Business
How Trump’s Closing a Tariff Loophole Will Hurt UPS and FedEx
Less than a year ago, executives from FedEx and UPS were talking about how they were handling a flood of packages from China to American consumers.
“Explosive” is how Carol Tomé, UPS’s chief executive, in July described the volume of shipments from e-commerce companies selling Chinese goods in the United States. And FedEx’s chief customer officer, Brie Carere, said about those companies in June, “No one carrier can serve their entire needs.”
But that torrent is expected to slow to a trickle after President Trump on Friday closed a loophole that had allowed cheap goods from China to enter the United States without paying tariffs.
The business of transporting hundreds of millions of low-value shipments on as many as 60 freighter flights a day between China and the United States could now wither.
A falloff in such shipments could deprive companies like UPS, FedEx and DHL of a big source of revenue. Airlines, mainly those that carry only cargo, and smaller logistics companies could also suffer. Passenger airlines may also be hurt somewhat because they carry some of those packages, too.
UPS said last week that it expected the revenue from shipping packages from China to the United States — its most profitable trade lane — to decline roughly 25 percent in the second quarter of this year, from a year earlier. UPS also announced that it would cut 20,000 jobs this year as part of a long-term plan to reduce costs, and said “macroeconomic uncertainty” prevented it from updating its forecasts for revenue and profits for 2025.
Ms. Tomé said UPS’s China-to-U.S. business was responsible for 11 percent of the company’s international revenue. She suggested that the company could take the trade tensions in stride, saying that, when trade between China and the United States declined during Mr. Trump’s first term, it increased between China and rest of the world.
But because Mr. Trump is now waging a more aggressive and broader trade war, logistics companies may not be able to easily make up for lost sales in other places, as they were able to during his first term, analysts said.
“It was a bit of a bumpy ride the last time,” said Jay Cushing, an analyst for Gimme Credit. “It took a little while for things to level out, but this is probably going to take even longer.”
The tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods during his first term helped set off the gusher of inexpensive goods from China.
To avoid those tariffs, Chinese sellers increasingly sent products to the United States under the loophole that was closed on Friday for imports from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Known as the de minimis exemption, the loophole allowed buyers to import goods worth $800 or less without paying tariffs or filling out detailed customs paperwork. Now that the exemption is gone, American shoppers will have to pay tariffs of as much as 145 percent on Chinese goods, adding $14.50 to the cost of a $10 T-shirt.
Temu, one of the biggest e-commerce companies selling Chinese goods, said last week that it was no longer shipping orders from China directly to American consumers. “All sales in the U.S. are now handled by locally based sellers, with orders fulfilled from within the country,” Temu said in a statement.
As the ending of the exemption loomed, Wall Street analysts pressed delivery companies to predict the impact.
When asked on an investor call in March what share of revenue came from de minimis shipments, FedEx’s chief executive, Raj Subramaniam, said it was a “minority.”
Isabel Rollison, a FedEx spokeswoman, declined to offer a more precise estimate. “In terms of our revenue split by geography, we serve an extremely diversified customer base across more than 220 countries and territories,” she said in a statement.
DHL, based in Bonn, Germany, also declined to say to say what percentage of its business came from de minimis shipments from China. Glennah Ivey-Walker, a DHL spokeswoman, said they represented “only a small portion of our overall U.S.-bound volume and our overall business volume in the U.S. market.”
Ending the exemption might have been worse for the carriers had it not been for a late change to the rules by the Trump administration.
The lower-value goods were set to become subject to strict customs rules that require detailed paperwork. But the administration late last month issued a waiver that allowed the goods to be treated more leniently.
Some trade experts said the administration’s change undermined tariff collection because it deprived Customs and Border Protection of information it needed to make sure that importers were paying the correct amount of import duties.
“If you don’t know exactly what the good is, it’s hard to know what the right potential value is or what the right tariff should be,” said Lori Wallach, director of a trade program at American Economic Liberties Project, an organization that seeks to curb the power of large corporations.
But some customs lawyers said that, even after the waiver, detailed information would still be required.
The waiver came after DHL stopped making some shipments that were subject to the paperwork requirement, and after it had spoken to members of the Trump administration.
Ms. Ivey-Walker, the DHL spokeswoman, said the waiver would not “make it harder to collect tariffs or in any way impede the government’s ongoing efforts to protect its borders.” She added that DHL had spoken to the administration to highlight the delays that might occur if the detailed paperwork requirement was enforced.
