VIABOX Official Package Forwarding Newsletter

Category: General

Brazil’s Tax-Free Import Window Closes September 8
Since mid-May 2026, Brazil has been running a real-world experiment in what happens when you strip a tax off small international packages. The federal government suspended its 20% import tax — known locally as the “taxa das blusinhas” — on parcels worth up to US$50, dropping the federal rate to zero. The result: international package volume did not just rise, it exploded. Brazil’s postal system received 28.36 million international packages in June 2026 alone, up 118% from 13.02 million a year earlier. In the state of Ceará, parcel shipments jumped 64.35% almost immediately after the zero-rate took effect.

Now that experiment is about to hit a deadline. The tax cut was never permanent law — it was issued as a temporary executive measure (medida provisória), and it expires on September 8, 2026. If Brazil’s Congress doesn’t formally approve it by then, the old 20% federal tax on sub-$50 parcels snaps back on September 9. Lawmakers are currently juggling 32 separate temporary measures at once, so the outcome isn’t guaranteed either way.

What Actually Changes

Right now, a parcel valued at $50 or less pays 0% federal import tax, though Brazil’s roughly 17% state sales tax (ICMS) still applies regardless of the federal rate. Parcels above $50 already face a much steeper federal tax and are unaffected by this particular deadline. If the measure lapses, that 0% on small parcels reverts to 20%, pushing the effective tax burden on a typical low-value order back toward 35-40% once state tax is layered on top — a meaningful jump for anyone budgeting a purchase around what it will actually cost to receive.

Why It’s Bigger Than Shein and Shopee

Most coverage of this story focuses on Shein, Shopee, and AliExpress, since those platforms built their Brazil strategy around high volumes of sub-$50 parcels moving through the country’s compliant cross-border e-commerce program. Domestic Brazilian retailers have lobbied hard against the exemption, arguing it lets foreign platforms undercut local sellers on price.

But the tax treatment isn’t really about which platform a package comes from — it’s about the parcel’s declared value crossing into Brazil. That matters just as much to a shopper who skips the marketplace apps entirely and buys straight from a US retailer’s own website. Someone in São Paulo who wants an actual pair of Nike shoes, a Sephora order, or electronics from a US-only retailer runs into the same customs math as someone ordering from Shein — they just need a US address to buy from those stores in the first place, since most American retailers won’t ship internationally on their own.

That’s the gap a service like Viabox fills: a real US shipping address that lets shoppers anywhere, including Brazil, buy from any US store the way a domestic customer would, then have those packages forwarded onward. It doesn’t change what Brazilian customs charges on arrival, but it does open up the full US retail market — not just the platforms built for cross-border shipping — to shoppers watching this tax deadline closely.

What to Watch and What to Do

If you’re shopping into Brazil, or forwarding goods there for resale, the next two weeks are worth paying attention to:
- Watch for Brazilian Congress action before September 8 — approval keeps the 0% rate on sub-$50 parcels; inaction reverts it to 20% on September 9.
- If you have purchases planned near the $50 threshold, getting them shipped and cleared before the deadline avoids the higher rate entirely.
- Remember state tax (~17%) applies either way — it was never part of the suspended federal rate.
- Higher-value orders above $50 aren’t affected by this specific deadline, since they already fall under a separate, higher tax tier.
Tax policy on cross-border e-commerce has been genuinely volatile in 2026, not just in Brazil but across several of Viabox’s core markets. The practical takeaway is the same regardless of which way this particular vote goes: knowing your landed cost before you buy, not after the package clears customs, is what keeps international shopping predictable. A US forwarding address is one piece of getting there — it puts the entire US retail market within reach, whatever Brazil’s Congress decides next week.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

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September 1, 2026
US Tariff Refunds Top $106 Billion: What It Means for You
The US government is in the middle of one of the largest tariff reversals in recent history, and the numbers are becoming clear. After the Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that a wide swath of tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were unlawful, US Customs and Border Protection has been steadily paying that money back to the importers who originally covered it.

