No matter where you live on Planet Earth, if you aren’t aware of Donald Trump’s new trade tariffs, or at least the fact that The White House has announced new trade tariffs, it’s possible that you might in fact not be living on Planet Earth at all.

I don’t mean to be flippant or facetious, and the real purpose of this blog is to explain what these new tariffs mean to our customers in the USA (which, know right from the start, is actually really good news), but I would find it very surprising if anyone at all who has access to a TV, a radio, a computer, a smart phone or a newspaper is not aware of the changes and is not worried by them.

What very few people know though, is that despite what the headlines tell us, not everything changed, and as far as we’re concerned here at Beaufort Ink, it’s very much business as usual.

Read on and I’ll tell you why - and it’s great news, I promise!

Trade tariffs are the percentage rates used by a country’s customs authority to calculate import duty, and before Mr Trump’s so called Liberation Day on 2nd April 2025, we were legally able to ship up to $800 worth of goods to the USA, without the US customs authority even batting an eyelid. To be fair, that $800 needed to include the cost of shipping, but as long as the total value of the order including shipping was no more than $800 it would not incur any import duty.

If the value tipped the scales and came to more than $800, which is about £600 in good old British Pounds, then the entire order would attract import duty, the tariff for which was about 2.7% for pen related products, although it varied a tiny bit depending on exactly what was in the parcel.

Since 2nd April, that 2.7% is consigned to history. It has been replaced by a blanket 10% tariff on almost all goods entering the USA from the UK, irrespective of the type of product. There are exceptions that attract an even higher percentage, but we don’t need to concern ourselves with those here since Beaufort Ink doesn’t make cars, nor do we manufacture raw steel or aluminium.

What has not changed however, is that very handy $800 threshold. It’s still very much in place and even amidst the continual announcments coming from Trump, all the indications are that it seems destined to remain in place. The great news is then, that we are able to continue legally shipping orders up to $800 to the USA without the need for you, the customer, to pay any import duty whatsoever.

The $800 duty threshold is properly called the “de minimis exemption” and in case you want to look it up online it’s covered by Section 321 of the Tariff Act in the USA. It won’t please all our US customers unfortunately, as quite a few of you routinely place orders well in excess of the threshold. If you do, you’ll now pay duty at the rate of 10% on the whole lot I’m afraid, but if you can keep your orders under $800, or if you split them into different orders to remain under the threshold, you won’t pay any duty at all.

The bottom line is though, that the vast majority of our customers in the USA will remain unaffected by Donald Trump’s increased trade tariffs and will continue not to have to pay any import duty whatsoever when you order from Beaufort Ink.

And that, you have to agree, as I said near the beginning, is great news!

A quick note to end with, about how much $800 represents when you order on our website, which is priced in British Pounds.

To establish if duty is payable, and if so, how much, the currency conversion is calculated by Customs using the exchange rate on the day the goods enter the US, not on the day they are purchased. Exchange rates fluctuate and change from moment to moment, sometimes dramatically, but the dollar rarely goes above $1.35 to the pound these days, and in fact hasn’t done so since the dark days of Covid more than 3 years ago. In other words, if you had placed an order on our website at that time for £100, US Customs would have valued it at $135 for the purposes of import duty calculations. There wouldn't have been any import duty to pay in my example of course, because the value would have been well short of $800, but you get the principle of how it works.

Today as I write this, it’s about $1.28 to the pound, after a spike last week that considerably devalued the dollar in reaction to the “Liberation Day” announcements. But that spike only took the dollar to about $1.31 to the pound.

Your order on our website will be in British pounds, but if you include the cost of shipping and multiply the total value by 1.35, although obviously not completely foolproof or guaranteed, it will pretty much give you a worst case conversion into dollars for the purposes of duty calculations. However, I’m afraid that we cannot be held responsible if you’re unfortunate enough to get caught by spikes or fluctuations in the exchange rate on the day that US Customs do their stuff.

So there you are. You're now fully up to speed with what's going on as far as ordering in the US from Beaufort Ink is concerened, so as I said right at the start, despite all the worry it's business as usual. And if it changes, we'll let you know.

Phil Dart
April 2025