Shipping to the US with the removal of de minimis exemption
With the ending of the $800 de minimis exemption on August 29th 2025, all orders to the US will be subject to tariffs.
Due to the uncertainty and likely chaos caused by the removal of the exemption at short notice, we have suspended all shipments to the US temporarily.
The tariffs are at a country origin specific level, so US customers can expect to pay a different tariff per tea dependent on where the tea originates from.
For example, the tariffs on Japan is 15% while China has been set at 30%, meaning all Chinese tea will see a 30% tariff while Japanese tea would be half that at 15%.
US customs requires all tariffs to be prepaid prior to the parcel reaching US soil, meaning we will have to collect the tariff at checkout and pass it on to the US government via Royal Mail when we book the parcel in.
The exact details are still to be finalised by Royal Mail, so the above is purely indicative of what is likely to happen.
We anticipate restarting shipments to the US in October hopefully, providing Royal Mail have built the capability to do so and we have the website able to charge the correct tariffs for our US customers.
Alistair Rea
Author