Australia Post suspends most postage to the US ahead of new tariffs

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Australia post has suspended many forms of postage to the United States mirroring similar moves by European postal services.

Transcript

00:00Well, Australia Post has made this decision as a deadline on tariffs in the United States

00:08on low-value parcels approaches in just a few days' time.

00:13Until now, packages worth less than $1,500 Australian aren't being taxed when they arrive

00:20in the United States.

00:21But the Trump administration has ended this so-called de minimis exemption on August 29,

00:27so on Friday, and this means that packages, when they arrive, they'll now, it says,

00:33either get a tariff of appropriate to their country of origin, so that could mean 10%

00:39if they're goods made in Australia, or even higher if they're goods potentially made in China,

00:44or it is saying that these goods could be slugged with a fee of anywhere from $80 US.

00:51And the uncertainty of what will happen to these packages when they arrive in the States

00:56has really been throwing postal providers across the world into chaos.

01:02Australia Post is just one of many postal services around the world that have suspended

01:07parcel shipping to the States ahead of this deadline.

01:11It's worth noting that Australia Post will still send letters and documents to the States

01:17and low-value gifts if they're under a value of around $150 Australian dollars.

01:23Now, the complexity of how these tariffs will be applied on these packages seems to be what's

01:29throwing postal services into chaos.

01:31I just spoke to an expert in Washington who has been looking through the fine details here.

01:39Here is Kate Muth speaking about what's happening.

01:42The carrier or approved party will collect and remit the duties to Customs and Border Protection,

01:48but they have to be able to kind of integrate those.

01:52The third-party providers that have been approved have to be able to integrate with a postal operator

01:56or set it up so that the postal operator can pay the duties to the third-party provider.

02:04And that's going to just—it's going to take a little bit of time.

02:06So there's that part of it.

02:08And the other piece is that we're starting to hear that airline carriers do not want to take mail.

02:14They don't want to be held potentially liable.

02:17I've been speaking to big and small retailers of everything from quilts to clothing to medical equipment

02:25who have already been making the tough call to suspend shipping to America ahead of that Friday deadline

02:33because they're just so unsure about how this is going to play out.

02:37It's been really tough.

02:38It's kind of been the focus of my business.

02:40I wasn't sure.

02:41There's, you know, it is very unsure out there.

02:44There's not a huge amount of information.

02:47I could kind of see that it wasn't necessarily going to end and be resolved quickly.

02:54So that's why I made the decision last week to stop shipping to the U.S.

02:58because I couldn't risk my customers either not getting their parcels or having to pay more on arrival.

03:04And until I had more answers, I decided it was a much safer option to just stop.

03:09Australia Post says it's working as fast as possible to fix this situation,

03:13as are other postal services around the world.

03:16It says that it's working with third party providers, as Kate Muth mentioned there,

03:22to try and put in place the mechanisms for which these duties and tariffs can be remitted.

03:27However, it's anyone's guess how long this could take.

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