Trump's tariffs impact on your Decent Espresso purchase

TLDR:

DE1:

On June 1st, 2025, we received confirmation from a customer that DHL is tariffing the DE1 at a total cost of $118. That means that our arguments for our tariff classification are being accepted by DHL, which is good news. On July 22nd 2025, we received a copy of another customer tariff bill, this time for $155, in line with what they'd ordered (DE1+accessories). So, it appears that we have achieved consistency with DHL's tariff evaluations.
Exemptions for high technology products lower the tariff to 20%, and the DE1 is sent under that tariff classification. As of May 14, if the 20% tariff exemption is not accepted in your case, a 30% tariff will apply.
Once they begin, we don't foresee a tariff in excess of USD$100 (20% x USD$500)
As of May 14, if the 20% tariff exemption is not accepted in your case, you might have to pay a 30% tariff.
If you do receive a tariff bill from a courier, please contact us, so that we can see what we can do to have it reduced or vacated. Because the tariffs (and exemptions) have been changing so quickly, it's possible that the bill was calculated using older rules, that are less favorable than the new ones.

Coffee Accessories:

Starting May 2, HK post will no longer accept packages destined to the US, which they would normally then hand off to USPS.
- Coffee accessories orders for the USA will be shipped expedited (UPS/FEDEX) as of April 28, with a cost of USD$30 charged for shipping.
You might have to pay tariffs to receive your goods. As of May 14, a 30% tariff applies.
Most of our customers have not been taxed at all for their coffee accessory orders.

Detailed explanation:

In rapid succession, the US has first imposed tariffs of 10%, then 20%, then 54%, then 104%, then 125%, then 145%, then 30% (on May 14) on goods coming from Hong Kong, where Decent Espresso is based. On April 13th, exemptions for high technology products were announced, lowering the DE1's applicable tariff to 20% multiplied to the DE1 dutiable basis of USD$500 . As of May 14, if the 20% tariff exemption is not accepted in your case, a 30% tariff will apply.

In practical terms, though, what does this mean?

Decent sends espresso machines (and other goods weighing over 2kg) to the US via couriers such as UPS, FEDEX and DHL.

These are sent DDU (Delivery Duty Unpaid)
As of April 14, the duty rate for our “Computerized espresso machine” is 20%,
The dutiable basis for our DE1 espresso machine is USD$500.
- Decent ship its hardware separately from its software.
- The hardware is valued at USD$500.
- The rest of value is ascribed to the software, which is delivered to you over the Internet, and which is not subject to tariffs.
- The US is a signatory to the WTO's Information Technology Agreement which governs this practice.
  - “The aim of the treaty is to lower all taxes and tariffs on information technology products by signatories to zero” (wikipedia)
- Decent pursues this policy worldwide, and has defended (and won) twice in customs court in EU jurisdictions.

Decent sends all coffee accessory orders weighing less than 2kg, via USPS.

However, USPS has delayed implementing tariff collection and it is not clear when USPS will be able to do so.
Given that on average, every man, woman and child in the US receives 5 small packages from China each year, this new tariff collection will be a massive undertaking for USPS.
We have not yet heard of any USPS package we sent, being held for customs duty due.
The White House Fact Sheet specifies a 30% tariff on packages shipped via the postal services.
- There is also mention of “or” a $25 (rising later to $50) per item tax, but it's unclear if the logic is the “greater” or the “lesser” of the two options. Articles about the tax have been written with either meaning, so this appears to be officially unclear at the moment.

We do not think that the tariffs are being actually collected in the majority of cases, with packages sent DDU via couriers.

Our own experience is that 1 DE1 sent in 200 was tariffed.
Meanwhile, another manufacturer told us that out of 7000 packages to the US, 3 were tariffed.
In both cases, that's about 0.5% of packages.

Our guess is that because the rules are changing so quickly, and processes take time to change, the parties responsible for collecting tariffs from couriers are waiting for the same rules to remain in place for some time, before undertaking the effort to apply them.

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