The US is closing a loophole that's kept a lot of online shopping cheap. Good morning. This is the Marketplace Morning Report and we're live from the BBC World Service. I'm Leanna Byrne. Yes, if you're an American shopper buying cheaper goods from abroad could be about to cost more. The US has wrapped up a long-running global tax exemption on imports worth $800 or less.

It's an end to what is known as the de minimis loophole. The exemption already ended for packages

from China and Hong Kong. Now it's been stopped globally. The BBC's Sir Njana Tuari explains why.

The White House says that between 2015 and 2024, the volume of

de minimis shipments entering the US increase to more than 1.36 billion and that the system

has been abused and used to smuggle the deadly opioid fentanyl into the US. Now, there is a bit of flexibility for the next six months,

with senders having to pay either a fixed amount ranging from $80 to $200 or be subject to the

tariff rate in the country of origin, which, of course, in India's case, for example, could be as high

as 50%. Now, like Sarnj, for example, could be as high as 50%.

Now, like Sarnjana said, there will be a transition period where postal services can pay a flat duty.

But Kate Muth, executive director of International Mailers Advisory Group, says that's not going to help.

The flat duty won't help because the way that's set up is it's $80 per package if you are one of the lower tariffed countries.

So, for example, the UK, a good, that's maybe $20 coming to the U.S.

If you use that flat rate per package, it would be $80 as the tariff.

So six months, that flat rate goes away completely, and I don't expect anybody to use it anyways.

Some overseas postal services have already stopped sending low value parcels to the US.

In the UK, one of the businesses feeling the squeeze is Yandy Skin, a beauty products exporter run by Julian Batai.

He says he's no idea how to charge customers.

You know, the most frustrating thing, the short answer is no, we don't.

We don't know how much of that we want to obviously charge to the customer.

And is it going to affect their kind of buying attitudes and habits as well?

Also, I was wanting to fundraise and it just makes it a very difficult time because we don't

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