Sales to USA after August 29th - Tariffs / End of de minimis

[wellingnorth]

I asked about this in the weekly chat, specifically whether ebay are alerting US buyers to the fact that they will shortly have to pay duty on anything delivered from outside the US and marco@ebay helpfully later posted this link showing that there is messaging to increase awareness of this:

https://pages.ebay.com/tariffs/

Then I also stumbled across this link:

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Announcements/Navigating-New-US-Tariffs-Support-and-Solutions-for-UK...

From this it sounds potentially like we may have to add a 'country of origin' to listings for them to be visible to US buyers at all?

"Add “Country/Region of Manufacture” (country of origin) to your listings: To reach US customers, you’ll need to Include the “Country/Region of Manufacture” (country of origin) in your listing aspects. This information helps US buyers anticipate potential duties and make informed purchasing decisions."

It specifies the same thing for items sent through GSP.

[david2052]

I appreciate your comments re US.Very helpful thank you.I just managed to send a trial LL via click and drop. It picked up all the product detail from Ebay which was a help.The label and customs looked just the same as before so i hope its in the QR code. I paid the 10% plus 50p surcharge just ti try it out.Sent from my Galaxy

[4_bathrooms]

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@itsfozzy wrote:

An eBay.com account might make sense for me in the short term

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You don't need a separate account; you can just log on to eBay.com with your existing account and list directly.

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@itsfozzy wrote:

I could charge 10% more for my products and 50p more for the shipping. The downside (apart from another subscription is having to use send.royalmail.com manually, and split out the 10% tariff from the price of the product, and also show it on the invoice.

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That's not a good idea. The declared value of the goods is the price the goods sold for. You would be making a misdeclaration on the customs form - items detected as being misdeclared will likely be rejected by US Customs.

The tariff needs to be added to the shipping cost as anything sent via Royal Mail to the US is sent "Delivery Duty Paid". That way the declared goods and shipping values will match. 
 

[itsfozzy]

Thanks for the clarification. 

The problem I now have is that it's not possible to adjust shipping charges based upon unit selling price when a single listing contains options with different prices.

[tinksemporium]

@wellingnorth 

Thank you so much for this information.  I found an article today from the BBC originally from April 2025 and updated 7 August 2025

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ypxnnyg7jo

I hope this also helps you and others who are trying to navigate this enormous task. I feel sometimes like we are being left out to sink or swim alone but sellers helping sellers is a great thing.

Cheers, Tinkers Emporium

[4_bathrooms]

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@itsfozzy wrote:

The problem I now have is that it's not possible to adjust shipping charges based upon unit selling price when a single listing contains options with different prices.

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Depending upon the difference in price between the highest and lowest priced options you could do one of the following:

1. Base the shipping cost on the highest-priced option
2. Base the shipping cost on the average or mean price for the listing
3. Base the shipping cost on the most popular option

#1 means you never take a hit, #2 & #3 mean you will be sharing the hit with your buyers. I have no idea what your volumes or margins are but I would personally do one of the above for multi-variation listings.

[itsfozzy]

A compromised solution is better than no solution, but a bad solution might be worse no solution. I'm not sure if the solutions are merely compromised or simply bad (I'm not criticising you for the solutions). I'm guessing I would need to create about forty shipping policies to cover whichever of the three suggested solutions I might choose to use, or maybe ten, if I were to use a more blunt-instrument approach.


If eBay were to give some indication on what they might be planning along with a vague timeline, it would help me judge whether the required work is justified. I would still need to resolve the issue of who best to screw over, and that's likely to be me.