Anthony DeSousa recently ordered oven repair equipment from a supplier in Canada for his pizza shop, Antonio’s Real New York Pizza, in Estes Park, Colorado. Prior to receiving the parts, which he previously believed totaled about $640, he received an email from UPS that he assumed was a scam. It was asking for an additional $1,196.12 payment for “government charges” and $128.17 for a “brokerage charge.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story, DeSousa dug deeper into the charges and ultimately realized they were genuine. The UPS fees stemmed from a recent U.S. tariff policy that eliminated a longstanding exemption for low-value imports. Until this year, packages worth $800 or less could enter the country without duties. That exemption is now gone—first for shipments from China in May, and by late August, for goods from everywhere else.
The change has created turbulence in global shipping—and headaches for consumers and some small business owners like DeSousa. According to the Journal, nearly 90 foreign postal services have stopped sending e-commerce packages to the U.S. altogether. Daily arrivals of sub-$800 packages dropped from an average of four million last year to just one million this summer.
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For carriers like FedEx, UPS and DHL, the rule shift has meant a surge in shipments requiring customs clearance. All three companies now process duties on behalf of shippers or recipients—often adding their own brokerage or processing fees in the process. When sellers don’t cover the charges up front, the bill defaults to the recipient, sometimes without a clear explanation of how the tariff is calculated.
That’s what happened to DeSousa. His supplier intended to cover the duty fees but ultimately couldn’t get the payment to process through UPS’s system. After multiple failed delivery attempts, DeSousa ultimately declined the shipment. It was an understandable decision: In total, the charges came to $1,964.29, or nearly three times what he was initially quoted.
“Imagine you order a $20 pizza and you get an additional $57 tariff bill upon delivery because of duties on the prosciutto di Parma from Italy and the bell peppers from Peru,” DeSousa told the Journal.
The confusion stems in part from the Trump Administration’s move to close a loophole that was allowing international businesses to ship cheap goods to the U.S. to avoid recently levied tariffs. As the legality of the Trump Administration’s tariffs moves through courts, mail carriers, post offices and end recipients in the U.S. have been left in limbo.
DeSousa founded Antonio’s Real New York Pizza in 2014 in Estes Park, which is about 90 minutes Northwest of Denver by car. He opened a second shop in Longmont—about an hour closer to Denver—in 2024. Both pizzerias offer dine-in, online ordering and pickup. The newer shop in Longmont also offers slices.
