8 ms·

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. suns

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries have invented sunscreens that feel better on your skin than the old styles, but aren't yet approved in the US. Motorcycle helmets are another. You may have seen the MIPS system - the yellow slipliner that's become popular in bicycle helmets. Scientists have realized that rotational impact leads to concussions and similar brain damage, but prior helmets only protected against naive impacts. Europe now requires helmets to protect against rotational damage. The US requires that manufacturers self-assert that they meet a very old standard that ignores rotational impact. They do not recognize Europe's new standard. Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now. Protectionists are going to see this as a win. More background on helmet standards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUyp3HX8cY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUyp3HX8cY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo

93po 1y ago
i appreciate you mentioning MIPS - i had no idea there was a new, better standard, and i'll definitely get one for my next helmet (motorcycle)
- bsimpson 1y ago
  MIPS is actually pretty rare in motorcycles helmets. I know Bell makes a helmet with it, but the premium helmets tend to come up with their own solutions to the same problem. ECE 22.06 is the standard to look for for rotational protection in 2025.
  - 93po 1y ago
    thanks!
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  MIPS isn’t a standard, but an enhancement (and there is some argument that its benefits are overstated: e.g. you’ll get some beneficial slippage in your helmet if it isn’t as tight as possible, if you have hair, or if the thing you hit is more slippery than asphalt) See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45018181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45018181
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  MIPS is a technology, not a standard. There are other technologies for rotational trrauma protection. The current best standard for consumers is ECE 22.06.
- jq-r 1y ago
  MIPS AB is actually a company, known for predatory patent lawsuits. They've used clever marketing to make MIPS the technology desireable and in my opinion totally unnecessary, or maybe even outright more dangerous for majority of bike riders.
hypeatei 1y ago
This comment was very informative, thanks. It's really disappointing to see a seemingly new wave of people cheering on isolationism/protectionism. Maybe some have valid concerns for certain products that we don't make ourselves (e.g. semiconductors) but Trump and his cronies are not the solution to that at all.
schmookeeg 1y ago
Ignoring the massive political elephant that exists in all of this stuff -- isn't this a good trigger, as demand for the "updated standards" products will force these companies (or resellers of these products) to either validate their products for sale in the US or force the US to recognize these EU standards? I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality products. :/
- bsimpson 1y ago
  If motorcyclists had the power to demand common sense policy improvements, filtering would be legal everywhere, and cities would start adding PTW (powered two-wheels: motorbikes and e-bikes) lanes alongside the current acoustic bike lanes. It's a relatively small constituency. Most politicians don't want to upset the status quo to advocate for them. A lot of non-riders have enough negative experience (hearing scary stories or being startled by delivery drivers working within the current system) to actively add friction to the conversation. For instance, NYC's current chief-of-police is a nepobaby. Her mom is a high society type who is afraid of bicycles, so the police have been actively abd specifically harassing cyclists this year.
  - schmookeeg 1y ago
    Yeah, after I posted (and disappointed a few people apparently) I was thinking about just how sticky this stuff really is, and how our political system is a "broad brush" system. It seems to muddle a lot of the smaller sensible details. Thought-provoking for sure. I'm glad I ride in a filtering-legal state :)
- Rebelgecko 1y ago
  For sunscreen, they just make a separate less effective version for the US market. The market of people who would say "well, I won't buy sunscreen at all unless it's as good as foreign variants at blocking UV-A rays" is pretty small.
  - slipperydippery 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
throwawa5 1y ago
> Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. Stylevana, where I go for my Japanese/Korean sunscreen and skincare, is still shipping to the US as far as I can tell.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewinardeer 1y ago
  Do they use Japan Post?
pessimizer 1y ago
I don't understand the argument that it's bad that the government is suppressing grey markets in goods that aren't approved in the US. I get it from a selfish point of view, as in I want a particular helmet and I think the design is safer, so I'm upset when I can't have it at the price I want it. I don't understand it as a political argument. If our government isn't meant to do anything, shut it down entirely. Don't have processes and subvert them so everybody can do what they want when they want. Who would you vote for to get rules broken whenever they stop you from doing what you want, and why would anybody else vote for that person? That being said, I deeply understand that the science and regulation around any sort of helmeting in the US (also in the case of motorcycles) is completely compromised by the people who sell helmets. The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes, not making rules easier to break for connected, smart, wealthy people. If you think fixing regulatory processes is an absurd, naïve impossibility, shut the government down and stop complaining about trivialities.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  The government can't solve for everything at all times. That's why free markets exist and are important. You could have the best most awesome helmet safety regulation get passed on Friday and have it completely blown up by a new discovery on Monday. How long will it take for regulators to catch up? > The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes Well, that kinda hand waves away a lot of the roadblocks you run into with government and elected officials. In an ideal world, yes, we have regulatory and legislative bodies that can react quickly and do the right thing everytime but that isn't reality.
- bsimpson 1y ago
  Two things are happening at the same time. On the one hand, government is broken writ large. It's been dominated by politicians who care more about power than improvement for as long as I've been alive. The problem becomes worse and feels more intractable every year. I'm not convinced there's anything individuals can practically do to help resolve it. (Those in power would ruin your life if you actually did a good job at making the world better in a way that impinged on their power.) On the other hand, technology is enabling rules to be enforced in a more automated way. You see this with speed cameras, and now also with these stricter shipping requirements. These rules were written to have an exhaust valve: for speed limits, that's police discretion. For imports, that's the de minimus exemption. Nobody cares what individuals do; they care what markets do (which is part of why bans are usually bans on selling, not on owning). I touched on this a little bit about self-driving cars the other day too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987516 The ratcheting of rules into automated policy is dystopian.
