Trade Updates — US, EU & UK customs rule changes, dated and sourced

What changes next?

Dates already set in law or regulation. Nothing here is speculation.

29 September 20268 days68 Canadian subheadings barred from importation entirely
22 October 202631 daysChapter 98, FTA-preference and PGA goods lose mail informal-entry eligibility
1 July 2028649 daysEU Customs Data Hub goes live for e-commerce
Date not setThe £135 customs duty relief will be removed, by October 2028 at the latest

Every change we track

Ordered by what bites next, then by what is already in force. Expired rules stay on the record — a duty paid inside a window that has since closed is still a duty that has to be repriced correctly.

Takes effect in 8 daysUnited States · Section 338, Tariff Act of 1930

68 Canadian subheadings barred from importation entirely

Announced: 8 September 2026
Effective: 29 September 2026
Ends: —

Three further proclamations exclude 68 HTSUS subheadings of Canadian goods from entry into the United States — alcoholic beverages, dairy, motorcycles over 800cc, and also five molasses lines (1702.90.35, 1703.10.30, 1703.10.50, 1703.90.30, 1703.90.50) and non-alcoholic beer (2202.91.00), which sit in the dairy annex. The ban turns on the date of IMPORTATION, not the date of entry. The proclamation preserves the 50% Section 338 duty for products "that were imported, but not yet entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, prior to September 29, 2026" — so a consignment already imported before that date is not barred, whatever its entry date.

Read the plain-English guide

Why it matters

This is a prohibition, not a rate — the goods may not enter at all, and a duty quote is not a clearance. The transition rule is written on importation, which is the detail most summaries get backwards: what matters is whether the goods were imported before 29 September, not whether they were entered. 28 of the 53 alcoholic-beverage subheadings are barred only where the product is packaged in bottles, cans, boxes, kegs or similar direct-to-consumption containers; bulk in the same subheading is not barred \u2014 though it still carries the 50% Section 338 duty, so "not barred" is not "no exposure". And the three annex titles under-describe the scope — six of the 68 lines are molasses or non-alcoholic beer, so an importer of those would wrongly read the headline as not applying to them.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

Screened as an origin-gated, date-effective prohibition. The packaged-only subheadings return a hold for packaging confirmation rather than a refusal.

Takes effect in 31 daysUnited States · CBP

Chapter 98, FTA-preference and PGA goods lose mail informal-entry eligibility

Announced: 24 June 2026
Effective: 22 October 2026
Ends: —

From 22 October 2026, merchandise claiming Chapter 98 duty-free treatment, merchandise subject to Chapter 98 or 99 duties, merchandise claiming FTA duty-free treatment, and merchandise subject to Partner Government Agency requirements are excluded from the mail informal entry process and must use Entry Type 13 or formal entry.

Why it matters

This narrows the route that most low-value mail currently takes. Any merchant relying on an FTA claim through the post needs a different entry plan before the date.

Primary sources

CBP — E-Commerce FAQs

Stipendia

Flagged, not priced

The engine warns when a consignment claims Chapter 98 treatment. Full entry-type routing is on the roadmap.

Takes effect in 649 daysEuropean Union · European Commission — EU Customs Reform

EU Customs Data Hub goes live for e-commerce

Announced: —
Effective: 1 July 2028
Ends: —

The Data Hub is expected to come online for e-commerce on 1 July 2028, at which point the €3 flat duty ends and consignments revert to the normal tariff for their classification. It becomes voluntary for all operators from March 2031 and mandatory from March 2034.

Why it matters

It sets the horizon on the current EU regime. Any low-value EU pricing model built today has a known expiry.

Primary sources

DG TAXUD — EU Customs Reform

Stipendia

Tracked, not priced

Tracked. The €3 duty data carries 2028-07-01 as its end date.

