The De Minimis Suspension Is Now a CBP Regulation, Not an Executive Order

As of June 24, 2026, a $45 parcel from anywhere in the world, arriving by any carrier, needs a real customs entry to clear. Not a broker's professional judgment that it's exempt under Section 321. An actual filed entry, with an HTS code, a Merchandise Processing Fee, and in some cases a bond. If your compliance team has been treating the de minimis suspension as something that started with China and might still get walked back in court, that mental model is wrong twice over now. CBP didn't extend an executive order this month. It wrote the suspension into the Code of Federal Regulations, under the same statute that created the exemption in the first place, and gave the public thirty days to comment on a rule that's already in force.

From Emergency Order to Standing Regulation

The suspension itself isn't new. Executive Order 14324, signed in August 2025, suspended duty-free treatment under the de minimis exemption for every country, not just China, and CBP implemented it through a Federal Register notice on September 2, 2025. A continuing notice followed on February 25, 2026, extending the suspension under that same executive authority. Through all of it, the legal foundation was identical to the one underneath the Liberation Day and fentanyl tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February: IEEPA emergency powers, invoked by proclamation, renewable at the President's discretion, and vulnerable to exactly the kind of challenge that ended those tariffs. Our explainer on IEEPA tariff authority covers how that argument worked and why it failed.

June 24 changed the foundation entirely. CBP published two interim final rules, 91 Fed. Reg. 37789 and 91 Fed. Reg. 37801, that ground the suspension in 19 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(2)(C) directly, the same statute that created the de minimis administrative exemption and that Congress raised to its current $800 threshold in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015. That's a materially different posture for a court challenge. An importer now has to argue that CBP misread its own discretionary implementing authority over an exemption Congress never guaranteed, not that the President lacked emergency power to impose a tariff at all.

Section 122 tariffs are stuck defending the harder argument right now, with a hard 150-day statutory sunset bearing down regardless of how the appeal turns out. And when the Supreme Court invalidated the Liberation Day and fentanyl tariffs, CBP had to stand up an entirely new refund system, CAPE, just to process the fallout. A suspension rooted in the de minimis statute itself doesn't carry that same unwind risk, because the underlying exemption was always discretionary administrative relief, never an emergency tariff Congress is positioned to claw back.

Comments on both rules close July 24, 2026. That date doesn't pause anything. Interim final rules take effect on publication and stay in effect through the comment period. CBP can revise the regulatory text afterward based on what it hears, but the suspension itself isn't sitting on hold while anyone reads the docket.

Two Rules, Split by Channel

CBP divided the rulemaking by how merchandise arrives. The non-postal rule, 91 Fed. Reg. 37789, covers everything moving by air cargo, ocean, truck, or express courier, FedEx and UPS included, since neither runs through the international postal network. It took effect June 24 with no grace period at all.

The postal rule, 91 Fed. Reg. 37801, covers shipments arriving through the international postal network, which in practice means foreign-post-originated mail like USPS-routed e-packets. It does two things simultaneously: it suspends the exemption for mail on the same June 24 timeline, and it stands up a new postal informal entry process for mail shipments valued at $2,500 or less. That second piece carries a delayed compliance date of October 22, 2026 for certain specified shipment categories, handing postal-routed importers roughly four months that courier-routed importers never got.

A third, narrower notice, 91 Fed. Reg. 38007, opened a pilot for an electronic version of that new postal entry process. Worth tracking if your volume runs through international mail, since the pilot is where CBP will work out data-field requirements before October arrives. Importers using FedEx, UPS, DHL, or ocean freight don't get a pilot phase. They're already inside the rule.

What to File Now, and the Math Most Importers Get Backwards

Before June 24, a sub-$800 parcel needed nothing: no HTS code, no entry, no fee, regardless of mode. That's gone. What replaces it depends on declared value.

Shipments valued at $2,500 or less generally qualify for informal entry under 19 CFR § 143.21, filed as CBP Entry Type 11. Above $2,500, it's a formal entry, which typically means a licensed customs broker and a continuous or single-entry bond.