Muromec 1y ago
That's an interesting way to approach regulation.
Scoundreller 1y ago
The funny thing about MIPS is that it makes the same helmet safer, but it might have been a garbage helmet to begin with. Throwing away your non-MIPS helmet and replacing it with a MIPS may be a safety-reducing decision, unless you’re buying the exact same model.
- solardev 1y ago
  For anyone who wants more data, Virginia Tech runs a helmet impact testing lab and publishes results and rankings: https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html
  - Scoundreller 1y ago
    If we used a similar methodology for testing cars, we’d be blasting watermelon heads from a cannon against windshields and sacks of potatoes against steering wheels. We’d benefit from more realistic models. But I guess our helmets would then cost $500.
    - solardev 1y ago
      Is the methodology that bad? What's wrong with it? From their test protocol (https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5e7e952d-8e1c-4926-b090-7898bb005e13/content https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5e7...), it looks like they simulate a fall (with a model head inside it) against a target at an oblique angle, at six different impact locations and two speeds each. They go through 4 of each helmet model for the rest. It seems a lot better than nothing (which is what we had before them, at least outside of manufacturers own private tests). Their research was initially funded by the IIHS, the group that does the highway crash tests. How would you like to see it improved?
      - Scoundreller 1y ago
        Crash test dummy on a mechanized bicycle falling off/hitting stuff.
ericmay 1y ago
> Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now. Everything has a trade-off. On the other hand, it also prevents companies from dumping artificially cheap and crappy goods (TEMU) on US markets and making it nearly impossible for others to compete. Unsuspecting consumers buy a super cheap (subsidized) crap product on Amazon or Temu or Shien or wherever - probably a knock-off of an American product, have it shipped to the US, then it disintegrates after a couple of uses or stops working, and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country all so we can help a certain country whose name starts with a C keep the lights on and keep factories running so that they don't see unemployment numbers tick up. Legitimate businesses selling higher quality products where they exist will be able to figure it out. Or not. It's not a big deal if your sunscreen is slightly worse than the Korean version (which I use). Maybe it just hasn't been approved because they haven't done the work to apply because they can get around working with our government and making sure their product meets our safety standards because of the de minimus loophole? There's also safety concerns, which I think the CBP did a good job of overviewing here: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploit-de-minimis-shipments https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploi... . Send drugs or guns or illegal animal products to the US, get caught, who cares you live in (not the US) so you can just spin up another sham company and do it again.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  > and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country But that happens regardless of whether or not you import manufactured goods, doesn't it?
  - nluken 1y ago
    You're not going to get new clothing for TEMU prices without the de minimis exception. In theory, the higher price of these goods will decrease the amount they're purchased and lessen impact of pollution. As others in this thread point out, though, there are other casualties of this change.
johnbrodie 1y ago
The DOT standard isn't good, but the US doesn't disallow helmets that meet other standards. You can buy Bell and Alpinestars MIPS helmets in the US today, no gray market needed: https://www.revzilla.com/mips-motorcycle-helmets https://www.revzilla.com/mips-motorcycle-helmets
- bsimpson 1y ago
  You're on a tangent of a tangent, but: Old school helmets use the philosophy that in a crash, you want your head to be harder than its opponent. New school helmet use the philosophy that a helmet should absorb or deflect as much energy as possible, so that energy doesn't get translated to your brain. They are actually diametrically opposed. Fortnine (the same channel I linked earlier) has a video on the SNELL standard. Its origins are as a beefier version of the DOT standard. They recently found themselves at a crossroads where it's impossible to both meet SNELL and meet ECE 22.06 (today's state-of-the-art standard). They ended up bifurcating SNELL into two standards: one that meets old DOT-based SNELL, and another that basically says "if it's 22.06, they can call it SNELL variant B." It was the only way they could keep the SNELL brand alive across both halves of the transition.
  - harrydehal 1y ago
    "The Snell Helmet Standard is Meaningless" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo
ivape 1y ago
Americans don't fully understand what a pain in the ass it is for people in other countries to buy whatever they want. They are always paying some additional amount, if it's even available.
- Gud 1y ago
  Not really the case in at least Europe and the gulf states
  - trimethylpurine 1y ago
    I'm not sure it's the same as what GP is saying. Maybe anecdotal, but living in Italy I had a very hard time finding a lot of things. Even getting basic mail delivery was pretty difficult. Same with Spain, to varying degrees. As another example, visiting the Netherlands, it would take a week to get a decent child car seat delivered last year. Comparing with the US, it's night and day. I can order something at 6AM and it's at my doorstep by 10AM. And the number of goods that are offered at that speed is absolutely astonishing. As a side note, what the US has done to the shopping experience may not be preferable when considering all related effects on the market, happiness, etc. But it certainly sets a very high bar if you are comparing to Europe. EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that all of this magical instant delivery is free!
stefan_ 1y ago
De minimis makes no sense and the EU doesn't have it either - in fact they recently managed to even make the Chinese properly fill out the tax forms and in most cases prepay it.
- warpspin 1y ago
  > De minimis makes no sense and the EU doesn't have it either You're conflating tax with tariffs here. EU does not have a de minimis rule for tax - you always pay tax on import - but it does have a 150 Euro de minimis rule for tariffs.
mritterhoff 1y ago
Thanks for sharing info about MIPS, it looks great. Short animation of how it works for anyone else who's unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyoSzAPIBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyoSzAPIBE
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
The motorcycle helmet part of this comment is misleading. I can walk down the street to cycle gear and buy an ECE 22.06 rated helmet with MIPS. This is because ECE is a strict superset of DOT, so companies just sell the ECE version in the US with a DOT sticker added on. (I have spoken to the helmet companies about this directly - most respond to a quick email.) It's not like ECE vs SNELL where the standards are incompatible.
dehugger 1y ago
I work for a company that owns three different helmet brands. All of them sell MIPS helmets on our US ecomm websites and have for years. In fact, one saved from what could have been a severe injury this spring (a car pulled in front of me while I was riding an electric scooter at speed). You dont need to do anything special to get a MIPS helmet in the US.