A Record-Breaking Tariff Reversal

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that IEEPA lets a president “regulate” imports during a declared national emergency, but does not clearly hand over the power to impose tariffs, a power the Constitution reserves for Congress. That ruling opened the door to refunds on duties collected from more than 330,000 importers across over 53 million entries. CBP built a new processing tool inside its Automated Commercial Environment portal, called CAPE, specifically to handle the payout, rolling it out in phases starting in April 2026.

Where the Refunds Stand Right Now

As of late August 2026, the numbers are substantial. Over 272,000 refund declarations have been submitted, with roughly 191,000 passing CBP’s file validations. About $132.5 billion has entered the CAPE system for processing, and roughly $106.6 billion of that has already been certified and sent to the Treasury for disbursement, close to 64% of a refund pool that could total as much as $175 billion. CBP confirmed on August 25 that the next phase of the rollout is being temporarily delayed while it builds additional validation checks, a sign of just how large and complicated this payout has become.

Why This Matters If You Shop From US Retailers

Tariffs on imported goods and components don’t just hit the importer’s balance sheet, they tend to work their way into retail price tags. Over the past couple of years, many US retailers selling electronics, apparel, and goods with imported parts have had to absorb or pass along higher landed costs tied to these duties. A refund of this scale doesn’t flip prices back overnight, but it does ease some of the cost pressure that’s been pushing prices upward, and it gives retailers more breathing room and predictability when they restock inventory that international shoppers are ordering every day.

The Catch: Don’t Expect Tariffs to Disappear

It’s worth being clear-eyed about what this ruling actually does. It only struck down tariffs imposed specifically under IEEPA. The administration still has other legal tools available, including Section 301, Section 232, and Section 122 authority, and could reimpose duties on some of the same goods through those channels. So this is meaningful backward-looking relief and a signal that trade policy is being checked by the courts, not a guarantee that the cost of importing goods into the US stays low going forward. If you shop and resell internationally, that uncertainty is exactly why it pays to stay flexible rather than betting on any one price trend holding.

What This Means for Your Next Order

Whatever happens next in the tariff fight, one thing doesn’t change: international shoppers and resellers still need a reliable US address to receive their orders and get them shipped home, and that’s true whether US import costs are rising, falling, or stuck in legal limbo. Viabox exists for exactly that, giving you a real US address to shop any American store, consolidating multiple boxes into one shipment, and forwarding everything to you wherever you are, without you having to track court rulings or customs bulletins to place an order.
- US tariff policy is still shifting; don’t assume today’s retail price is locked in.
- Consolidating multiple orders into one shipment is one of the few cost levers fully in your control.
- A US forwarding address lets you keep shopping normally while the bigger trade questions get sorted out in Washington.
If you’re not already using a US address to shop and ship internationally, now is a reasonable time to set one up and see how much easier cross-border shopping can be.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 31, 2026
USPS Just Joined the Holiday Surcharge Club for 2026
USPS Files for a Holiday Season Price Increase

The U.S. Postal Service has filed a request with the Postal Regulatory Commission for a temporary price increase on select package products during the 2026 holiday season, according to USPS’s own August 25 announcement. The change applies to four product lines: Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select — covering nearly every way a small package moves through the postal network domestically.

Pending approval, the higher rates take effect October 4, 2026, and stay in place until January 17, 2027 — a window that covers essentially all of the fall and winter shopping season, from early holiday deals through post-New Year returns and restocks.

How Much More You’ll Pay

The increases are structured by weight and shipping zone rather than as a flat percentage, so the impact varies by package. USPS’s filing shows retail Priority Mail and Ground Advantage packages rising roughly $0.50 to $3.90 for closer zones and up to $9.10 for longer-distance zones. Priority Mail Express, the fastest and priciest option, sees the steepest jump — up to $12.70 more for nearby zones and as much as $20.80 for farther ones. Commercial rates, the ones many online sellers use, go up too, generally by a slightly smaller margin than retail counter rates.

USPS says the increase is meant to help cover extra handling costs during peak volume and to keep its pricing in line with competitive practices — a fairly direct acknowledgment that it’s catching up to what FedEx and UPS already do every fall.

