HongKong Post said late on Thursday it would continue to suspend postal goods to the United States, despite the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) having reversed a decision to suspend parcels from China and Hong Kong.
The move by USPS on Tuesday to stop accepting parcels from China and Hong Kong had caused chaos and confusion among retailers and express shipping firms over how to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump’s new 10 per cent tariff on imports from China.
Trump’s move also included closing the “de minimis” duty exemption for packages valued at under $800, with the stated aim of stopping the flow of fentanyl and precursor chemicals into the United States.
USPS later reversed the 12-hour suspension after Trump scrapped an exemption used by retailers including Temu, Shein, and Amazon, to ship low-value packages duty-free to the United States.
China-ruled Hong Kong has also been subjected to the same tariffs as China according to a U.S. government notice that stated: “Articles that are the products of China, which hereinafter will include products of Hong Kong … will be subject to the additional ad valorem rate of duty.”
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Hong Kong has long been known as a free and open trading hub, but China’s imposition on Hong Kong of a sweeping national security law in 2020 drew criticism from the U.S. and led it to end the former British colony’s special status under U.S. law, escalating tensions between China and the U.S.
The U.S. subsequently stipulated that goods made in Hong Kong for export to the United States needed to be labelled as made in China, ending one of Hong Kong’s longstanding competitive advantages as a trading hub.
The Hong Kong government said in a statement that it “reiterates its strong disapproval of the United States’ imposition of additional duty on products of Hong Kong” and “urges the United States to take urgent actions to rectify its wrongdoing, so as to avoid causing confusion and inconvenience to the public owing to its constantly changing policies.”
—Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; and Jessie Pang and James Pomfret in Hong Kong; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Susan Fenton