A sharp decline in low-value shipments could also shake airlines.
Air cargo shipments had already slowed even before the end of the exemption on Friday.
By mid-April, air cargo traffic from mainland China and Hong Kong to the United States was down about 16 percent from a year earlier, according to WorldACD, an industry data firm. And experts say that traffic is likely to slow further in the coming weeks.
“We expect to see as much as 30 to 40 percent of China-to-U.S. capacity come out of the market,” said Derek Lossing, the founder of Cirrus Global Advisors, an e-commerce and supply chain consulting firm.
The carriers most active in e-commerce trade between China and the United States include two U.S. cargo airline companies, Atlas Air Worldwide and Kalitta Air; Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways; and the cargo divisions of Chinese airlines, according to several air cargo experts.
U.S. passenger airlines are not as vulnerable because they operate relatively few flights between the United States and mainland China and Hong Kong.
To make up for the losses, Chinese businesses may try to sell more goods to customers elsewhere, including in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, experts said.
There are already signs of such a shift. While air cargo shipments from China to the United States were down in the weeks leading up to the expiration of the exemption, flights into Miami, a hub for flights to Latin America, were up slightly, according to Mr. Lossing.
The strait is just 35 miles wide, but before the war began, a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and one-fifth of its gas traversed through the waterway. The choking off of that supply is creating economic shocks around the world. Even nations not heavily dependent on Gulf oil and gas are contending with the consequences.
International oil prices are at their highest levels in years. L.N.G. prices have soared. Rising jet fuel costs are causing flight cancellations. From Tokyo to Vancouver, driving has become considerably more expensive. In Bangladesh, garment factories have begun to sit idle. In Pakistan, the government has established statewide school closures to conserve power.
The price shock is depleting foreign currency reserves and stoking inflation in nations already struggling with rising costs.
Experts have called the current situation a “systemic collapse” of the energy security era established in the 20th century.
Governments worldwide are deploying measures to combat shortages and high energy prices, including the largest-ever release of strategic oil reserves by the United States, Japan, South Korea and others.
For now, energy experts and economists say these stopgap measures are helping shield households and companies from the most acute disruptions, but they warn that the drag on global economic growth will compound if the war persists.
President Trump has pressed for an international naval coalition to break the Iranian blockade of the strait. Over the weekend, he threatened to obliterate parts of Iran if it did not reverse course. Tehran has said “non-hostile” ships can sail through the strait, but it is unclear if any vessels will try.
Methodology
The New York Times identified ports and energy installations in the Persian Gulf affected by the Strait of Hormuz and then used activity tracked by Kpler, an industry data firm, to measure the tonnage of individual shipments flowing out of the region in 2025, as well as their final destinations. The shipping analysis focused on seaborne trade and was limited to the following oil and gas products: crude oil and condensate; gasoline and naphtha; liquefied petroleum gas; gasoil and diesel; kero and jet; fuel oils; and liquefied natural gas. About half of the outgoing shipments made by Iran are estimated by Kpler using satellite imagery.
After a grueling seven weeks of court proceedings and more than 40 hours of tense deliberations across nine days in one of the country’s most closely-watched civil trials, jurors handed down a landmark decision in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, finding Instagram and YouTube responsible for the suffering of a Chico woman who charged the platforms were built to addict young users. .
Kaley G.M., the 20-year-old plaintiff, arrived in court just before 10 a.m. wearing the same rose-colored maxi dress she’d donned to testify in February. She remained stoic as the verdict, the $3 million damages award and the decision warranting punitive damages were read out. A companion fought back tears, her chin quivering. Several observers wept silently despite Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl’s repeated warning not to respond.
“We need to have no reaction to the jury’s verdict — no crying out, no reactions, no disturbance,” Kuhl warned. “If there is we will have to have you removed from the courtroom, and we sure don’t want to have to do that.”
Attorneys for Snapchat and TikTok also appeared in court Wednesday morning to hear the decision. The two platforms settled with Kaley out of court for undisclosed sums before the trial.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” a spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company Meta said.
The verdict arrived less than 24 hours after a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for $375 million in damages related to Atty. Gen. Raúl Torres’ claim it turned Instagram into a “breeding ground” for child predators — a decision the platform has vowed to appeal.
The Los Angeles jury took much longer to deliberate. On Friday, jurors preempted their pizza lunch break to ask Kuhl whether all of them should weigh in on damages, or only those who’d agreed on liability. On Monday they told Kuhl they were struggling to agree about one of the defendants.