Why This Is the Story to Watch

For years, USPS was the one major US carrier that didn’t layer a seasonal surcharge on top of its published rates during peak season. That’s no longer true. With this filing, all three of the largest shipping networks in the US — FedEx, UPS, and now USPS — apply some form of temporary holiday pricing between roughly October and mid-January. There’s effectively no low-cost carrier left to route around during the exact months when package volume, and shipping costs, matter most.

What It Means If You Shop US Stores and Ship Internationally

Most of the packages that make their way to an international shopper’s US mailing address weren’t sent by a giant retailer with negotiated freight rates — they came from a small Etsy shop, a boutique brand, an eBay seller, or a wholesale supplier that ships via standard USPS Priority Mail or Ground Advantage and passes that cost straight to the buyer. That’s exactly the shipping method getting more expensive, and exactly the season — Q4 into January — when international shoppers and resellers tend to order the most: holiday gifts, New Year restocks, and inventory for the year ahead.

If you’re a small reseller ordering from multiple US suppliers, the effect compounds. A few extra dollars per package adds up quickly across a dozen shipments a month, on top of whatever the final international leg costs.

How to Get Ahead of It
- Place bulk or restock orders before October 4 if you can, to lock in current domestic shipping rates before the surcharge window opens.
- Consolidate purchases from multiple US sellers into a single international shipment rather than absorbing a domestic surcharge on each package and then shipping each one abroad separately.
- Compare seller shipping options when you have a choice — some smaller sellers still offer flat-rate or free-shipping terms that may not immediately reflect the new USPS pricing.
This is one of the reasons a US forwarding address plus package consolidation exists in the first place: a service like Viabox lets your orders land at one US address, get combined into fewer, larger shipments, and go out internationally as one package instead of five — softening exactly this kind of per-package cost creep, no matter which domestic carrier your seller happens to use.

Whatever carrier raises prices next, the fix stays the same: keep buying from more US stores without multiplying your shipping costs, by routing everything through one address before it crosses the border.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 30, 2026
UPS’s 2026 Peak Surcharges Are Up 25%: What It Means for You
UPS confirmed its 2026 peak season surcharges in late August, and the new fee schedule is steeper than last year’s. The charges start rolling in on September 27 and run through January 16, 2027, which means anyone ordering from US stores this fall and winter will be shipping under a more expensive rate table than they were twelve months ago.

What’s Actually Changing

UPS is phasing the increases in two waves. Additional Handling and Large Package surcharges hit first, on September 27: Additional Handling runs $8.75 to $11.90 per package, and the Large Package Surcharge climbs to $96.25–$117.50. The bigger increase lands October 25, when UPS adds demand surcharges on residential and air shipments. The Ground Residential and Ground Saver demand fee rises to $0.75 per package, a 25% jump, and the Next Day Air and All Other Air fee rises to $2.50 per package, up 22%. Those demand surcharges hit hardest between November 22 and December 26 — the exact stretch when most holiday orders ship.

UPS isn’t the only carrier moving. FedEx and USPS have both already announced their own peak-season increases this year, and UPS itself expects US package volume to climb roughly 24% from the third quarter to the fourth as everyone tries to get orders out before Christmas.

Why It Matters More If You’re Shipping Internationally

These surcharges technically apply to the domestic leg of a shipment — the trip from a US retailer’s warehouse to wherever the package first lands. That cost doesn’t just disappear for shoppers outside the US, though; it tends to show up as a higher “shipping and handling” charge at checkout, or gets folded quietly into prices during peak weeks, the same as it does for any US-based buyer.

Where it compounds specifically for international shoppers is volume. Say you’re placing several separate orders this holiday season — shoes from one store, electronics from another, gifts from a third. If each one ships internationally as its own individual parcel, you’re paying for separate international shipping and going through separate customs clearance on every single box, on top of whatever domestic surcharge each retailer is now passing along. During the highest-surcharge weeks of the year, that adds up fast.