Takes effectUnited Kingdom · HM Treasury / HMRC

The £135 customs duty relief will be removed, by October 2028 at the latest

Announced: 26 November 2025
Effective: —
Ends: —

The Budget of 26 November 2025 confirmed the end of the customs-free £135 threshold. The consultation closed on 6 March 2026 and the summary of responses was published on 13 July 2026. The UK has chosen a full tariff approach rather than the EU's flat rate — UKGT rates apply to LVIs, the same as for freight, with no simplified schedule — plus a separate, still-undecided additional per-LVI fee, and a fiscal-representative model under which a UK-established business is jointly and severally liable for an overseas seller's low-value import declarations. Commencement is by statutory instrument, no later than October 2028. This is a GB-only reform — Northern Ireland stays under the Windsor Framework and the EU's own low-value regime.

Why it matters

This is a third distinct low-value regime — US classification, EU flat rate, UK full tariff — and the fiscal-representative requirement has the same shape as the EU's IOSS intermediary route.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Tracked, not priced

Tracked. No engine change is due until commencement is laid.

In forceUnited States · Section 338, Tariff Act of 1930

50% duty on Canadian alcoholic beverages, dairy and a broad retaliation list

Announced: 20 July 2026
Effective: 22 August 2026
Ends: —

Three proclamations imposed an additional 50% ad valorem duty on 554 HTSUS subheadings of Canadian goods under a statute that had lain essentially unused. The effective date was postponed three days on 18 August while Canada negotiated; the duties took effect on 22 August when those talks failed. Proclamations of 8 September modified the scope with effect from 15 September, taking it to 666 subheadings.

Why it matters

The list titled 'motor vehicles' spans more than fifty HTSUS chapters — it is a broad retaliation list, not vehicles, and reasoning about it at chapter level will miss most of it. The duty is additive to MFN and to the Section 301 forced-labour duty, and USMCA preference does not exempt it (Section 338 has no equivalent to the Section 301 forced-labour carve-out). The September modification also split several 8-digit subheadings into specific 10-digit statistical lines, so an 8-digit classification can no longer answer whether the duty applies. A companion proclamation issued the same day removes a subset of these goods from the 50% duty into an outright import ban from 29 September — see the separate entry on that ban; a good already excluded is no longer merely dutiable.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

Both scope versions are modelled with their effective windows. Matching never widens an 8-digit code into a 10-digit entry.

In forceUnited States · Section 301, Trade Act of 1974

Section 301 forced-labour duties replace the expired Section 122 surcharge

Announced: 23 July 2026
Effective: 24 July 2026
Ends: —

USTR took final action in 60 forced-labour investigations, imposing duties on goods of those 60 economies with two exemptions built in: a product-level exemption in Annexes I and II (not yet ingested by this engine) and an economy-wide exemption for articles already subject to Section 232 duties. The rate is 10% for an economy that imposes a forced-labour import prohibition, has committed to one through an Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, or has a partial regime; 12.5% for an economy that has failed to do any of those. For the European Union and Taiwan the duty is capped so MFN plus this duty reaches 10% total; for Japan, Korea and Switzerland the cap is 12.5% total — either way, a product whose MFN rate already meets the cap attracts nothing. Economies outside the 60 attract no duty at all. Goods already loaded and in transit before 24 July, and entered before 28 July, were not subject to the duty.

Why it matters

This replaced a flat 10% that applied to every origin, so the shape of the calculation changed and not only the number. Two FTA carve-outs exist and are easy to miss because the rate table's own entries for the affected origins say nothing about them: U.S. note 52(g)/(h) exempts USMCA duty-free goods of Canada and Mexico outright, and note 52(i) exempts CAFTA-DR-originating textile/apparel goods of Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Without a duty-free claim, Canada and Mexico stay in the 10% tier. It stacks on MFN and on the Section 301 China lists.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

All 60 economies and all four mechanics are modelled, including the net-of-MFN cap. The per-economy product exemptions in Annexes I and II are not yet ingested, and every affected quote says so.

