[patrickhogan1]

Why are many shippers still getting everything through? Are they using tech like Flexport to handle the complexity?

Is this a situation where if you abide by the letter of the law without tech it doesn’t work, where if you use software and/or route through nations that already have no tariff deals with US you get your items through?

I just bought (last week) an EEG kit from Europe to US for personal sleep studies. It has similar metals that you indicate. There was no issue in my shipper getting it through. There was no tariff added. There was no certificate of analysis.

[zaptheimpaler]

There's a comment asking about this on the blog that they replied to:

> Mouser and Digikey have the same issues, but have professional import customs brokers and do these import procedures and handle all these charges by themselves. The average small US customer have no clue how to do import, they wait someone to deliver their parcel to their door. Which now do not happens, and after several weeks of this parcel hanging at US customs they ask the seller “where is my parcel? I ordered this way many times and every time the parcel arrived to my door” meantime they have to pay import taxes, storage fees etc etc and they simple refuse the parcel and return it back. This is why DHL and UPS refuse to take parcels to USA now until they figure out how to calculate these import tariffs correctly so they can be pre-paid in advance i.e. the US customer knows what he have to pay $$$ tariffs in advance and all these returns stop.

[mschuster91]

Digikey is nuts anyway. I ordered less than 100 euros worth of stuff (but still free shipping?!) for a ham radio DATV receiver kit from them and the package showed up like 30 hours later. From the US to Germany. And given just how freaking many components it was, handling of all these single-piece mini packages is insane.

I seriously wonder if Digikey lost money on that order, shipping alone must have cost 20-30€, and on top come all the antistatic bags, handling costs, payment costs.

[blackguardx]

The Digi-key situation is funny. Going forward, ordering from Digi-key will be cheaper for europeans than for folks in the US. Digi-key operates a bonded warehouse where they don't pay tariffs until it gets shipped to a customer. ICs that are sent from China to Digi-key and then to europeans will pay no US tariffs and often with free shipping deals as you mentioned.

Digi-key never offerred free shipping for US customers and now we will have to pay these high tariffs too.

[crote]

Digikey pricing is designed around it. They give some really serious volume discounts: they'll happily charge $0.10 / unit when you're buying 1 while charging $0.002 / unit when you're buying a whole reel of 10.000. Similarly, they charge a $7 reeling fee if you don't want cut tape.

Combine that with a stupidly efficient order picking process, and I wouldn't be surprised if they basically break even on small orders.

You've got to remember that those small one-off orders are almost always for industrial prototyping. You don't need to make a lot of money selling 5 units for a hand-assembled prototype when you know you will be selling them 500 units for the initial automated run, or even 50.000 units for the final production run.

Additionally, there's a lot of value in being a one-stop-shop: they might not make a lot of money on small-quantity low-volume items, but if an engineer can purchase their entire BOM from you at once, she is unlikely to go looking for a competitor to save a few bucks on the higher-margin items.

[kjs3]

the package showed up like 30 hours later

Or...they have a warehouse in Germany?

all these single-piece mini packages

Automated pick-and-package.

[CalChris]

DigiKey itself only ships from Thief River Falls. But they also have direct shipping from European suppliers to European customers (Marketplace). So I'm just gonna guess that those parts had to have been shipped from a European supplier.

[mschuster91]

Nope. Thief River Falls, showed up as such in parcel tracking.

[KerrAvon]

My one experience with this recently is that UPS will charge you anyway for the duty and if you don't pay they will threaten to turn you over to debt collectors even if they don't deliver the package. So I'm not sure why they in particular would care.

[dwedge]

I had the same with FedEx. I reported it as a lost padkage at X value and they decided to write off the customs charge

[layer8]

It’s still an administrative cost for them, and the non-delivered packages are filling up their warehouses.

[post_break]

They have teams that are dedicated to handling tariffs and imports. Smaller companies that used traditional shipping now having to jump through insane loops are just calling it quits.

[kjs3]

Having bumped into this world via family...even small manufacturers that do substantial portion of their business overseas often have dedicated import/export people, or contract to firms that handle it. It's just smart business. I think it's the scale and the level of uncertainty that the current round of economic chicken has the SMBs hedging.

[ranger_danger]

> Why are larger shippers still getting everything through?

Boats. They're still dealing with tariffs, but it's a lot easier to declare an entire container than individual airmail packets.

But having a US presence that can then receive the containers and ship domestically, is kindof reserved for the big boys.

[mschuster91]

Look at the rates FedEx etc. will charge you for DDP service, and there's your answer.