93po 1y ago

i appreciate you mentioning MIPS - i had no idea there was a new, better standard, and i'll definitely get one for my next helmet (motorcycle)

bsimpson 1y ago
MIPS is actually pretty rare in motorcycles helmets. I know Bell makes a helmet with it, but the premium helmets tend to come up with their own solutions to the same problem. ECE 22.06 is the standard to look for for rotational protection in 2025.
- 93po 1y ago
  thanks!
Scoundreller 1y ago
MIPS isn’t a standard, but an enhancement (and there is some argument that its benefits are overstated: e.g. you’ll get some beneficial slippage in your helmet if it isn’t as tight as possible, if you have hair, or if the thing you hit is more slippery than asphalt) See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45018181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45018181
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
MIPS is a technology, not a standard. There are other technologies for rotational trrauma protection. The current best standard for consumers is ECE 22.06.
jq-r 1y ago
MIPS AB is actually a company, known for predatory patent lawsuits. They've used clever marketing to make MIPS the technology desireable and in my opinion totally unnecessary, or maybe even outright more dangerous for majority of bike riders.

hypeatei 1y ago

This comment was very informative, thanks. It's really disappointing to see a seemingly new wave of people cheering on isolationism/protectionism. Maybe some have valid concerns for certain products that we don't make ourselves (e.g. semiconductors) but Trump and his cronies are not the solution to that at all.

