Is the $800 de minimis rule coming back? No.

The short answer

Executive Order 14324 suspended the $800 de minimis exemption for shipments from all countries, effective August 29, 2025. It was not narrowed to one country and it was not a temporary pause that quietly lapsed. Goods arriving since that date need an entry and owe whatever duty their classification and origin carry, no matter how small the parcel.

The second thing to know is that the mechanism people used to move low-value e-commerce is also gone. Entry type 86 no longer exists as a working option: ACE rejects all type 86 cargo release transactions, per CBP message CSMS #66065494. If your fulfillment model was built on it, it is not waiting to be switched back on.

Three layers, and why that matters

The reason the answer is flat rather than hedged is that the exemption did not end once. It ended in layers, and each layer would hold on its own.

First the executive order. Then two CBP interim final rules, both published June 24, 2026, resting on 19 USC 1321(b), which lets the Secretary except merchandise from the exemption to protect the revenue or prevent unlawful importations. Then the statute itself, which repeals commercial de minimis outright in 2027. An order can be revoked. A rule can be rewritten. A statute with a date on it is a different kind of fact.

The two rules are not interchangeable. Only the first one touches 19 CFR 10.151. The postal rule amends part 145 instead, which is why mail now has its own procedure.

What actually survived

Something did survive, and it gets flattened into a wrong number constantly. It is not one $100 allowance for everybody. There are three, and they are narrow.

• Bona fide gifts up to $100 from foreign countries.
• Bona fide gifts up to $200 from the US Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.
• Up to $200 of personal articles accompanying a traveler.

Why you may be reading something different on a government page

This is worth saying carefully, because you may have checked already and come away reassured. CBP's consumer page on internet purchases, at cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/internet-purchases, still says in the present tense that packages under $800 clear without additional paperwork. There is no banner on it, and its footer reads Last Modified: Mar 06, 2024.

That page is simply older than the change. CBP's regulations and its Federal Register notices are the authority, and they say what this page says. But it means a careful person can go straight to the government's own website, read it honestly, and still get the wrong answer for their shipment. If a page you are relying on predates August 2025, check the date on it before you plan around it, or ask somebody who files under the current rules every day.

What we can and cannot do about it

We cannot make the duty go away. Nobody can. What changed is that low-value shipments now need an entry, and the entry has to be right: classification, origin, valuation, and whichever process fits how the goods arrive.

The honest limit is worth stating too. For one personal parcel, a broker's fee will usually be larger than the duty you are trying to sort out, and we will tell you so on the phone rather than take the file. Where it pays for itself is recurring commercial volume: a seller moving parcels every week, a company whose landed cost just changed under it, an importer who needs the same product classified once and filed the same way every time.

What we cannot answer from a web page is your specific situation, because it turns on documents we cannot see: what the goods actually are, where they were made, how they arrive, whether you have a bond on file, and how often this repeats. That is a short conversation with real answers at the end of it.