Trump Closes De Minimis Loophole As Dark Chapter In Trade Ends
30th August 2025
The long-standing “de minimis” exemption, which allowed small packages valued less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free, officially ended Friday. This closes the dark chapter on an era when China flooded America with cheap junk (think $10 Bluetooth wireless speakers) and, according to many in the America First movement inside the White House, helped flood the nation with fentanyl precursor chemicals – if not fentanyl itself – and fueled the drug-death crisis unlike anything this nation has ever seen. Think of it as a modern-day reverse Opium War (hybrid warfare by the CCP).
For those with a background in Latin, “de minimis” translates to “too small to matter.” But that’s certainly not the case. Since 2015, the number of packages entering the U.S. under this exemption has surged from 134 million packages per year to 1.36 billion by 2024. Much of this flood originated from Chinese e-commerce giants, including SheIn Group and Temu.
The decade-long tsunami of small packages flooding the U.S. didn’t just undercut domestic small businesses. It also created a backdoor for illegal drugs and fentanyl precursor chemicals from China to slip in undetected, fueling the drug-death crisis now killing more than 100,000 Americans every year.