I’d deem it extremely unlikely that US customs processing or the express carriers will be able to handle that overflow in anything like a reasonable timeframe.
The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights they use during those times.
For that matter customs processing also has experience managing the same surges.
I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for customs that could hang things up.
Yes, they do. But my understanding is that we’re talking about almost the entire US-bound volume from China of all of Aliexpress, Temu, eBay, Amazon, and all the other retailers shipping from China. USPS carries a massive amount of load there. And almost none of that was dutied in customs because of the high de minimis value in the US.
you do know how they "ramp up" right? All the big ones hire thousands of temp holiday workers then let them go shortly after. do you think they are going to hire thousands of full time workers for these roles. most of them since the pandemic have enjoyed record profit from already increasing shipping rates. this would be a perfect excuse for them to do it more
Nothing more American than the government attempting to kill competition so multi billion dollar corporations can get richer
The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights they use during those times.
For that matter customs processing also has experience managing the same surges.
I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for customs that could hang things up.