Episode 10: The End of De Minimis and the Rise of Evasion

The end of de minimis started on Friday May 2nd (https://www.wsj.com/articles/e-commer...) . That affects 1.36bn packages that enter the country every year. This change will affect both consumers that buy cheap products from China but also businesses in the U.S. that source their products or parts from China. We’re expecting a rise in the technique of trans-shipping (https://tribune.net.ph/2025/04/14/cou...)  to evade the end of Chinese de minimis packages.



 



The US Trade Representative released the 2025 “Special 301 Report” (https://ustr.gov/about/policy-offices...)  on Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement. There are eight countries on the Priority Watch List: Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Venezuela, and eighteen on the Watch list: Algeria, Barbados, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Türkiye, and Vietnam.



 



Issues with countries cited in the report include poor enforcement of local counterfeit manufacturing, piracy of intellectual property, bad faith trademark enforcement, and poor enforcement of trade secrets, copyright law, and patent infringement.



 



We’re also tracking this dispute, which is both a federal criminal case (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndoh/pr/...)  and a state attorney general case (https://www.police1.com/legal/ohio-ag...)  over where body armor plates, designed to protect law enforcement were made. The vendor in question is accused of using Chinese-made products and claiming they were made in the U.S. The DOJ also stated that these body armor plates failed testing, which is a catastrophic consequence for something like body armor. According to the DOJ, Customs and Border Protection detected these packages during an inspection inside a larger freight shipment in a truck crossing the border from Canada to the U.S.