Trump learns he can't hold back the tide
National Post, 20 February 2025
U.S. customs chaos involving packages from China reminiscent of an old story about another supposedly vainglorious leader, King Canute
It’s possible, as President Donald Trump flings executive orders hither and yon, that he may sign one to regulate the flow of waters in the Gulf of America, or the tides in what may become the American Ocean. After all, did not King Canute do the same?
The tale of Canute and the tides is often told incorrectly — that a vainglorious king, drunk on power, ordered the tide not to roll in. When it did, the humiliated king was forced to concede that there are natural limits to executive power.
The story, as first recorded by Henry of Huntingdon a century after Canute lived, is rather different. Huntingdon wrote that the king wanted to make that point himself, having wearied of his coterie of courtiers, who praised his every utterance as a sort of divine oracle. So Canute went down to the shore, had his throne placed near the surf, and ordered the tide to halt. It rolled in over the royal feet, and Canute illustrated to his sycophants that their overweening flattery was foolish.
They likely already knew that, but knaves are willing to play the fool if it offers them proximity to power and its pecuniary benefits. And some emperors, presidents and prime ministers are, unlike Canute, happy to be surrounded by knaves and fools, as long as their fealty is fiercely sworn.
President Trump had something of a Canute moment. In his various decrees on tariffs — Canada, Mexico, steel and aluminum, global reciprocal impositions — the only ones that have gone into effect are those on China. At the same time, Trump suspended the “de minimis” import provision on goods from China. It proved immediately to be a maximal problem. So Trump backed down, overwhelmed by the tide he tried to stop.
“De minimis” is a provision by which U.S. customs exempts incoming goods sent directly to the consumer from commercial inspections, taxes and duties if the value is less than $800. It has led to an explosion in e-commerce, with American consumers ordering massive amounts of low-cost goods from abroad, mostly from China, but also from Canada and Mexico.
Suspending “de minimis” on Feb. 4 caused immediate chaos. The U.S. postal service stopped accepting packages from China for a day, trying to figure out what to do. U.S. customs processes one million packages a day at JFK airport in New York alone. Under “de minimis” there is screening for illegal goods, but no processing to assess duties or tariffs. That would cost U.S. customs about $5/package and result in several million packages backed up within days.
Thus a few days later, Trump suspended his own suspension of the “de minimis” law. He was powerless to manage the flow of goods, mostly headed toward lower-income consumers needing to stretch their straitened household budgets.
The “de minimis” is usually referred to as a “loophole” but that is rather like considering the sluice gate on a dam to be a “hole” in need of plugging. Plug it for too long — even one day at JFK — and a flood overflows behind the dam.
Trump has given U.S. customs time now to figure out how to process the packages and how much it will cost. There were 1.3 billion “de minimis” packages entering the U.S. last year — about 3.5 million per day, 365 days a year. For context, that’s about a million more than Trump’s margin of victory in the 2024 popular vote. Every day, one per cent of the American population has a “de minimis” package headed their way.
Canute had a better chance against the tide.
Trump’s quick reversal was not only due to logistical logjams in the postal service and at customs. It’s because the first to suffer are those working-class consumers who buy clothes online from Chinese suppliers. Trump’s tariff policies mean an immediate inflationary tax hike on American workers and consumers. That’s the opposite of what he promised. It may be that in the medium- and long-term there will be the Trump-claimed growth in domestic manufacturing jobs, but the higher prices and lost access begins immediately.
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