00:01 John Daub: Ladies and gentlemen, you might have heard a little bit about this, but if you're sending packages to the United States from outside the United States, there's a lot going on with it. This package is one that I send to my Patreon supporters every month. The post office warned me. And I said, okay, now this is big news, so I'm going to have to make sure that you guys get the warning too. A lot of you are probably wondering because just recently in the news, they've talked about this in detail.

00:30 John Daub: Europe is suspending parcel shipments to the United States—all parcel shipments. France is suspending. Australia is suspending. Even China and Taiwan are suspending. DHL is suspending packages. So what's going on? Are we going to be able to send this stuff to my viewers? Like this box right here, which is supposed to go to the post office in five minutes.

01:01 John Daub: This came out from Japan Post today. They warned me when I sent packages five days ago. You can see the date is the 25th of August. The US government issued an executive order on de minimis—it's Latin. Under this executive order, starting on the 29th of August, mail containing goods imported for personal use will no longer be eligible for duty-free treatment. Tariffs will be imposed as of the 15th of 2025. The US Customs and Border Protection announced new guidelines regarding the elimination of the de minimis rule, which is if you have a certain amount, you get it for free.

02:02 John Daub: Therefore, starting the 27th—which is tomorrow here in Japan—national postal operators will temporarily suspend the acceptance of postal items. Individual gifts with content value exceeding $100 are not okay. So if it's under $100, it's okay—I can give you the thumbs up. Goods intended for sale or for consumption—meaning like food or gifts—are not okay. In addition, we will continue to accept letters and postcards. Thank goodness because the postcard club has hundreds of people in it. And containing gifts to individuals with value less than $100 is okay. $100 is the magic number. So in the customs forms, I'm a pretty honest guy. I'll just make sure the contents of the boxes are under $100.

03:10 John Daub: America is not the only one that collects duty on packages coming in. Europe is one of the worst. When I send packages to Germany and in particular Austria, poor Peter von Gomm in Vienna—I love him so much, great guy. He's had his packages taken from the post office and requested to come in to pay duties on a gift that was just $30 or less of stuff in the box. And he's got to pay like 3 euros on it, which is ridiculous. Europe is worse than America. Many countries in Europe are worse than America with the duties.

03:47 John Daub: So anyone who wants to blame the US for this, I get it. But this is just growing pains. If you're buying figures or items that are more than $100, I would say hold off for right now from Japan—from anywhere in the world, to be honest. Peter von Gomm is in the Daimyo tier on Patreon. This is one of the Daimyo tier boxes. I fill this up with regional goods, try to support local businesses. There are just these Kit Kats and weird-flavored chocolates and things like that all in there.

04:36 John Daub: The reason Japan Post issued this statement and they're gonna be suspending mail in general is just because they don't know what's going on yet. There's a lot of growing pains—it's chaos, which is somewhat expected. But I didn't expect DHL to completely stop packages to the US—that's gonna hurt their business as well. They told me that they weren't sure a couple of days ago. I went there today and they said if the package is a gift valued under $100, it's okay—you can go through. If it's business to individual and there's an invoice involved, that's different—there might be taxes involved. They're not quite sure—they said to hold off on that kind of a deal. Mine is a gift because of people supporting me—it doesn't really have any monetary value on it, but I do put the price of the contents in there on the list, and it's marked as a gift, so it goes through okay, just like sending it to family.

05:47 John Daub: Starting the 27th, in line with other national postal operators, we will temporarily suspend the acceptance of postal items—small packets, parcels, EMS to the United States—that contain anything over $100 exceeded in value. So you could mark it under that, but they might open it up and say that's crap, we're gonna tax you anyways. Or goods intended for sale or for consumption—these two things Japan Post won't even accept. If you're ordering things, it's good for you to know this. If you're sending stuff home to yourself and you've already purchased it, the value of the goods—I guess you could just mark it $99 and you're good to go. I'd mark it like—yeah, I don't think lying on the forms is a good idea, and you just get in trouble.

06:46 John Daub: Lying in general never gets you anywhere—there's times where you can lie, but lying in general doesn't usually get you out of trouble. If you're marking $99 on a $1,000 item, that's really bad. But if it's like $110, I might be able to get away with it. Shipments to trunks are okay—John, I see you've changed your handle name, but yes, you'll be fine just as long as we get some bullet holes in there so you have some air in the trunk. I'm being serious—it's hot in there.