In forceUnited States · CBP — 19 CFR / EO 14324

International mail is classified, not flat-rated

Announced: 24 June 2026
Effective: 24 July 2026
Ends: —

CBP indefinitely suspended the de minimis exemption for mail by regulation and stood up a postal informal entry process. Mail is now entered with a 10-digit HTSUS classification and assessed at the rate for that classification plus any applicable Chapter 99 duty — exactly as cargo is. Filing is by the owner, purchaser or a licensed customs broker, against a single-transaction or continuous bond in ACE eBond, on a monthly IMDW spreadsheet paid via Pay.gov by the 7th of the following month. From 22 October 2026 this process narrows — see the separate entry on mail informal-entry carve-outs.

Why it matters

Two figures are widely misquoted. The informal-entry ceiling for mail is $2,500, not $800 — $800 was the de minimis exemption and was never an entry ceiling. And mail is exempt from the Merchandise Processing Fee except Inbound EMS. The deeper change is that a spreadsheet problem became a classification problem.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

The postal pipeline classifies rather than flat-rates, applies no MPF except Inbound EMS, and uses the $2,500 ceiling.

In forceEuropean Union · Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382

The €150 customs duty relief is abolished; €3 per declaration line replaces it

Announced: March 2026
Effective: 1 July 2026
Ends: 1 July 2028

The EU abolished duty relief for consignments of intrinsic value at or below €150 and replaced it with a flat €3 customs duty, applied per declaration line, until the Customs Data Hub for e-commerce comes online in July 2028. It applies regardless of the VAT regime used — IOSS, Special Arrangements or standard import VAT.

Why it matters

The €3 is per declaration LINE, not per parcel and not per tariff heading. H7 and H6 — the reduced datasets used for low-value e-commerce — group goods sharing the same 6-digit HS or 8-digit CN code, while a standard H1 declaration separates at 10-digit TARIC and so produces more lines and more duty for the same consignment.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

Modelled per declaration line with 6-digit grouping, plus destination VAT on goods and duty.

In forceGlobal · World Trade Organization

The moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions lapsed

Announced: 30 March 2026
Effective: 30 March 2026
Ends: —

MC14 closed without consensus and the Work Programme on E-Commerce and its moratorium — in place since 1998 — lapsed. A plurilateral group issued a joint statement committing to continue not imposing such duties among themselves, and the roughly 70-member E-Commerce Agreement codifies a moratorium for its parties, but the multilateral floor is gone.

Why it matters

Duties on digitally delivered products are now possible in principle for the first time in nearly three decades. Nothing changes for physical parcels today, but the direction of travel is worth watching for anyone selling software, media or digital services cross-border.

Primary sources

WTO — E-commerce, post-MC14 briefing note

Stipendia

Tracked, not priced

No duty applies to a physical consignment as a result. Monitored.

In forceUnited States · Executive Order 14324

Duty-free de minimis suspended for all countries

Announced: 30 July 2025
Effective: 29 August 2025
Ends: —

The $800 administrative exemption was suspended for all countries and all modes, and the suspension was continued by an order signed 20 February 2026 (effective 24 Feb, published in the Federal Register 25 Feb). For mail it was made indefinite by regulation in June 2026. Every item entering the United States is dutiable regardless of value.

Why it matters

1.4 billion parcels entered the United States duty-free in 2024. Every one of them now requires duty processing. This is the single event that created the market for automated cross-border duty collection.

Primary sources

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

De minimis is never applied to a US consignment.

Announced, not confirmedEuropean Union · European Commission — delegated act

A Union handling fee is expected, but neither the amount nor the basis is settled

Announced: —
Effective: —
Ends: —

A handling fee covering customs processing costs is proposed. The Commission's own guidance states only that both the amount and the date of application are “to be determined”, targeting autumn 2026 — no delegated act or other legal mechanism has been named for it yet, and no specific date is fixed. Reported figures cluster around €2, but that is press commentary, not a confirmed number, and it is not settled whether the fee would apply per consignment or per product category.

Why it matters

Both open questions change the landed cost of a multi-item parcel materially. Anyone quoting a figure or a date today is quoting a press report, not a regulation — including any figure or date this entry carried before 2026-09-16, when an audit found the cited source does not support the “1 November 2026” deadline or the “delegated act” mechanism this entry previously stated as settled.

