(Yicai) Feb. 6 -- Several Chinese companies engaged in cross-border e-commerce have responded to US President Donald Trump’s elimination of the de minimis tariff exemption for low-value goods by raising prices.

Yiwu Canyuan Import and Export yesterday hiked the prices of its products on cross-border e-commerce sites by 25 percent due to changes in the US tariff policy, Feng Junfeng, the Chinese small goods trading company’s general manager, told Yicai.

On Feb. 1, Trump signed an executive order that ended the de minimis tariff exemption for items valued under USD800. According to data from the US Customs and Border Protection agency, the move will impact more than one billion low-value items shipped directly to individual US consumers from China.

YunExpress started charging US customers additional CNY20 (USD3) per parcel to US residents for customs clearance. The Chinese cross-border logistics services provider explained that the adjustments in the US tariff policy led to a significant increase in customs clearance costs.

US Postal Service announced on Feb. 4 that it would suspend accepting packages sent to the US from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. USPS resumed such services the day after.

Chinese cross-border e-commerce merchants need to change the way they deliver goods from directly to consumers to through general trading, which will likely increase costs and the delivery time by one to two days, Wang Sijie, vice president of Chinese cross-border supply chain services provider Winit, told Yicai.

In the short term, more merchants will rely on overseas warehouses to deliver their goods, with this kind of business expected to grow significantly this year, Wang noted.

To save delivery costs and time, cross-border e-commerce merchants can transport goods in bulk to overseas warehouses to deliver them to overseas customers directly from there.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Futura Costaglione