How Trump's Tariffs Are Creating Jobs -- for Canadians

A few months ago, Elliot Markillie started getting calls about small boxes.

He works for a logistics company near Vancouver, British Columbia, called a52 that handles distribution for big apparel and footwear brands. The brands source their goods from China and had just been hit with steep tariffs, on top of the duties already applied to clothes and shoes.

But, the brands had learned, there might be an out: According to U.S. customs rules, packages worth less than $800 — known as the de minimis threshold — don’t have to pay duties at all. They just have to ship items directly to consumers one at a time, rather than in bulk to stores or U.S.-based warehouses.

The result: Companies now have an incentive to use fulfillment centers in Canada and Mexico rather than the United States.

Here’s how it works. Instead of coming into the Port of Seattle, say, a shipping container or cargo plane full of Chinese goods comes into Vancouver, and pallets full of goods are transferred to a52’s warehouse. As goods are ordered from a52’s clients’ websites, they are individually packaged with a mailing label and sent via a courier service like UPS or FedEx across the border to their destination. There is no tariff code, because there is no tariff, and precious little other information about the contents of each package.

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-trump-tariffs-are-creating-jobs-for-canadians

The news isn't all positive. Due to the changes in the shipping system there is an increase in the amount of counterfeit goods.