Primary sources

DG TAXUD — guidance on the temporary flat fee

Stipendia

Tracked, not priced

Deliberately not priced. Every EU low-value quote discloses that the fee is not included and why.

ExpiredUnited States · Section 122, Trade Act of 1974

The flat 10% import surcharge expired

Announced: 20 February 2026
Effective: 24 February 2026
Ends: 24 July 2026

A temporary 10% surcharge applied to all countries, all goods and all transport modes including postal. Section 122 is capped at 150 days by statute and Congress did not extend it, so it lapsed on 24 July 2026. The Court of International Trade held it unlawful on 7 May 2026, but enjoined collection only as to the named plaintiffs; the Federal Circuit stayed that ruling on 11 June and collection continued to expiry.

Why it matters

Importers who paid this surcharge between 24 February and 24 July may have a refund claim worth preserving if the CIT ruling is ultimately affirmed. The surcharge is frequently still quoted as current — it is not.

Primary sources

White House — Imposing a Temporary Import Surcharge

Stipendia

Priced by Stipendia

Retained for repricing entries dated inside the window. Never applied to a current date.

Common questions

What tariff applies to US imports right now?

Is the US de minimis exemption still suspended?

How is duty charged on international mail to the US?

What replaced the EU €150 duty relief?

When does the UK £135 low-value threshold end?

What we have corrected

Entries are corrected in place with a note, never silently rewritten.