Run the numbers on a seller moving 200 parcels a month, each a $45 silicone phone case that previously cleared duty-free under Section 321. Say the case classifies at a 4.5% general duty rate. Per shipment: $45 × 4.5% = $2.03 in duty, plus the Merchandise Processing Fee for an automated informal entry, currently $2.69 under CBP's fee table. That's $4.72 a shipment that didn't exist three weeks ago. At 200 shipments a month, that's $944 a month, or $11,328 a year, in duty and fees alone. Add Section 301 exposure if the cases originate in China and the number climbs fast.

Here's the part that trips up importers trying to get clever about it. Consolidating those parcels into fewer, larger formal entries doesn't save money at this value range, and the floor in the formal MPF calculation is why. Formal entry MPF runs 0.3464% of value, floored at $29.66. Ten of those $45 items combined into one $450 formal entry generate $1.56 in calculated MPF, but the floor pushes the actual fee to $29.66, which is worse than ten separate informal entries at $2.69 each ($26.90 total). The math only flips toward formal consolidation once per-entry value clears roughly $8,560, the point where 0.3464% of value exceeds the floor on its own. Below that, filing informal Entry Type 11 per parcel, tedious as it feels, stays the cheaper path.

When the Postal Delay Actually Helps

The October 22 compliance date only applies to mail CBP designates as "certain specified" categories under the postal rule, not to international mail broadly. If your low-value goods route through a foreign post office rather than a courier's own air network, confirm your shipments fall inside that designation before assuming you have until October. CBP hadn't published a finalized category list as of this writing; guidance is expected closer to the compliance date, not before the comment deadline.

For everyone else, courier and ocean-freight importers, June 24 isn't a date to plan around. It already happened. Entries filed since then without the right entry type on file are entries CBP can flag now, not entries that turn into a problem in the fall.

Pitfalls CBP Is Watching For

A few patterns will draw scrutiny faster than others.

Splitting one consignment into multiple shipments to stay under the $2,500 informal threshold is a known red flag, and it's getting more attention now that informal entry volume has spiked across the board. CBP's own informal entry guidance already addresses when separate informal entries are and aren't appropriate for goods consigned to a single buyer. Treat that guidance as the standard your filings get measured against, not as a loophole.

Filing manually instead of through an Automated Broker Interface adds real cost at scale, too. CBP's fee table sets manual informal entry MPF at $8.06 versus $2.69 for automated filings, a gap that compounds fast across hundreds of monthly parcels.

And if any of your sub-$800 goods carry Section 301, AD/CVD, or UFLPA exposure, don't assume informal entry status survives that overlay automatically. Run the duty lookup before you file, not after CBP holds the shipment at the port.

Key Takeaways

• CBP's June 24, 2026 interim final rules (91 Fed. Reg. 37789 and 37801) move the de minimis suspension from executive-order authority to a standing regulation under 19 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(2)(C), the statute that created the exemption. That's a harder legal target than the IEEPA-based tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February.
• Comments are due July 24, 2026, but the suspension took effect immediately on publication. Filing a comment doesn't pause your entry obligations.
• Non-postal shipments, courier, air cargo, ocean, and truck, got zero grace period; the suspension applied June 24. Mail shipments in certain specified categories get until October 22, 2026.
• Shipments valued at $2,500 or less file as informal entry, CBP Entry Type 11, under 19 CFR § 143.21. Above that threshold, expect a formal entry and a bond.
• Consolidating low-value parcels into formal entries to dodge per-shipment fees backfires below roughly $8,560 in aggregate value per entry, because the $29.66 formal MPF floor beats informal entry's flat per-shipment fee.
• Run a duty and overlay check on every SKU that used to clear duty-free under Section 321. Section 301, AD/CVD, or UFLPA exposure doesn't disappear just because the shipment is small.

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TariffClassify's landed cost calculator already evaluates Section 321 eligibility on every shipment; under the June 24 rules, that check now returns ineligible regardless of country of origin. Run the numbers on your actual SKUs before an extra $2.69 to $30 a parcel finds your margins for you.