Consolidation Is the Practical Fix

The way around compounding fees isn’t to stop buying from US stores — it’s to stop shipping every order on its own. Receiving multiple US purchases at a single US address, combining them into one outgoing box, and sending that one package internationally turns several potential shipments, each with its own handling and customs friction, into one. This is the core idea behind a package forwarding service like Viabox: shoppers get a real US shipping address, order from as many stores as they want, and only pay to ship internationally once everything is consolidated, instead of absorbing a fresh set of fees with every order.

What to Do Before the Fees Hit
- Get bulkier or heavier orders moving before September 27, ahead of the first wave of Additional Handling and Large Package surcharges.
- If you’re stocking up for resale or buying gifts, place orders before October 25, when the residential and air demand surcharges begin.
- Avoid shipping anything you don’t have to during November 22–December 26, the highest-surcharge window of the year.
- Consolidate multiple US purchases into a single international shipment instead of paying separately for each one.
Peak-season surcharges aren’t going away — carriers have raised them every year as holiday volume grows. But shoppers who plan around the dates, and combine their orders before shipping internationally, can avoid paying that surcharge tax more than once.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 29, 2026
FedEx’s $150M Delhi Hub: What It Means for US-to-India Shipping
FedEx Breaks Ground on an 8x-Bigger Cargo Hub in Delhi

On August 25, 2026, FedEx broke ground on a new $150 million air cargo hub at GMR Cargo City, inside Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) — India’s busiest airport. The 230,000-square-foot facility will combine FedEx’s international gateway operations and local pickup-and-delivery under one roof, and once it’s running, it’s designed to process 5,000 packages an hour, up from the roughly 600 an hour the current setup handles. India’s Civil Aviation Minister attended the groundbreaking ceremony, underscoring how much weight the government is putting behind the country’s air cargo ambitions.

The Delhi hub is one piece of a roughly $400 million investment FedEx is making across India, alongside gateways in Bengaluru (serving the south) and Navi Mumbai (serving the west). Construction is expected to take 12 to 18 months, so the upgraded hub likely won’t be fully operational until late 2027 or 2028. FedEx has framed the project around India’s own target of handling 10 million tonnes of air cargo annually by 2030 — a goal that assumes cross-border trade, including consumer e-commerce, keeps climbing.

Why a Carrier Is Betting $150 Million on India Right Now

Carriers don’t build automated sortation hubs on a bet that demand will flatten. FedEx’s investment is a signal that it expects sustained growth in package volume moving in and out of India — and a meaningful share of that volume is driven by Indian consumers and small resellers buying from US retailers that don’t ship, or don’t ship affordably, straight to Indian addresses.

That demand has been building for years: American electronics, cosmetics, supplements, and fashion brands routinely sell in the US at prices or in product lines that aren’t available through Indian retailers, and resellers have built businesses around sourcing them. The bottleneck hasn’t just been demand — it’s been throughput. A facility running at 600 packages an hour during high-volume stretches, like the US holiday season or Indian festivals such as Diwali, creates exactly the kind of backlog that turns a five-day delivery into a two-week one.

What This Actually Changes for You, and What It Doesn’t

If you’re buying from US stores and shipping to India, here’s the honest read:
- It won’t speed anything up today. The hub is 12-18 months from opening, so this quarter’s shipments move through the same infrastructure as last quarter’s.
- It’s a signal, not a fix, for customs. A faster sorting hub in Delhi has no effect on India’s import duty rules or how customs assesses each individual parcel — that part of the process is unchanged.
- It does suggest capacity keeps growing, not shrinking. With FedEx expanding rather than pulling back, and competitors watching, the medium-term trend favors more reliable — and eventually cheaper — shipping lanes into India, not fewer.
The Piece Carriers Can’t Fix: How Many Parcels You Send

Even with more sorting capacity upstream, India’s customs process still treats each incoming parcel as its own event — its own paperwork, its own duty assessment, its own carrier handling fee. Buy five items from five different US stores and ship them separately, and you pay for five clearances instead of one. This is where shipping strategy matters as much as a carrier’s infrastructure: consolidating multiple US purchases into a single shipment before it ever crosses the border cuts the number of times customs touches your order, which is usually a bigger lever on landed cost than which hub the package happens to route through.