14 September 2026 · us-section-338-canada-exclusions
Corrected the transition rule, which had been published inverted. We wrote that goods ENTERED before 29 September stay on the 50% duty. The proclamation says goods IMPORTED BUT NOT YET ENTERED before that date do. The ban turns on importation, not entry. Also corrected the scope description: six of the 68 barred lines are molasses or non-alcoholic beer, not alcoholic beverages, dairy or motorcycles.
How it was found: An adversarial audit of every published entry against its cited primary source, run the day the hub went live. The auditor quoted the proclamation text back at us.
Rule added: A sentence stating who is in scope, from when, and under what condition is quoted verbatim from the instrument, never paraphrased. That is how this error was made.
15 September 2026 · us-section-338-canada-exclusions
Added the three Federal Register proclamation citations (FR Docs. 2026-18835/18836/18837) and clarified that bulk product in a 'Packaged'-marked subheading is not barred but still carries the 50% Section 338 duty.
How it was found: The same audit. The auditor grepped all three annex PDFs we were citing and found they contain no date, no rate, no Section 338 reference and no proclamation number — they are bare HTSUS lists. Every date and rate in the entry came from the proclamation text, which we had not cited. We were telling readers to check sources that could not verify our two most load-bearing facts.
Rule added: A cited source must be able to verify the claim it is attached to. Citing a document that does not contain the fact is not a citation.
16 September 2026 · us-section-301-forced-labour
Corrected a live pricing defect, not only a publication error. This entry said "there is no FTA carve-out — USMCA goods from Canada and Mexico pay it", and the engine's own rate file (section_301_fl_rates.json) asserted the identical claim in its stacking.fta field. Neither was true: U.S. note 52(g)/(h) exempts USMCA duty-free goods of Canada and Mexico from this duty outright — the single largest carve-out in the instrument — and note 52(i) exempts CAFTA-DR-originating textile/apparel goods of six Central American origins. The engine now applies both (see app/utils/section_301_fl.py, usmca_duty_free and cafta_dr_textile_claim). Also corrected: the rule for choosing the 10% vs 12.5% additive rate (10% covers committed-but-not-yet-enforcing economies too, not only economies that already enforce a prohibition — the underlying rate table was always correct, only this description of the rule was wrong), which of the capped economies get the 10% cap vs the 12.5% cap, the in-transit grace period, and the unverifiable "99.4% of US imports" figure, which appeared in neither cited source and has been removed.
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, run a second time after the Canada-ban entry's correction. The auditor retrieved both cited sources in full — the USTR final-action PDF (431 pages, extracted locally) and the Federal Register text — and quoted U.S. note 52(g)/(h)/(i) verbatim. It also checked for a later, superseding instrument and found none as of 2026-09-14.
Rule added: A pricing claim published on this page is checked against what the engine actually charges, not only against the source — the engine's own rate file carried the same error, so checking the hub text alone would have missed it.
16 September 2026 · uk-lvi-reform
The cited policy paper never states the full-UKGT-rate decision — that comes from a different, uncited document. Added the consultation-response source that actually contains it. Also noted the still-undecided additional per-LVI fee (on top of the tariff), and that this is a GB-only reform — Northern Ireland stays under the Windsor Framework and the EU's own low-value regime, not this one.
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, extended to every remaining live hub entry after the Section 301 forced-labour and Canada-ban corrections. Each finding is quoted from a source the auditor actually fetched.
Rule added: None new — these are applications of the rules already added on 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16: quote a legal condition rather than paraphrase it, and cite a source that can actually verify the claim.
16 September 2026 · us-section-338-canada-duty
Noted that a companion 29 September proclamation removes some of these goods from the 50% duty into an outright ban (see the separate hub entry for that ban — a good already excluded is no longer merely dutiable). Added the two Federal Register citations that actually establish facts this entry states: FR 2026-17294 (Proclamation 11056, the postponement to 22 Aug) and FR 2026-18839 (the motor-vehicles scope modification that completes the 554→666 count alongside the already-cited alcohol modification).
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, extended to every remaining live hub entry after the Section 301 forced-labour and Canada-ban corrections. Each finding is quoted from a source the auditor actually fetched.
Rule added: None new — these are applications of the rules already added on 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16: quote a legal condition rather than paraphrase it, and cite a source that can actually verify the claim.
16 September 2026 · wto-ecommerce-moratorium-lapsed
‘66-member’ corrected to ‘roughly 70-member’ for the E-Commerce Agreement.
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, extended to every remaining live hub entry after the Section 301 forced-labour and Canada-ban corrections. Each finding is quoted from a source the auditor actually fetched.
Rule added: None new — these are applications of the rules already added on 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16: quote a legal condition rather than paraphrase it, and cite a source that can actually verify the claim.
16 September 2026 · us-mail-classified-entry
The bond can be a single-transaction or a continuous bond, not continuous only. Cross-referenced the separate 22 October informal-entry carve-outs entry, since this entry's own description of the process narrows on that date.
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, extended to every remaining live hub entry after the Section 301 forced-labour and Canada-ban corrections. Each finding is quoted from a source the auditor actually fetched.
Rule added: None new — these are applications of the rules already added on 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16: quote a legal condition rather than paraphrase it, and cite a source that can actually verify the claim.
16 September 2026 · us-de-minimis-suspended
‘continued on 26 February 2026’ corrected to the order's actual signed date of 20 February 2026 (effective 24 Feb, published in the Federal Register 25 Feb) — no official date tied to this action is the 26th.
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, extended to every remaining live hub entry after the Section 301 forced-labour and Canada-ban corrections. Each finding is quoted from a source the auditor actually fetched.
Rule added: None new — these are applications of the rules already added on 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16: quote a legal condition rather than paraphrase it, and cite a source that can actually verify the claim.
16 September 2026 · eu-union-handling-fee
The cited source states only that the amount and date are ‘to be determined’ for ‘autumn 2026’, naming no delegated act and no 1 November date. The entry previously stated both the mechanism and the date as settled. Softened to what the source actually supports.
How it was found: The same adversarial audit, extended to every remaining live hub entry after the Section 301 forced-labour and Canada-ban corrections. Each finding is quoted from a source the auditor actually fetched.
Rule added: None new — these are applications of the rules already added on 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16: quote a legal condition rather than paraphrase it, and cite a source that can actually verify the claim.

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This page is published for information. It is not legal or customs advice, and a duty quote is not a clearance. Where an entry says a rule is not modelled, it is not priced by the platform and no figure should be inferred from its absence. Last reviewed 14 September 2026.