When mailing a letter to the U.S. becomes a global headache

Brian West, a retired restaurant owner in Thailand, thought six weeks was plenty of time to renew his New York driver's license. All he had to do was mail an application form and his vision test results to the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Brooklyn.

When he tried to do that last Friday, the post office near his home in Chiang Mai declined to send his documents.

Thailand Post, the country's postal service, has stopped sending mail to the United States while its transportation partners adjust to President Donald Trump's decision to end duty exemptions for low-value imports. Many postal services around the world have done the same as they await clarity on how Trump's executive order, which went into effect at midnight Friday, will play out.

While some carriers say the suspensions are temporary, they have created headaches and confusion for people who had never thought twice about dropping a letter or parcel destined for the United States at their post office.

Also Read: How the end of de minimis exemption will impact U.S. shoppers and businesses

"It feels helpless to think I can't send mail to the U.S.," West said, adding that not everyone can afford to use a more expensive courier service, such as UPS or FedEx. He said he would wait a few more days, but if the suspension wasn't lifted by then, he would have to shell out about $50 for a courier.

Trump's rule change intends to curb the use of a loophole that primarily Chinese retailers like Shein and Temu used to sell inexpensive products directly to U.S. consumers without customs inspections or duties. For years, recipients in the United States could accept parcels valued at up to $800 without having to pay customs duties.

The president's decision to eliminate the exemption has reverberated far beyond China.

Also Read: US ends tariff exemption for small packages shipped globally

It is not clear how many countries are taking such steps, or how long the restrictions will be in place. But the suspensions have been particularly cumbersome for people who cannot afford couriers or live in areas without easy access to them.

Adam Christopher, an author living in the English countryside, said that he walked to his local post office last week to mail two batches of signed bookplates for his new novel to his U.S. publisher, Penguin Random House, only to be told that shipments to the United States had been temporarily stopped. Instead, he said, he would have to drive about an hour to a UPS office, where the cost of shipment will be significantly higher.

"This is not end-of-the-world stuff," said Christopher, whose book "Star Wars: Master of Evil" is out in November. "It's just a very irritating situation."

"It sounds minor, but if you multiply this over however many people are affected, it's enormous," he said.

Tonya Kemp, the owner of a specialty candy and soda shop in Alexandria, Virginia, said that over the past week, her candy suppliers in Europe and Canada had told her that they could not fill her orders until the new customs requirements were better understood.

For now, she has enough specialty sweets -- Coffee Crisp chocolate bars, salted caramel and hazelnut Kit Kats from Canada and digestive cookies and Jelly Babies from England -- to fill her shelves. But without knowing when mail will resume, she said she was unsure whether she would keep importing candy if costs increased significantly.

"All are extremely popular," she said of these products. But with the extra shipping costs, she said, "where will be the point that people stop paying that high for a candy bar?"

In the Philippines, people often send Christmas gifts to relatives in the United States in September to avoid year-end shipping surcharges. Customers typically fill packages with items such as cheese, sweet Filipino-style spaghetti sauce, snacks and seasoning mixes that are not readily available in the United States, said Rein Gatchalian, the owner of Kabayan Box Padala, which sends packages from Manila. The shipments typically fall well below $800 in value, Gatchalian said.

"Sometimes there are clothes and shoes, but mostly it's creature comforts that they miss from the Philippines," she said. As the suspension kicks in, nothing will change for her clients in the Philippines, but their relatives in the United States will have to start paying duties when their boxes arrive, she added.

In a notice in early August, the postal service in the Philippines said that recipients of U.S.-bound shipments could face a tax ranging from $80 to $200.

Giovanni Castro, a business owner in Baguio, a city north of Manila, was still trying to figure out which tax would apply to his products. His online store, Tinkerboy, produces adapters so that old keyboards and gaming consoles can be used with newer computers. Most of his products cost less than $50, and Castro said 90% of orders come from the United States.

"If the specific duty is too heavy, it wouldn't make sense," Castro said.

The post office in Baguio said it would suspend shipments to the United States starting Friday, which Castro relayed to customers in a red banner at the top of Tinkerboy's website.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.