The $800 exemption is gone, and so is Europe's. Your maths is from a different era.

This is not something coming down the road: it has already happened, on both sides of the Atlantic. And it lands squarely on the kind of parcel dropshipping is built on — the cheap one that used to enter paying nothing.

For years, dropshipping out of Asia worked partly because of something almost nobody discussed: low-value parcels came in duty-free. Below a certain value customs asked for nothing, and that threshold comfortably covered everything being sold.

That threshold is gone. In the United States and in Europe. And it is already in force as you read this.

What changed in the United States

The US had the more generous rule: $800 per shipment, duty-free. It was closed in two moves — for China and Hong Kong from 2 May 2025, and then for every country from 29 August 2025. All imports, regardless of value, now face duties and customs entry requirements.

There was a middle ground for a while: low-value postal shipments could use a flat per-package amount instead of a calculated duty. That option ran only until the end of February 2026. It has expired. Duty is now worked out on the ordinary tariff rates for the country of origin.

And Europe closed its own

If you sell on any European eBay site, this one is yours. From 1 July 2026 the EU removed the customs duty exemption for consignments worth €150 or less arriving from outside the union. The Council gave final approval in February 2026 — it is law, not a proposal.

In its place, for now, sits a temporary flat duty of €3 per tariff heading on low-value consignments. It stays until the EU's new customs system comes online, expected around 2028, at which point standard rates apply to everything. A separate EU-wide handling fee on low-value goods has been proposed, with the amount and start date still to be set.

Why this hits you harder than it hits a normal shop

A shop importing by the container pays duty once, on one shipment, and spreads it across thousands of units. You pay on every individual parcel — and a fixed amount weighs far more on a $12 product than on a $200 one.

But the cost is not the worst of it. The worst of it is who pays and when.

It is the most expensive way there is to lose an order, because you lose both ends: the goods have shipped, the money goes back, and your seller standards take the hit. On a marketplace where visibility depends on those standards, the bill does not stop with that order.

What can be done about it

• Have duty settled at dispatch rather than on delivery. It is the difference between a price the buyer sees in full up front and a surprise at the door. You arrange it with the supplier or the shipping service — not every cheap service supports it, and that is worth establishing before you build a catalogue on one.
• Redo the maths on cheap products. A fixed charge per parcel wipes out the margin on a few-dollar item long before it touches a fifty-dollar one. The $8 product that worked on volume may simply not work now.
• Say it in the listing. If an import charge might reach the buyer, telling them beforehand costs you the occasional sale; not telling them costs you a case and a star.
• Look again at closer suppliers. This is not ideology, it is arithmetic: a domestic or regional supplier that was too expensive six months ago may not be any more.

The thing to take away, underneath the numbers

The advantage the model rested on — cheap goods entering with no extra cost — was removed deliberately, on both sides of the Atlantic, for the same stated reason: the flow of low-value parcels had grown too large and undercut importers who paid.

It does not mean dropshipping stops working. It means it stops working on the old margins, and that any sums you did last year are from a different era. Sellers who redo them carry on. Sellers who discover it from the first parcel held at customs mostly do not.

Where DropMind comes in

In two places, and it performs no miracles in either. First: prices are not built by adding a percentage to the supplier's cost, but by working back from what you want to keep, with fees and postage in the calculation and a minimum profit you set. When costs change, you update one rule rather than a thousand prices.

Second: it reads from ten suppliers rather than one. If the arithmetic now pushes you to source somewhere else — and for a lot of people it is — that is a setting, not a rebuild.

Where these dates come from

From the sources below, checked on 30 August 2026, including the European Commission's own page on removing the €150 threshold. ⚠️ This is the fastest-moving subject in the trade right now: if you are reading well after that date, verify it. And for how any of it applies to your own business, that is a conversation with your accountant or your freight forwarder, not with an article.