07:22 John Daub: All in all, I think once the confusion is more understood, things will start to settle down and they'll get into the process of collecting those duties. Japan Post and USPS have been in the red for decades, so I guess they need the money. I just hope that the money goes to them because as postal workers, they probably deserve a raise. I got to be honest—the staff has gone down and the responsibilities have gone up, so stress is really high. Postal workers don't get compensated enough in my opinion. I love the guys at the Japan Post office and everywhere around the world—they're usually working pretty hard for a civil service job.

08:14 John Daub: If you're ordering from international like Amazon.co.jp, you're gonna get taxed—you're gonna get tariffed on anything over a certain amount, and we don't even know how this gonna work yet. Do they send you a notice in the mail for you to pay by QR code and then they send this stuff to you? Or do they come to the door looking for cash? Not quite sure. In Japan, they have people who will come and collect the cash—they have to pay for it every single day. I've had it in multiple ways where I had to pay in advance, and I've had to accept the cash one. One operator paid it for me and said please pay us back. I got my mochi from Daishin with Japan Post. Daishin the Japanese sake maker has sake-based mochi and confections too. I tried to get Sakurai-san, who's the CEO, to do an episode with me, but it's been complicated working with him.

09:10 John Daub: Shipping from abroad is gonna get expensive. I had to raise the prices for my Daimyo packages—that's the tier on my Patreon. I still kept the base tier, but I had to add in $20 for express delivery on EMS. During the pandemic, we only had EMS for a while, so I was eating the costs. I think a lot of people are just gonna eat the costs. I had to pass the cost of shipping for the first time in a while. I padded in enough where I took a hit and I was getting like $10 or something a package because the shipping was really high plus the contents. It's like $10–20 a package—it's not that much, but helps to keep the channel going.

10:05 John Daub: Does this affect packages we send from US military stations? I believe not—anything sent from a US post base is sent via US carrier—it's like coming from the US. Basically a US zip code. Anything sent from Guam to the US—I don't think it's tariffed because it's US. US bases are like going to America—wow, look at all the stuff they got: big steaks, Costco's here. I've always wanted to go on base—I've been on the naval base once or twice for friendship day, but the dates just never worked out.

11:09 John Daub: Packages to Switzerland—Scott told me his last month's was delayed quite a bit. There's a lot of things going on with postal services all around the world right now. But this news hit real hard today when they told me about the suspensions from Japan Post. Now I think we all kind of figured it out—just be careful, do a little bit of homework, and know that you're gonna have to pay some duties and figure out what those duties are. I'll put a link to the press release if you're interested.

11:47 John Daub: What's the alternative to Japan Post? FedEx—there's no matter what service you use from Japan—it's up to the carrier to collect the duties. That's why DHL is like, we're gonna take a step back here and figure out what's going on because they want to be in compliance with the law. We all do. And I get why the duties need to be collected. I really hope that this goes to help the USPS—these workers need a little bit of a bonus, in my opinion. I'm on their side.

12:33 John Daub: Shipping from Guam is probably higher to start with. It was funny—all the items had to go from Japan to San Francisco, then to Guam to collect tariffs and duties. I was like, why don't they just open up a tariff and duty place on Guam? But the government in general is so inefficient in every country—it's not just the US, it's everywhere. So in that sense, we really need to fix a lot of stuff, the mail in particular.

13:11 John Daub: You could do FedEx, but if you're sending individual packages, you need a high threshold to send a lot of packages to make it work—or else DHL was like three times more than EMS, which is Japan Post's fast sending. I sent a package on the 21st—it arrived in New York already to David and Alice. So we're all good. My son is stationed in Sasebo—I have no idea if he pays taxes on base at eateries. You'd think that they wouldn't have taxes on the servicemen and women—that would not be fair. But I would not put it beyond the government to do something like that. I'm on the people's side. US postal workers are underpaid and overworked in many cases.

14:04 John Daub: This is something that is hitting the news all over the world—it's not just here. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I'd like to hear what you have to say about this so I can address it in a future episode and get the word along. We have a Discord server—if you have a Nitro boost, we'd love to have your boost on our server. We exchange this kind of information. So if you're sending packages home from Japan, this might impact it depending on what the value of the goods are. You might want to just carry it back or pay the extra $200 for an extra suitcase on the airline or something—that might pay off.

14:42 John Daub: Take care, everybody. I'll see you in another livestream tomorrow. I'm going to be going to Chiba—I'm driving there to film an episode. A UPS truck just went by—we don't see a lot of those in Japan. I'll be in Chiba tomorrow, so probably do a livestream somewhere in Chiba. I got to rent a car—it's going to be quite interesting, maybe in the afternoon or early morning. Until then, take care and stay cool because it is freaking hot here. That's Tokyo Station—you got a live view of the Shinkansen up there if you can see it with the reflection.