This is the exact gap Viabox is built to close. You get a real US shipping address, order from any US store, and Viabox holds your packages until you’re ready — combining them into one consolidated shipment before it heads to India, rather than sending each purchase through customs on its own. As carriers like FedEx keep investing in faster infrastructure on the receiving end, pairing that with smarter consolidation on the sending end is how the savings actually show up in what you pay.

The Bottom Line

FedEx’s Delhi hub won’t change your shipping costs this month, but it’s a useful data point: the major carriers are still building for a bigger cross-border e-commerce market into India, not a smaller one. For shoppers and resellers relying on US retailers, that’s a reason for cautious optimism about reliability over the next couple of years — and a reminder that how you ship matters just as much as how fast the hub sorts.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 28, 2026
Asia Ports Are Jammed by Typhoons. Air Shipping Isn’t.
Global ocean shipping just hit a bottleneck few outside the freight industry are watching — but it is quietly reshaping how goods move out of Asia, and it has a lesson for anyone who sources or resells US retail products internationally.

What happened

Container port congestion has surged to a record high, with an estimated 4.18 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of shipping capacity now stranded at anchorages worldwide, according to industry tracking reported by The Loadstar and Freightos. North Asia alone accounts for roughly 54 percent of that global backlog. The trigger: an unusually aggressive typhoon season. Typhoon Dolphin, the third tropical storm to hit China’s east coast in five weeks, forced three-day terminal closures at Shanghai and Ningbo — two of the busiest container ports on Earth — stranding an estimated 2.4 million TEUs of cargo. Congestion has since spread into southern China, and analysts expect it to take several weeks to fully clear as carriers work through the backlog.

Why it’s pushing freight rates up

The timing is bad for anyone shipping ahead of peak season. Asia–US East Coast spot rates have already climbed to a 2026 high, and Asia–North Europe rates, while down from their July peak, are still running about 60 percent above where they sat back in May. Some ocean carriers are even routing vessels back through the Red Sea despite ongoing security risks, simply to avoid the pileup in Asian anchorages. In short: ships are stuck, capacity is tight, and rates are climbing right as retailers stock up for the holiday season.

Why this matters if you buy from US stores

If you’re an international shopper or a small reseller who sources inventory from US retailers — whether that’s electronics, apparel, beauty products, or general merchandise — this congestion touches you in two ways. First, US retailers that restock from Asian suppliers can see their own shelves thin out or their landed costs rise when ocean freight backs up like this, which historically shows up a few weeks later as price increases or stockouts on popular items. Second, if your normal shipping route into your home country runs through a congested Asian transshipment hub, your parcel can sit in a queue you have no visibility into.

The upside: none of this touches goods that are already sitting on a US retailer’s shelf, or a package that’s moving by international air courier rather than container ship. A US-based forwarding address lets you buy inventory that’s already landed and in stock domestically, then ship it out via air and postal networks that never touch the Asian ports currently backed up. That’s the model Viabox runs on — give your US store a real Portland, Oregon shipping address, and once your order arrives, it goes out to you by air, sidestepping the ocean-freight bottleneck entirely.

What to do about it
- If you’ve been eyeing a specific item — especially electronics or apparel that leans on Asian components or manufacturing — buying now, before restock delays ripple into US retail pricing, is a reasonable hedge.
- For resellers, diversify what you’re sourcing. Items already sitting in US warehouse stock are insulated from this specific disruption in a way that pre-order or made-to-order goods are not.
- Keep an eye on holiday shipping cutoffs. Peak-season congestion tends to compound: port delays now can mean tighter carrier capacity and higher surcharges later in the season.
The bigger picture

