On Wednesday, eBay applauded Mexico’s plans to make it easier for its residents to buy low-value shipments from the US by raising its “de minimis” threshold from $50 to $100. In other words, that’s the amount Mexicans can import from the US without having to pay duties.
The move was part of a revised trade agreement the US and Mexico are negotiating, as eBay explained.
“This decision is a positive step forward for promoting trade and economic opportunities for small businesses,” eBay said on Wednesday. “eBay believes that lowering trade barriers is critical to supporting small business growth and creating more access to goods for buyers on a global basis. We will continue to advocate for higher de minimis levels on behalf of our customers.”
However, the Washington Post detailed how trade talks faltered late last week, and it described the challenges facing the three North American nations in coming to a new agreement. The President appears willing to forgo a trilateral deal with both neighbors and do bilateral deals with each instead, according to Friday’s Post article.
As far as eBay, it’s been fiercely advocating for Canada to raising its “de minimis” threshold for years. It has an entire page devoted to the issue where it says the de minimis is $20 and where it writes, “Canada’s de minimis threshold was originally set in the early 1980s. Today, it is the lowest in the industrialized world and among the lowest globally. By comparison, the US has a $800 USD de minimis threshold that is applied to ecommerce.”
Retailers are also keeping an eye on the talks, and the National Retail Federation issued its own assessment of the current trade talks.
Next UK with their ridiculous minimus of 15 GBP. Moreover the ” royal ” mail charges extra GBP to administer the minimus’. A bunch of thieves. No wonder these people are upset with Trump.
I don’t ship internationally for a bunch of reasons – take Mexico for instance – hatis would freeze over before I ship anything to a country where they have executed over 30,000 people in the last year and the drugs flow freely into the USA. Canada? well my darling relatives – they are the “tightest” folks around. I’ve never sold anything to a Canadian that didn’t feel I should give them a discount or lie on the declarations page. I simply gave up on international shipping a long time ago. Go ahead and try to negotiate a new trade agreement – I think this will fall apart too. Everyone in the world wants to sell to America – the money drain continues.
WE have never shipped to Mexico, Canada and or any other country with third world post offices. I don’t care if they never have to pay an export tax. Just not worth the trouble and there are enough scammers that buy in the United States we don’t be needing to add more.
I average 20-25% of my sales are international so this might help a “bit”. Mainly by keeping negatives away when a customer gets a tax notice surprise they were not expecting.