schmookeeg 1y ago

Ignoring the massive political elephant that exists in all of this stuff -- isn't this a good trigger, as demand for the "updated standards" products will force these companies (or resellers of these products) to either validate their products for sale in the US or force the US to recognize these EU standards? I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality products. :/

bsimpson 1y ago
If motorcyclists had the power to demand common sense policy improvements, filtering would be legal everywhere, and cities would start adding PTW (powered two-wheels: motorbikes and e-bikes) lanes alongside the current acoustic bike lanes. It's a relatively small constituency. Most politicians don't want to upset the status quo to advocate for them. A lot of non-riders have enough negative experience (hearing scary stories or being startled by delivery drivers working within the current system) to actively add friction to the conversation. For instance, NYC's current chief-of-police is a nepobaby. Her mom is a high society type who is afraid of bicycles, so the police have been actively abd specifically harassing cyclists this year.
- schmookeeg 1y ago
  Yeah, after I posted (and disappointed a few people apparently) I was thinking about just how sticky this stuff really is, and how our political system is a "broad brush" system. It seems to muddle a lot of the smaller sensible details. Thought-provoking for sure. I'm glad I ride in a filtering-legal state :)
Rebelgecko 1y ago
For sunscreen, they just make a separate less effective version for the US market. The market of people who would say "well, I won't buy sunscreen at all unless it's as good as foreign variants at blocking UV-A rays" is pretty small.
- slipperydippery 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

throwawa5 1y ago

> Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. Stylevana, where I go for my Japanese/Korean sunscreen and skincare, is still shipping to the US as far as I can tell.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
andrewinardeer 1y ago
Do they use Japan Post?

pessimizer 1y ago

I don't understand the argument that it's bad that the government is suppressing grey markets in goods that aren't approved in the US. I get it from a selfish point of view, as in I want a particular helmet and I think the design is safer, so I'm upset when I can't have it at the price I want it. I don't understand it as a political argument. If our government isn't meant to do anything, shut it down entirely. Don't have processes and subvert them so everybody can do what they want when they want. Who would you vote for to get rules broken whenever they stop you from doing what you want, and why would anybody else vote for that person? That being said, I deeply understand that the science and regulation around any sort of helmeting in the US (also in the case of motorcycles) is completely compromised by the people who sell helmets. The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes, not making rules easier to break for connected, smart, wealthy people. If you think fixing regulatory processes is an absurd, naïve impossibility, shut the government down and stop complaining about trivialities.

hypeatei 1y ago
The government can't solve for everything at all times. That's why free markets exist and are important. You could have the best most awesome helmet safety regulation get passed on Friday and have it completely blown up by a new discovery on Monday. How long will it take for regulators to catch up? > The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes Well, that kinda hand waves away a lot of the roadblocks you run into with government and elected officials. In an ideal world, yes, we have regulatory and legislative bodies that can react quickly and do the right thing everytime but that isn't reality.
bsimpson 1y ago
Two things are happening at the same time. On the one hand, government is broken writ large. It's been dominated by politicians who care more about power than improvement for as long as I've been alive. The problem becomes worse and feels more intractable every year. I'm not convinced there's anything individuals can practically do to help resolve it. (Those in power would ruin your life if you actually did a good job at making the world better in a way that impinged on their power.) On the other hand, technology is enabling rules to be enforced in a more automated way. You see this with speed cameras, and now also with these stricter shipping requirements. These rules were written to have an exhaust valve: for speed limits, that's police discretion. For imports, that's the de minimus exemption. Nobody cares what individuals do; they care what markets do (which is part of why bans are usually bans on selling, not on owning). I touched on this a little bit about self-driving cars the other day too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987516 The ratcheting of rules into automated policy is dystopian.

Muromec 1y ago

That's an interesting way to approach regulation.

Scoundreller 1y ago

The funny thing about MIPS is that it makes the same helmet safer, but it might have been a garbage helmet to begin with. Throwing away your non-MIPS helmet and replacing it with a MIPS may be a safety-reducing decision, unless you’re buying the exact same model.

solardev 1y ago
For anyone who wants more data, Virginia Tech runs a helmet impact testing lab and publishes results and rankings: https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  If we used a similar methodology for testing cars, we’d be blasting watermelon heads from a cannon against windshields and sacks of potatoes against steering wheels. We’d benefit from more realistic models. But I guess our helmets would then cost $500.
  - solardev 1y ago
    Is the methodology that bad? What's wrong with it? From their test protocol (https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5e7e952d-8e1c-4926-b090-7898bb005e13/content https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5e7...), it looks like they simulate a fall (with a model head inside it) against a target at an oblique angle, at six different impact locations and two speeds each. They go through 4 of each helmet model for the rest. It seems a lot better than nothing (which is what we had before them, at least outside of manufacturers own private tests). Their research was initially funded by the IIHS, the group that does the highway crash tests. How would you like to see it improved?
    - Scoundreller 1y ago
      Crash test dummy on a mechanized bicycle falling off/hitting stuff.