Kuhl told the jury to keep trying.
Kaley said she first got hooked on YouTube and Instagram in grade school. Jurors were charged with determining whether the companies acted negligently in designing their products and failed to warn her of the dangers.
Their verdict will echo through of thousands of other pending lawsuits, reshaping the legal landscape for some of the world’s most powerful companies. Experts say the payout will likely set the bar for future awards.
It comes on the heels of a Delaware court decision clearing Meta’s insurers of responsibility for damages incurred from “several thousand lawsuits regarding the harm its platforms allegedly cause children” — a ruling that could leave it and other tech titans on the hook for untold future millions.
Until this trial, which began in late January, no suit seeking to hold tech titans responsible for harms to children had ever reached a jury. Many more are now set to follow.
Amy Neville (L), who lost her son Alexander at 14 from fentanyl he purchased through social media, is hugged by attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett, as they wait for a verdict in the social media trial tasked to determine whether social media giants deliberately designed their platforms to be addictive to children, in Los Angeles, on March 20, 2026.
(PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
Kaley’s test case was chosen from among scores of suits currently consolidated in California state court. Hundreds more are moving together through the federal system, where the first trial is set for June in San Francisco.
Collectively, the suits seek to prove that harm flowed not from user content but from the design and operation of the platforms themselves.
That’s a critical legal distinction, experts say. Social media companies have so far been protected by a powerful 1996 law called Section 230, which has shielded the apps from responsibility for what happens to children who use it.
Lawyers for Meta and Google argued Kaley’s struggles were the result of her fractious home life and fallout from the COVID pandemic, not social media.
Phyllis Jones (R), attorney for Meta, leaves the Los Angeles Superior Court on March 12, 2026.
(Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
“I don’t think it should have ever gotten to a jury trial,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and an expert on the 1st Amendment, which also protects the platforms. “All media tries to keep people on [their platform] and coming back.”
Others say social media’s algorithmic ability to capture, cultivate and control attention makes it fundamentally different from teen-friendly romantasy novels, Marvel movies or first-person shooter games.
“These are truly hard and heart breaking cases,” said Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State College of Law. “[They] represent a clash between free speech values and the real harms caused by protecting those companies that engage in free speech amplification for profit.”
“Letting jurors sort all of this out without more guidance is tempting but also risky,” he said.
As deliberations that began March 13 wore on, jurors signaled similar skepticism, asking to see internal Meta documents, and reviewing testimony from a defense expert “in regards to her professional integrity; being the only doctor stating social media was not a contributing factor to KGM’s mental health.”
They appeared to agree on Meta’s culpability by Friday, but labored through Tuesday to hash out a decision for Google, delivering their verdict just after 10 a.m. Wednesday.
“Today, a jury saw the truth and held Meta and Google accountable for designing products that addict and harm children,” said Lexi Hazam, court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the related federal action. “This verdict sends an unmistakable message that no company is above accountability.”
The outcome will likely transform the already heated debate over social media addiction as a concept, what role apps may play in engineering it, and whether individuals like Kaley can prove they’re afflicted.
The platforms’ attorneys sought to cast doubt on the ailment — emphasizing that there is no formal diagnosis for social media addiction — while also arguing that Kaley had never been treated for it.
“Substitute the words ‘YouTube’ for the word methamphetamine,” attorney Luis Li urged the jury during closing arguments Thursday. “Ask yourselves with your lifetime of experience whether anybody suffering from addiction could say, ‘Yeah, I just kind of lost interest.’”
“She was sitting there for hours without being on her phone,” said Meta attorney Paul W. Schmidt.
YouTube’s team also sought to distance the video-sharing app from Instagram and other social media platforms, saying its functions are fundamentally different.
Kaley’s team called it “a gateway” to her social media addiction.
“YouTube wasn’t a gateway to anything,” Li said. “YouTube was a toy that a child liked and then put down.”
Jurors disagreed, ultimately holding the platform liable, though they split the liability 70-30, weighting heavily to Meta.
Lanier leaned on his down-home Texas folksiness throughout the trial, telling the jury what was on his heart and scribbling with grease pencil on his demonstrative aids. In his direct addresses to the jury, he used a set of wooden baby blocks, stacks of paper, even a hammer and a crate of eggs.
During the punitive phase of the trial late Wednesday morning, he brought out a glass jar filled with 415 peanut M&Ms to represent the $415 billion dollars of stockholder’s equity Google’s parent company Alphabet was valued at in December.
