So how does this all work in practice? You order something from China and it will be sent over on a ship. At what point do you pay for the item, what steps does it go through to get to you, and how/when do you pay the tariff to the government?
Say you pay the Chinese company $100 online for your order and they ship it. So it arrives on US soil. Who picks it up there, the USPS? Who determines what the tariff amount should be and collects it? Some shipping company or port authority inspector or what? At what point does someone deliver it to you and collect the tariff from you?
Didn’t Trump flaunt a Department of External Revenue?
Such a profound lack of understanding what tariffs are and who pays them…
It’s the consumer; the end user.
If you’re unable to answer the questions, just don’t respond.
If you cant handle comments, dont ask questions
No one has to answer your questions. They can make whatever comments they want. No need to be an ass.
The tariffs are simply an import duty and they are calculated by HS code and product origin. They are paid by an import agent at the point of import before the goods are released.
In practice many items sent by courier will not get any duty historically. It depends what, if anything, customs decide to do. I don’t think the manpower exists to look at every package and charge accordingly.
They’ll just do it for randomly selected shipments, much like only a handful of shipping containers will get customs checks each day. It’s not practical to apply it across the board, so the tariffs will be based almost entirely on paperwork. There’s nothing at all stopping a seller from misdeclaring origin and value on paperwork to avoid duties, but why would they when the tariffs don’t have any bearing on the sellers?
There was a de minimis exception for anything under 800 USD for courier shipments, but numbnuts got rid of that too.
Such a profound lack of understanding what tariffs are and who pays them…
They were the ass. Nothing in my post indicated I don’t understand what they are and who pays them. I was asking about how the process works in practice.
(edit: replying to new stuff added to post):
I don’t think the manpower exists to look at every package and charge accordingly.
This was part of my confusion as to how the tariffs were getting calculated and charged. One person said they were getting calculated when being cleared through customs, which would mean that every shipment would have to be processed and calculated at that time, or at least verified if it had already been pre-calculated.
So that certainly seems to justify the de minimus exceptions, since the cost of dealing with small-value shipments would be higher than what would be gained from the tariffs on them. Now they’ve removed that exception for China–I suppose they figure the huge increase in tariff rates will make up for that cost.
Pretty sure they were saying trump has a lack of understanding of tariffs.
And again, no one has to type words you want to hear. No one has to answer your specific questions.
The comment was simply saying (as far as I understood it) that the administration seems to have no idea what tariffs are nor how to use them to their benefit.
You were being the ass by somehow deciding your questions and views are the only important ones, and that any response must be on your terms or is worthy of scorn.
I didn’t express any views about it, just asked for help understanding how the process worked and got an insult as the first reply. No, they don’t have to answer and yes, they can just post a disparaging reply if they want, but I am also allowed to respond and defend myself as well.
Several people, including you in your edit, provided helpful information, and I thank all those who posted helpful replies.
So the way this works is the importer of record pays the tariff when it gets to the US port.
So, scenario 1, you buy a product from an American company that imports either the whole product or some part of it from China. The American company pays the tariff and then decides how much of that to add to their costs.
Scenario 2, you buy from a Chinese seller that ships to the US like Temu. In these cases generally the seller is the importer of record, so they pay all applicable tariffs on your behalf, but in order to do so they’ll add it to your bill along with the shipping.
Scenario 3, you buy from a company in China that ships directly to you without acting as an importer. There are a bunch of options for this where you basically order stuff direct from manufacturers, and it seems like it’s going to be way cheaper because there are no tariffs or other import fees. But in reality what happens here is you are now the importer of record. There’s two ways this will play out; the government will either hold the item at the port of entry until you pay the fees, or it’ll arrive and then you’ll get a bill for the fees later. This can be really dangerous because you can end paying a whole lot more than you expected to.
There’s your next spam scam, then. “You owe tariffs on the goods you received from Amazon, pony up”