ericmay 1y ago

> Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now. Everything has a trade-off. On the other hand, it also prevents companies from dumping artificially cheap and crappy goods (TEMU) on US markets and making it nearly impossible for others to compete. Unsuspecting consumers buy a super cheap (subsidized) crap product on Amazon or Temu or Shien or wherever - probably a knock-off of an American product, have it shipped to the US, then it disintegrates after a couple of uses or stops working, and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country all so we can help a certain country whose name starts with a C keep the lights on and keep factories running so that they don't see unemployment numbers tick up. Legitimate businesses selling higher quality products where they exist will be able to figure it out. Or not. It's not a big deal if your sunscreen is slightly worse than the Korean version (which I use). Maybe it just hasn't been approved because they haven't done the work to apply because they can get around working with our government and making sure their product meets our safety standards because of the de minimus loophole? There's also safety concerns, which I think the CBP did a good job of overviewing here: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploit-de-minimis-shipments https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploi... . Send drugs or guns or illegal animal products to the US, get caught, who cares you live in (not the US) so you can just spin up another sham company and do it again.

bigyabai 1y ago
> and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country But that happens regardless of whether or not you import manufactured goods, doesn't it?
- nluken 1y ago
  You're not going to get new clothing for TEMU prices without the de minimis exception. In theory, the higher price of these goods will decrease the amount they're purchased and lessen impact of pollution. As others in this thread point out, though, there are other casualties of this change.

johnbrodie 1y ago

The DOT standard isn't good, but the US doesn't disallow helmets that meet other standards. You can buy Bell and Alpinestars MIPS helmets in the US today, no gray market needed: https://www.revzilla.com/mips-motorcycle-helmets https://www.revzilla.com/mips-motorcycle-helmets

bsimpson 1y ago
You're on a tangent of a tangent, but: Old school helmets use the philosophy that in a crash, you want your head to be harder than its opponent. New school helmet use the philosophy that a helmet should absorb or deflect as much energy as possible, so that energy doesn't get translated to your brain. They are actually diametrically opposed. Fortnine (the same channel I linked earlier) has a video on the SNELL standard. Its origins are as a beefier version of the DOT standard. They recently found themselves at a crossroads where it's impossible to both meet SNELL and meet ECE 22.06 (today's state-of-the-art standard). They ended up bifurcating SNELL into two standards: one that meets old DOT-based SNELL, and another that basically says "if it's 22.06, they can call it SNELL variant B." It was the only way they could keep the SNELL brand alive across both halves of the transition.
- harrydehal 1y ago
  "The Snell Helmet Standard is Meaningless" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo

ivape 1y ago

Americans don't fully understand what a pain in the ass it is for people in other countries to buy whatever they want. They are always paying some additional amount, if it's even available.

Gud 1y ago
Not really the case in at least Europe and the gulf states
- trimethylpurine 1y ago
  I'm not sure it's the same as what GP is saying. Maybe anecdotal, but living in Italy I had a very hard time finding a lot of things. Even getting basic mail delivery was pretty difficult. Same with Spain, to varying degrees. As another example, visiting the Netherlands, it would take a week to get a decent child car seat delivered last year. Comparing with the US, it's night and day. I can order something at 6AM and it's at my doorstep by 10AM. And the number of goods that are offered at that speed is absolutely astonishing. As a side note, what the US has done to the shopping experience may not be preferable when considering all related effects on the market, happiness, etc. But it certainly sets a very high bar if you are comparing to Europe. EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that all of this magical instant delivery is free!

stefan_ 1y ago

De minimis makes no sense and the EU doesn't have it either - in fact they recently managed to even make the Chinese properly fill out the tax forms and in most cases prepay it.

warpspin 1y ago
> De minimis makes no sense and the EU doesn't have it either You're conflating tax with tariffs here. EU does not have a de minimis rule for tax - you always pay tax on import - but it does have a 150 Euro de minimis rule for tariffs.

mritterhoff 1y ago

Thanks for sharing info about MIPS, it looks great. Short animation of how it works for anyone else who's unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyoSzAPIBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyoSzAPIBE

trenchpilgrim 1y ago

The motorcycle helmet part of this comment is misleading. I can walk down the street to cycle gear and buy an ECE 22.06 rated helmet with MIPS. This is because ECE is a strict superset of DOT, so companies just sell the ECE version in the US with a DOT sticker added on. (I have spoken to the helmet companies about this directly - most respond to a quick email.) It's not like ECE vs SNELL where the standards are incompatible.

dehugger 1y ago

I work for a company that owns three different helmet brands. All of them sell MIPS helmets on our US ecomm websites and have for years. In fact, one saved from what could have been a severe injury this spring (a car pulled in front of me while I was riding an electric scooter at speed). You dont need to do anything special to get a MIPS helmet in the US.