Ocean freight congestion is a recurring story every typhoon season, but the scale this year — a record 4.18 million TEUs stranded, with more than half concentrated in North Asia — is a reminder that global supply chains still have chokepoints most shoppers never see until prices move or a package goes quiet in transit. For international buyers, the most reliable workaround isn’t predicting the next storm; it’s shortening the chain between where a product is in stock and where you receive it.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 27, 2026
USPS Just Suspended Mail to 14 More Countries: Why It Matters
On August 21, 2026, the U.S. Postal Service quietly posted another international service suspension notice. Mail acceptance for Priority Mail Express International, Priority Mail International, First-Class Mail International, and related classes was halted for 14 destinations: Afghanistan, Belarus, Bhutan, Cuba, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Kiribati, Seychelles, South Sudan, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen. The stated reason, in USPS’s own language, is “inadequate transportation options or service disruptions within the country.” In plain terms: the airline routes, ground contractors, or local postal partners USPS relies on to actually move a package from a US sorting facility to a doorstep overseas have broken down, and rather than lose parcels in transit, USPS stops accepting them.

A separate part of the same notice suspended the on-time delivery guarantee — though not acceptance — for Priority Mail Express International shipments to Great Britain, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland, citing airline travel restrictions and cancellations. That list includes some genuinely high-volume shopping corridors, which is the more telling detail here.

This Isn’t a One-Time Glitch

What makes the August notice worth paying attention to isn’t the specific country list — it’s the pattern. USPS issued comparable international suspension notices in January 2026, again in July 2026, and now in August 2026. Each one names a different mix of countries, but the underlying cause is consistent: USPS’s international network depends on a patchwork of foreign postal authorities and contracted air carriers, and when any link in that chain has a bad month, the whole route gets suspended until it’s fixed. For a shopper or reseller waiting on a package, there’s no way to predict it in advance and no fast alternative once it happens — USPS’s own remedy is a postage refund for returned mail, not a faster delivery.

Why Postal Mail Is the Weak Link

Most international online shoppers never think about which shipping method a US seller chooses at checkout. But there’s a real difference between a package handed to USPS for international mail and one handed to a commercial carrier like FedEx, UPS, or DHL:
- USPS international mail routes through bilateral postal agreements and, in many cases, a foreign country’s own postal service for last-mile delivery — a chain with several points of failure outside USPS’s control.
- Commercial carriers operate their own end-to-end air and ground networks (or tightly contracted ones), so a disruption in one country’s local infrastructure is less likely to freeze the entire route.
- When USPS suspends a corridor, the practical options are: wait indefinitely, request a refund, or have already used a different shipping method from the start.
Where Package Forwarding Fits

This is exactly the gap a US-based forwarding address closes. When you shop US stores through a service like Viabox, the seller ships domestically to a US warehouse — a route that’s never subject to these international postal suspensions — and the onward international leg is booked through commercial carriers with their own networks, not routed through whichever postal corridor happens to be functioning that week. It also means a shopper in a country experiencing intermittent postal disruptions isn’t stuck guessing whether a seller used USPS international mail at checkout; the international leg is chosen deliberately, after the package is already safely on US soil.

What to Do If You Shop From US Stores

A few practical takeaways from this news cycle:
- Check whether a US seller’s shipping method is USPS international mail or a commercial carrier before ordering something time-sensitive — the checkout page or shipping confirmation email usually says.
- If your country has appeared on any of the 2026 suspension notices, assume postal mail delays could recur and plan accordingly for orders you actually need on time.
- Consolidating orders through a US forwarding address sidesteps the question entirely, since the international shipping method is chosen after the package arrives, not baked into the seller’s checkout flow.
USPS’s international network isn’t going away, and most days it works fine. But three suspension notices in eight months is a reminder that for shoppers and resellers who depend on reliable delivery dates, it’s worth knowing exactly how your package is getting home — and having a backup route when the postal chain breaks.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 26, 2026
CBP Starts Voiding Importer Numbers Sept. 18: What to Check Now
A Quiet CBP Notice With a Big Deadline

On August 19, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection published a Federal Register notice most importers have never heard of: starting September 18, 2026, CBP will begin immediately voiding Importer of Record (IOR) numbers when the information on CBP Form 5106 is inaccurate or incomplete. The change is part of the initial rollout of Executive Order 14411, “Strengthening Customs Enforcement,” signed in June 2026.

