By JAMES POMFRET, LISA BARRINGTON and CASEY HALL Reuters
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HONG KONG/SEOUL/SHANGHAI — The U.S. Postal Service said on Wednesday it would again accept parcels from China and Hong Kong, reversing a temporary suspension after President Donald Trump scrapped an exemption used by retailers including Temu, Shein, and Amazon to ship low-value packages duty-free to the U.S.

The about-face contributed to growing confusion among retailers and express shipping firms over how to deal with Trump’s new 10% tariff on all imports from China and his closure of the “de minimis” duty exemption for package imports valued at under $800.

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“We’re all running around like headless chickens at this moment in time, trying to second-guess what’s going to happen. And in two weeks’ time we may be back to normal,” said Martin Palmer, co-founder of Hurricane Commerce, a cross-border ecommerce data provider.

The Trump administration has blamed the de minimis exemption for allowing fentanyl and its precursor chemicals to enter the U.S. unscreened. Recent

Reuters reporting

has also found that drug traffickers have exploited the exemption.

USPS said that it was working with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery,” it said in a statement.

USPS did not immediately comment on whether its temporary suspension had been tied to Trump’s order ending de minimis shipments from China, which was announced on Saturday and came into force from one minute past midnight on Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning there was still no call scheduled between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss the new U.S. tariffs and Beijing’s retaliatory measures, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Trump said on Tuesday that he was in no hurry to speak with Xi.

As Trump’s tariffs, nominally aimed at curbing the flow of fentanyl and precursor chemicals into the U.S., took effect just after midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, China responded with targeted tariffs

on imports of U.S. coal, liquefied natural gas, crude oil and farm equipment, and opened an anti-monopoly investigation into Alphabet’s Google.

But the launch of the new trade war caught the retail and shipping sectors flat-footed.

“There has really been absolutely zero time for anyone to prepare for this,” said Maureen Cori, co-founder of New York-based consultancy Supply Chain Compliance. “What we really need is direction from the government on how to handle this without warning or notice.”

Currently, de minimis parcels are consolidated so that customs can clear hundreds or thousands of shipments at once, but they will now require individual clearances, significantly increasing the burden for postal services, brokers and customs agents, Cori said.