“What are you going to fine them for this?” he probed. “Are you going to fine them a billion?” He plucked a green M&M from the top of the pile. “Two billion?” He pulled out another. “You know a pack of M&Ms has 18 M&Ms in it? You fine them a billion, and they’re not going to notice.”
“The last thing in the world they want you to do is talk about how many M&Ms they’ve got,” the lawyer said, urging jurors to “talk to Meta in Meta money”. “The last thing in the world they want you to do is focus on what it takes to hold them accountable for what they’ve done.”
Conversely, the tech teams relied on slick digital presentations to review evidence and illustrate their arguments.
“Focus on those facts that are at issue in this case,” Schmit urged the jury during closings. “Not lawyer arguments, not props like a glass of water or a jar of M&Ms, But actual proof in evidence.”
During the punitive phase of the trial, he sought to emphasize that “there wasn’t an intention to do harm” to children, and that it had worked diligently to make its products safer.
The case was the first to get Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the witness stand, where he defended Instagram’s safety record and lamented the difficulty of keeping youngsters off the app.
It also made public tens of thousands of pages of internal documents — documents Lanier argued showed the companies intentionally targeted children, and engineered their products to keep them on the platforms longer.
“These are internal documents that you’re uniquely seeing because you’re the jury that got to sit on this case,” Lanier told the jury during closing arguments on Thursday. “It’s given you exposure that the world hasn’t had.”
Those previously undisclosed materials likely proved critical to the jury’s ultimate verdict, experts said.
“Internal emails here were key — they painted a picture of indifference at Meta,” said Joseph McNally, former Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California and an expert in “technology-related harm.”
The tech titans have already vowed to appeal both the California and New Mexico verdicts, all-but ensuring the issue is ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, experts said.
OpenAI plans to shut down its Sora text-to-video tool, a stunning move that comes three months after Walt Disney Co. pledged to invest $1 billion in the artificial intelligence company and allow the use of dozens of beloved characters.
The San Francisco-based company did not disclose why it was shutting down the tool or the timeline for its phaseout. In a post Tuesday on the Sora account on X, the company said it knew the news was “disappointing.”
“To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you,” the post said.
Open AI’s pivot comes as the company was engaged in discussions with Disney to formalize their arrangement — but no deal had been reached, according to a source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment.
Although Disney had pledged to make the huge investment, the company had not yet made any payments to OpenAI, this person said. OpenAI had not paid any fees to license Disney characters.
A Disney spokesperson said in a statement that the company respected OpenAI’s decision to shift its priorities away from video generation.
“We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators,” the spokesperson said.
The emergence of Sora had roiled Hollywood, particularly as AI and compensation for actors’ likeness and voice became a central issue in the 2023 strike.
Performers guild SAG-AFTRA had said at the time of the Disney-OpenAI announcement that it would “closely monitor the deal and its implementation to ensure compliance with our contracts and with applicable laws protecting image, voice, and likeness.”
OpenAI first previewed Sora in 2024, and the realism of the tool’s AI-generated videos grabbed audiences at a time when competing video generation apps struggled.
The text-to-video platform enabled users to create short videos with different styles, voices and dedicated features such as “storyboard,” which enabled users to weave together prompts to make longer videos with consistent characters — something that wasn’t possible before.
In September, OpenAI launched Sora as a dedicated app to create and share AI-generated videos with friends, which many viewed as a social networking app modeled after TikTok.
The app’s remix feature enabled users to superimpose the likeness of their friends or celebrities into existing AI-generated video or create new ones. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, encouraged users to slap his likeness onto AI-generated scenes and other pop-culture videos.
The lax approach to copyright allowed the re-creation of dead celebrities and copyrighted characters from titles including WWE and South Park, which OpenAI said it would allow on its platform unless the celebrities opt out.
Despite hitting 1 million downloads in a week, the app lost its sheen, as regular users found little everyday use for a dedicated AI video app. As legal challenges mounted, Sora also strengthened its copyright guardrails and “content violation” warnings became a routine part of denying user requests.
But the AI space has become increasingly crowded. OpenAI’s smaller rival Anthropic has gained ground by offering its AI coding services to enterprises rather than just to consumers. Its Claude tool has become especially popular for coding tasks.
Since Sora’s release, competitors such as Google Veo and Bytedance’s Seedance also have rushed into the AI video generation market.
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
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