The $800 rule everyone quotes about shipping from China is gone. CBP suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for China on May 2, 2025. Every guide built around that number is answering a question that no longer exists.
That isn’t why parcels get stopped, though. Most boxes that never arrive are stopped for what’s inside them, or for what the paperwork claims is inside them.
The four categories that get pulled
Batteries come first, and they catch almost everything. A phone. A power bank. A kids’ toy with a light inside it. All of them carry lithium cells, and lithium cells are the single most common reason a parcel is refused at the depot before it ever leaves China.
The rule most forwarders use is simple. A battery installed in a device usually ships. A battery shipped on its own usually doesn’t. Anything above roughly 100 watt-hours gets its own paperwork, and carriers ask for a UN38.3 test certificate that a small seller will never have.
So a spare camera battery gets refused. The camera ships fine.
Power banks are the hardest case of all, because they are nothing but battery. Most economy lines refuse them outright. If you’re ordering one, expect to pay for a special line or to not get it at all.
And the watt-hour number is printed on the battery itself, usually in tiny text. Multiply voltage by amp-hours if it isn’t there. A 20,000mAh bank at 3.7 volts is roughly 74 watt-hours, which is under the line and still gets refused by carriers that don’t want the liability.
Liquids, pastes and powders are second. Cosmetics, shampoo, anything in a tube. Most lines cap a single container somewhere between 100 and 300 milliliters, and aerosols get refused outright because they’re pressurized.
Nail polish is a good example of why. It’s flammable, it’s a liquid, and it comes in glass. Three strikes, and most forwarders won’t argue about it.
Branded goods are third, and this one has teeth. Counterfeits get seized, obviously. What surprises people is that genuine branded items can be seized too, because CBP is allowed to ask for proof that whoever imported them had the right to.
A real pair of sneakers from a legitimate seller can still sit in a warehouse until somebody produces paperwork. The seller being honest does nothing for you if nobody can prove it.
And “it’s genuine” is not the test. The test is whether you can produce an invoice from an authorized distributor. Keep it when you buy anything with a logo on it.
Food and anything biological are fourth. Meat, seeds, fresh fruit, untreated wood. USDA prohibits a long list of these outright, and the list was not written with online shoppers in mind. Sealed, commercially packaged, shelf-stable goods usually pass. A packet of seeds will not.
Tea is the classic edge case. Loose leaf, dried, commercially packed, usually fine. Anything with fruit pieces, dairy or meat extract in it starts drawing questions.
The paperwork is where most parcels die
Now the part that catches people more often than any prohibited item. It’s the declaration.
Under-valuing is the most common reason an ordinary parcel gets held. Sellers who write “gift” or “sample” on the customs form are doing something that used to be harmless and now reads as a flag to anyone who opens the form.
If the seller offers to declare a lower value, say no. In most of these transactions you are the importer of record, which means a bad declaration is your problem and not theirs.
Be specific in the description too. “Electronics” invites a look. “Replacement camera battery, lithium ion, 45 watt-hours” answers the question and moves on.
So does quantity. Five of the same item at a low declared value reads differently than one, and officers see that pattern every day.
The duty side changed as well. With de minimis gone, postal shipments get assessed either a percentage of value or a flat per-item charge, and the carrier applies whichever method fits. That number has moved more than once since 2025, so ask your forwarder what they’re charging this month instead of trusting a blog post.
Including this one. I’d rather you ask and get a current figure than write down something I read somewhere and have it be wrong by October.
But the mechanism underneath is stable, and it’s worth understanding. Carriers and CBP both need to classify what you bought. That means a category code and an honest value. That’s the whole thing.
If you’re working out whether the whole trip is worth it, I ran the numbers on what it costs to ship from China to the US, and duty is now a line item you can’t wave away the way you could in 2024.
And if what you’re shipping is a charger or a small appliance, there’s a second problem waiting when it lands. Plug shape and voltage are two separate questions, and I went through which Chinese chargers and appliances actually work in the US already.
The check I’d run before paying takes about thirty seconds. Does it have a battery. Is it branded. Is it wet or powdery.
Is it food. Four questions, and if any answer is yes, ask the forwarder before you order rather than after.
Most forwarders will tell you straight. They would much rather refuse an item at a warehouse in Shenzhen than explain a seizure six weeks later.
When a parcel does get seized, you often find out by letter weeks later, and sometimes you never find out at all. Economy lines in particular tend to go quiet. That silence is the real cost, because there’s nothing to appeal and nobody to call.
So the honest framing isn’t “will this get through.” It’s “what happens to me if it doesn’t.” If the answer is that you lose $40 and three weeks, fine. If the answer is that you lose a $600 item with no recourse, buy it closer to home.
And consolidators are usually more willing than economy postal lines to handle the awkward stuff, because they know the rules and charge for the handling. If your parcel keeps getting refused, moving up a tier often solves it faster than arguing does.
None of this makes ordering from China a bad idea. It makes the item the cheap part, and everything after the item is where the money actually goes.
