This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on Trump's new
fees (custom charges, tariffs) that U.S. consumers importing packages
from other countries will now have to pay to the U.S. federal
government, that can approach 50% over and above the value of the
packages themselves, and have enabled a new form of phishing attacks. As
always there may have been minor wording variations from this script as
I presented this report live on air.
- - -
Yeah so I think it's best to start with the background on international
shipping, because it can be pretty complicated. And yes it was really
the Internet's e-commerce that made it practical for individuals to
order products from other countries and have them shipped directly from
those countries. And in the context of China of course this became an
enormous amount of trade and brought the rise of firms like Temu and
Shein, and AliExpress and many others, including newer ones like
Amazon's direct from China service.
And a key to making this all economical for U.S. consumers has been an
aspect of U.S. trade policy for almost a hundred years called "de
minimis", from the Latin basically meaning "too small to matter". And
this meant that inbound shipments below a certain dollar value did not
incur customs duties, customs charges. And that maximum value has
changed over time, fairly recently it went up to 800 dollars from 200
dollars in 2016. And we're now talking billions of often small packages
that weren't really practical for customs to inspect except on a
sampling basis anyway.
But this all dramatically changed really just a handful of days ago,
when the new administration completely eliminated the de minimis
exception. In fact inbound packages from China and Hong Kong were
stopped for about 24 hours, but started up again and the actual
application of what will be significant new charges for buyers will ramp
up as processes are established to deal with the volumes involved. But
ultimately given this change, consumers getting packages from for
example China, could be facing additional charges that could even
approach 50% of the package value added on to what they paid for the
item itself.
That's customs charges, sometimes there are additional handling fees
associated with these charges, and in the case of china also the 10%
tariff that the new administration has ordered. All of these amounts are
usually paid one way or another by consumers ultimately to the federal
government. So from the standpoint of an ordinary consumer this can all
be thought of as effectively new taxes to be able to receive those
packages.
And of course one of the big questions is are consumers going to be
willing to pay SIGNIFICANTLY more for these items coming in directly to
them from overseas vs. trying to get the same items -- if they can --
from local sources. There are foreign shippers that have established
local warehouses (including via eBay) in the U.S. both to avoid having
U.S. customers having to pay these kinds of customs charges but also to
reduce delivery time that can sometimes be notoriously slow for direct
international orders.
And nobody really knows to what extent U.S. customer behavior will
change and so how much additional revenue that the federal government
will be collecting from these consumers via these new fees and tariffs.
But it's clear that what has been a very economical shipping model will
be a considerably more expensive choice for consumers going forward.
So now it becomes pretty apparent how new kinds of email phishing scams
are being enabled by these large-scale import changes. You have U.S.
residents suddenly having to pay new fees in order to receive these
packages, and it's going to mainly be through online payments. And, you
guessed it, scammers are already sending out convincing looking phishing
emails claiming fake charges due on packages, hoping that they'll get
consumers to fall into their traps, especially since initial confusion
over actual new charges is likely to be intense.
So be very, very careful, because when it comes to the new and sometimes
complicated consumer payments that will result from these import
changes, we know all too well that the culprits are, as usual, going to
be at least one step ahead of the game.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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