De Minimis Is Gone for Good — Is Your Pricing Spreadsheet Still Assuming It's Free?

Quick answer: The $800 de minimis exemption that let low-value shipments enter the U.S. duty-free is not coming back. It has been suspended for every country since August 29, 2025, was made indefinite by CBP regulation in mid-2026, and survived a direct court challenge on August 13, 2026. Any pricing spreadsheet that still assumes shipments under $800 owe no duty is now wrong — potentially on every SKU that used to clear under that threshold.

The exemption most pricing models still assume is true

For years, "keep it under $800 and it clears duty-free" was a load-bearing assumption in a lot of pricing spreadsheets — baked into a formula, a lookup table, or just an unwritten rule someone remembered from when the model was first built. That assumption is no longer true, hasn't been true for over a year, and there is no announced date when it will become true again.

The de minimis administrative exemption under 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(C) — commonly called Section 321 — was suspended for shipments from every country starting August 29, 2025. U.S. Customs and Border Protection then made that suspension indefinite through two interim final rules: one covering shipments outside the postal network, effective June 24, 2026, and one covering mail shipments, effective July 24, 2026. Commercial shipments valued at $800 or less now owe applicable duties, taxes, and fees — full stop.

Why so many businesses still think it's temporary

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not authorize the tariffs imposed under that authority. A lot of coverage treated that as the end of the year's trade measures generally, and plenty of businesses concluded de minimis had quietly come back with it.

It didn't, and the reason matters: the de minimis suspension and the IEEPA tariffs run on two separate legal tracks. The same day as the ruling, one executive order ended the invalidated tariffs while a separate order continued the de minimis suspension on different statutory grounds. CBP has since carried that suspension into its own regulations. Then, on August 13, 2026, a three-judge Court of International Trade panel in Axle of Dearborn, Inc. v. Department of Commerce upheld the rescission of the exemption on the merits — the suspension has now survived direct judicial review, not just executive action.

In other words: the tariffs that got struck down and the exemption that got suspended are not the same thing, and only one of them came back.

What's actually still exempt — and what isn't

Only one of Section 321's three carve-outs was suspended. The other two are untouched, which is where a lot of confused advice comes from:

• Suspended: the general de minimis exemption for commercial shipments valued at $800 or less.
• Still exempt: bona fide gifts valued at $100 or less sent person-to-person from abroad.
• Still exempt: personal or household articles valued at $200 or less accompanying a traveler.

Neither surviving exemption is a commercial import channel, and structuring commercial shipments to look like either is a customs problem waiting to happen, not a pricing strategy.

CBP has also opened a new informal entry process for mail shipments valued at $2,500 or less, and on September 22, 2026 — days after this post goes live — it begins testing an electronic version of that process, Entry Type 13. That's an entry procedure, not an exemption: the goods still owe duty. It's easy to read headlines about a "new mail entry process" and assume relief is coming. It isn't.

Why this breaks spreadsheet pricing specifically

A spreadsheet has no way to flag that a rule it was built on has changed. If a landed-cost tab has a conditional — "if shipment value < $800, duty = 0" — that formula will keep returning zero duty on every quote below the threshold indefinitely, silently, with no error and no visual difference from a correct cell.

For businesses that ship a high volume of low-value parcels — direct-to-consumer brands, small-batch importers, anyone who built a fulfillment or pricing model around staying under the threshold — this isn't a rounding error. It's every quote for every SKU that used to clear free now carrying real, unaccounted-for duty, fees, and formal or informal entry costs. Total landed cost increases from the broader suspension of low-value duty-free treatment have been estimated in the range of 40–55% for affected goods once duties, fees, and brokerage are added back in — a gap that shows up as margin erosion no one budgeted for, discovered at reconciliation instead of at the quote.

What accurate pricing requires now

1. Assume duty on every shipment, not just the large ones. The under-$800 exception that used to make small orders "free" to land no longer exists. Landed cost needs to be calculated per shipment, regardless of value.
2. Track the legal instrument, not the headline. Because tariff news and de minimis news are running on separate tracks in 2026, a spreadsheet or pricing process that reacts to "tariffs got struck down" without checking the de minimis rules specifically will get this wrong.
3. Rebuild landed cost per SKU, not per shipment band. A pricing model organized around "under $800" as a category needs to be retired — every SKU needs its own duty and fee calculation now that the threshold no longer does that work for free.
4. Watch the entry-type change, not just the rate change. New processes like Entry Type 13 change how a shipment clears, which affects fees and timing even when the duty rate itself doesn't move.

FAQ

Is the $800 de minimis exemption really gone, or just paused?
It's suspended indefinitely, with no restoration date announced, and Congress has separately voted to repeal the commercial exemption by statute effective July 1, 2027. Whether you call that "paused" or "gone," a pricing model shouldn't be built on the assumption it comes back on any particular date.

Did the Supreme Court's tariff ruling bring de minimis back?
No. The February 2026 ruling addressed a different legal authority (IEEPA tariffs) than the one the de minimis suspension relies on. The tariffs were struck down; the de minimis suspension was not, and it has since been upheld separately by the Court of International Trade.

Does this affect businesses that don't ship internationally themselves?
Yes, indirectly. Any business sourcing goods or components from overseas suppliers — even through a domestic distributor — can see landed cost increases passed through the supply chain, whether or not they file the customs entry themselves.

What's the fastest way to check current exposure?
Pull every SKU or shipment category that was priced assuming duty-free treatment under $800, and recalculate landed cost with current duties, fees, and entry costs included — rather than assuming the old exemption still applies to any of them.

Pricing that assumes yesterday's rules is pricing that's already wrong. Quotahack is built to calculate landed cost the way international trade actually works in 2026 — not the way it used to.