Post Office explains the suspension of shipping from Belize to the United States

The Government of Belize has announced the temporary suspension of certain shipments to the United States, following a new U.S. Executive Order that eliminates the long-standing duty-free exemption on low-value packages.  The Executive Order, set to take effect on Friday, August 29, removes the de minimis threshold that previously allowed packages valued under $800 USD to enter the U.S. duty-free. Now, all goods will be taxed from the first dollar, with customs duties to be paid by the sender before an item enters the U.S. Only gifts under $100 USD and documents remain exempt.  In response, the Belize Postal Service has suspended shipments of goods to the U.S. effective today, citing unresolved questions regarding liability, tax collection procedures, and logistics. According to Dr. Marsha Price, there is a need for further clarifications which are currently being sought by the Universal Post Union, of which Belize is a member.

Dr. Marisha Price, Post Master General: “We work under the umbrella of the Universal Postal Union who is in direct contact with the United States government is to see how it works. And I know that they really wanted that the US collected their custom duties and not put it on the owners of the operators, right, of that origin country. So that is one of the grave issues that everybody’s facing. So it’s to find a system that you can work with and come up with some process to how you collect. And there’s a time frame that the US Customs have to collect that before the item reaches the United States. I think there’s a time frame of probably seven days if I can recall correctly. So it’s how we work with this now because the impact is it will cost the consumer, the businesses, that will be routing items through the posts to the United States. So that will increase those custom duties will now increase the costs. And sometimes the cost is harder to pass these costs to your customer  that are international especially for those small business. So we understand, we can see people are frustrated about what can we do, right? It’s an executive order, right? So we have to comply and  information are shortcoming. So we still need to finalize through the Universal Postal Union to see if they are working on some software  and to see how.”

The Ministry of Public Utilities, Energy and Logistics emphasized that the change affects all postal operators worldwide and that efforts are underway to resume shipments as soon as compliance procedures are clarified.  The announcement has already begun to impact small businesses in Belize that rely on international e-commerce. Local skincare brand CocoLove Belize shared their frustration on social media, writing, quote, “This is a hard post to write. Today we found out that we can no longer ship to the USA due to new restrictions. This means we won’t be able to serve our U.S. customers, just as we were preparing to launch our website.  While this is hard, we must pivot and overcome another challenge.”  End of quote.