Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930 allows for the informal entry of articles that have a retail value of $800 or less and are imported by one person in one day. These de minimis shipments are generally free of duty and taxes and subject to expedited clearance processing.
Earlier this year U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued separate proposed rules (see here and here for more information) that would remove de minimis eligibility for imports subject to certain tariffs and require additional data elements for de minimis entries. President Trump has since terminated de minimis eligibility for imports from China (including Hong Kong and Macau) as of May 2 and indicated an interest in eliminating de minimis entirely. That goal was echoed in an April 2025 report to the president asserting that the de minimis exemption is “a means by which fentanyl, counterfeit goods, and various deadly and high-risk products enter the United States with little scrutiny.”
In the meantime, CBP is working to upgrade the Automated Commercial Environment to automate the process of enforcing the $800 limit for the de minimis exemption. In January CBP released an ACE enhancement that provides warning notifications to ensure appropriate parties do not receive de minimis clearance for more than an aggregate of $800 in shipments on a given day. Since then CBP has been gathering input on this enhancement, the flow of cargo, and industry response when ineligibility occurs upon arrival. CBP next plans to implement this August ACE functionality that will withhold clearance (what CBP calls a hard reject) of shipments whose value exceeds the $800 threshold.
A working group under U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee reported at a recent COAC meeting that it is working to address de minimis issues as well. For example, the working group intends to provide input regarding enhanced methods to ensure the quality of data regarding de minimis transactions by addressing reoccurring compliance issues such as timely presentation of freight, manifesting, weight to value ratio, and partner government agency referrals. Other work will include identifying alternative enforcement actions to increase compliance (e.g., abandonment, denied entry, and penalties) as well as ways to improve CBP’s outreach to better educate the trade community on de minimis requirements and compliance.
COAC also adopted a working group recommendation that CBP update ACE edits and validations to enforce the bond requirement for type 11 and 12 informal entries when duties, taxes, and fees are not presented at the time of cargo release. CBP recently updated its ACE development schedule to indicate that such a change, which had been scheduled for this July, has been put on hold.
For more information on the status of de minimis entries, please contact attorney Lenny Feldman via email or at (305) 894-1011.
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