "de minimis" clause is upheld, this would mean that all orders, regardless of value, fall under this regime.

based on our experience with imported products, this tariff is usually applied to the sum of the declared value of the goods and the shipping cost. in some countries, an additional fixed handling fee may also be charged by customs or the courier

there are talks that european postal services would continue to ship letters and parcels sent by individuals containing gifts worth less than €100, but warned that these would be subject to extra checks to prevent the service being used for commercial goods. but these are just talks. in such case, whether this would be applicable during the suspension period, or after the suspension period, we simply don't know

we can only operate on the basis of what is certain and not on the basis of what could be, even though this was to be expected. unlike other postal services, PostNL only announced this yesterday, so until yesterday we have continued in terms of business as usual. from what he have understood in conversations with customer service, our best guess is that they must have believed a solution was in reach and did not want to create unnecessary fuzz, up to the moment where it was unavoidable

postal services have been taken by surprise, citing widespread uncertainty about how the new tariffs would work, as well as extremely limited timeframes given to prepare due to late announcement

apparently key questions remain unresolved such as who will pay the tariffs, what additional data is required, how information is to be transmitted, etc, etc ...

we have been told that postal services, including PostNL, and US customs are actively working on a solution. the suspension has been announced as temporary, but no official end date has been given.

as we understand it, this affects more than a billion packages per year, so we trust that this issue will be resolved. stranger things may have happened, but it is hardly thinkable if even relatives could no longer send each other christmas gifts

in the meantime, all we can do for the moment is just focusing on the things that are within our control: trying to handle each situation individually to the best of our abilities, as explained in the following sections

we will continue to update this FAQ as soon as there is more news.