WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - The United States is suspending a “de minimis” exemption that allowed low-value commercial shipments to be shipped to the United States without facing tariffs, the White House said on Wednesday.
Under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, packages valued at or under $800 sent to the U.S. outside of the international postal network will now face “all applicable duties” starting on August 29, the White House said.
Just got fucked by DHL holding my PCB order hostage. Had to pay an extra $66 that wasn’t at play last week, when I placed my order. I’m sooo glad the “country” is getting rich off of my back. I guess this is another hobby that will have to take a back seat for a few years…
I ordered a large keyboard enclosure from JLCPCB’s 3D-printing division recently. The tarriffs were like $48 on top of $45 postage and a $80 actual-goods price.
When I fed the job into Craftcloud (probably not the cheapest but a quick way to read the market) trying to get a US-based supplier would have been like $800.
They can’t tarrif these industries back on shore. At least not in any sort of useful timescale.
But the most frustrating part is just the ever-changing aspect. If they said it was a specific amount eith a clear timetable, merchants could at least build prepayment and accurate prices into their checkout flows. Now there’s the risk that whatever amount you paid 2 weeks ago is wrong, and the couriers seem to be responsible for collection, who love to turn that into an excuse to add penalty fees and hold parcels hostage.
Yup. My last JLC PCB order, also keyboard related, came at the worst of the recent tariffs, and it was still 1/3 the price of the cheapest option for PCBs in the US, and the pre-clearance rolled into shipping was as much as the tariffs themselves. The only place even close in price was a fab in India.
It’s dubious to to think that every country needs to have every sector fully spun up anyway, but even if that’s your goal you don’t just dump it on people overnight. That just raises prices and hammers the economy without creating any new jobs. Even the Trumpers know this at some level, hence TACO.
I’ll agree till your last sentence. Trumpers know very little about reality, they operate entirely on wishes and imagined the unfairness.
Some custom designed stuff I ordered just landed today. I’m about to pay an extra $300 because of that fool.
I’ve been researching methods for fabbing my own boards. I’ve got some pretty tight tolerances I’m trying to meet.
Any potential paths forward? Desktop cnc?
For my purposes: CNC routing is too sloppy. Photolithography is promising, but involves a lot of steps with potential for error at every stage, not to mention the chemicals necessary for etching. Lasers are interesting, both for lithography and direct copper ablation, but there’s a high barrier to entry with cost.
Fair, ya even around 10 mil is probably pretty tough with a reasonable cost cnc. I imagine with laser ablation, you’ll probably run into similar issues, you still have to physically move and point the laser, mirrors, or your target base.
I’ve got a little bit of a background in optics and sensors, but diy photolithography still seems pretty challenging, would be interested in following your work if you go down that route.
Computer-controlled laster etching/cutting is a thing - ideally we have as few manual steps as possible.
Ya ya, but same with cnc, you have things like backlash and physical control challenges.
Those can be adequately overcome by a proper controller. The greater challenges are in the physical effects of the actual method, such as CNC burrs and ablation heat spreading.