It was a loophole. The country taxes imports of X, the intent is for those who sell X in the US to pay the tax. Standard retailers using distribution have to p

It was a loophole. The country taxes imports of X, the intent is for those who sell X in the US to pay the tax. Standard retailers using distribution have to pay it. But if you put the warehouses outside the US and ship direct you don’t. That’s not how the law was supposed to work. De minimus is a legal term that means something. It means so small as to not matter. When retailers figured out how to use this approach to send hundreds of billions of dollars of goods without the intended tax, they were exploiting a loophole. It being closed should have happened ages ago it’s just confusing now because it’s in the midst of a lot of other tariff activity that makes a lot less sense.