After months of negotiations Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau have finally come to an agreement and there is much to be celebrated about this new deal when it comes to Canadian online shopping.
Canadian online shoppers will be pleased that now they will be able to ship more goods into Canada without paying duties as new agreement increased the minimum cross-border purchase price for duties and taxes, known as deminimis threshold. We wrote in an article not so long ago pushing for this change in increase to duties exemptions. I guess Trump and Trudeau have listened to our rumblings.
Canada’s deminimis threshold was $20 since the 80s and have not been updated since. That means that anything you ship into Canada over $20 must incur a duty and a tax unless the product is exempt.
Under the new NAFTA or the new name of NAFTA, USMCA, these thresholds will be increased. Canada has agreed to increase deminimus to $40 for tax purposes (ie GST/HST) and $150 for duty purchases.
Canadian retail was not pleased with the change as they say hundreds and possible thousands of retail jobs will now be lost.
Oh dear … to my American friends: the new NAFTA, called the USMCA, will reduce your duty-free allowance from $800 to $100 when you buy online and order goods from abroad. Does the American consumer feel all that “winning” yet? pic.twitter.com/MAfVkiEFCt
— Alex Bartos #resist #glovesoff (@itsreallyalexb) October 1, 2018
Mexico has also upped its deminimis to $100 US or about $130 Canadian while US has decided to decrease their deminimis from $800 to $100 US.
So Canada has now officially the largest duty free exemption in North America. Sounds like a win for Canadian consumers. Time to load up that www.amazon.com.
