European postal services are temporarily halting shipments to the United States, creating a cross-Atlantic mail bottleneck that nobody saw coming—well, nobody except trade analysts who've been warning about exactly this scenario for months.
The suspension comes as the Biden administration implements new 15% tariffs targeting an estimated $64 billion worth of low-value goods from China, many of which have been routing through European sorting facilities before making their final journey to American doorsteps.
It's a classic case of policy meeting reality. Hard.
Royal Mail (UK), PostNL (Netherlands), and several other European postal services have essentially thrown up their hands in bureaucratic surrender. They simply aren't equipped—not even close—to suddenly identify which small packages contain Chinese-origin goods subject to the new tariffs.
"This is creating absolute chaos," said Martin Reeves, a logistics consultant I spoke with yesterday who works with several European postal operators. "These organizations move millions of items daily. They're being asked to become customs inspectors overnight with zero additional resources."
The heart of the issue is the long-exploited "de minimis" provision that allowed packages valued under $800 to enter the US duty-free. This created what industry insiders sometimes call the "small package expressway"—a regulatory side road that Chinese sellers have used extensively, often routing through European postal hubs that offered efficient handling and favorable rates.
I've been tracking this issue since 2019, and the numbers are staggering. Last year alone, more than 685 million de minimis packages entered the US. That's nearly two million packages daily, many containing merchandise from online marketplaces like Temu, Shein, and countless Amazon third-party sellers.
Look, nobody's saying the old system was perfect. Far from it. American manufacturers have complained for years about competing with products that essentially got a free pass on tariffs simply by arriving in small boxes rather than shipping containers.
But the implementation? That's another story altogether.
European postal services weren't consulted about how they'd actually handle this change—a baffling oversight given their critical role in the global shipping network. These aren't massive private logistics companies with armies of customs brokers; they're often semi-governmental organizations operating on tight margins with legacy systems designed when "e-commerce" meant ordering from a paper catalog.
"We simply don't have the capability to determine the country of origin for every item," a PostNL representative told me (requesting anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly). "Our systems track where a package entered our network, not where the contents were manufactured."
The impact is already rippling through the e-commerce ecosystem.
Small European businesses shipping to American customers are caught in the crossfire, despite having nothing to do with Chinese manufacturing. Shipments are piling up in postal facilities across Europe. And American consumers? They're about to discover that their $12 phone case might now cost $15—if it arrives at all.
What happens next? (That's the multi-billion-dollar question, isn't it?)
In the short term, expect delays—lots of them. Packages already in the system will eventually move through, but new shipments are in limbo until European postal services develop workable compliance procedures.
Longer-term, we'll see adaptation. Markets always adjust—sometimes elegantly, usually messily. Alternative shipping routes will develop. New services will emerge to handle tariff compliance. Prices will rise to cover these costs.
And Chinese manufacturers? They're already pivoting, looking at different shipping channels, different transshipment points, maybe even different manufacturing locations. The tariff balloon gets squeezed, it doesn't pop.
The whole situation reminds me of covering the initial China tariffs back in 2018. Everyone focused on the big headline numbers, but the real story was always in the implementation details—the how, not just the what.
For now, if you're expecting a small package from Europe... well, don't hold your breath. It's gonna be a while.