Form 5106 is the form that ties an importer’s identity — legal name, tax ID (an EIN, a Social Security number, or a CBP-assigned number for people without either), mailing address, physical address, phone, and email — to their importer number. Once CBP voids that number, it becomes invalid for any purpose, including bringing goods into the country, until it’s formally reestablished.

Why This Matters More Than It Used To

For years, most personal shipments under $800 cleared as informal entries with barely a glance at who the importer was. That changed when the U.S. ended the de minimis exemption: most low-value imports now require a formal customs entry, complete with duties, taxes, and a valid importer number attached to CBP Form 7501. If you’re a reseller shipping product back to the Gulf, Mexico, or Latin America, or simply someone who buys regularly from US stores, a larger share of your shipments now likely runs through formal entry than did a year ago.

That means more of your parcels now depend on a piece of paperwork most people never think about. If the name, address, or tax ID on file doesn’t match — because you moved, misspelled something, or an old broker submission was never updated — CBP now has the authority to void the number immediately and notify you, and your broker, by email.

What CBP Is Actually Checking

According to CBP’s notice, enforcement focuses on the core fields captured on Form 5106:
- Legal name and tax identification number (EIN, SSN, or CBP-assigned number)
- Mailing address and physical address
- Phone number and current email address
Mismatches between these fields and other government records, or information that’s simply out of date, are enough to trigger a void. CBP sends notice to the most recent email address on file and copies the customs broker that last filed on the importer’s behalf — which is exactly why keeping that email current matters as much as the address itself.

What To Do Before September 18
- Confirm the name, address, and tax ID on your most recent Form 5106 or customs entries match your current, legal information exactly.
- Make sure the email address on file is one you actually check — that’s where CBP sends the void notice.
- If you ship regularly through a broker, ask directly whether your IOR data is current rather than assuming it carries over automatically.
- If a number does get voided, CBP’s notice includes instructions for reestablishing it — don’t ignore that email.
None of this is optional paperwork anymore. A voided importer number stops shipments cold until it’s fixed, and with formal entries now the default for most international purchases, that’s a real risk for anyone shipping product for resale.

Where Viabox Fits In

This is exactly the kind of detail that gets lost when you’re juggling multiple US sellers, a forwarder, and international customs on your own. Viabox already handles the US side of the equation — receiving your packages at a real US address, consolidating them, and forwarding them wherever you ship next — and part of that is keeping the information tied to your shipments consistent, instead of cobbled together from whatever address you used last time. If you’re shipping often enough that formal entries are now part of your routine, it’s worth making sure your importer information isn’t the thing that trips you up.

Take a few minutes this week to confirm your Form 5106 details are current — it’s a lot cheaper than a shipment stuck at the border on September 18.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

Go to my Viabox dashboard →
August 25, 2026
Air Freight Rates Are Rising Again: What It Means for You
Jet Fuel Costs Just Jumped 76% in a Year

New data from the TAC Index shows global jet fuel prices rose 8.2% in the single week to August 14, 2026, putting them 76.5% higher than a year ago. The spike traces back to renewed tension in the Persian Gulf, where an on-and-off ceasefire between the US and Iran has kept fuel markets on edge for months. Airlines and cargo carriers buy fuel on the open market, so when it jumps this fast, the cost eventually shows up somewhere in the shipping chain.

Air Freight Rates Are Climbing Too — Just Not as Fast

The Baltic Air Freight Index, which tracks global air cargo pricing, rose 0.2% in the week to August 17 and is now up 19.2% over the past 12 months, according to TAC Index data reported by Air Cargo Week. That’s a smaller jump than the fuel spike, which suggests carriers are still absorbing part of the cost rather than passing it straight through — for now. Rates on the busiest China-to-US and China-to-Europe lanes rose week-over-week as the market keeps adjusting to the EU’s new flat-rate customs regime that replaced the old de minimis exemption on July 1.

Why This Matters If You Shop US Stores and Ship Abroad

Two costs feed off each other here: what a store charges for the product, and what it costs to fly that product across an ocean. When jet fuel and cargo capacity get squeezed — especially with the Persian Gulf still tense — the second number tends to move first. And it’s moving right as carriers start layering on their usual peak-season surcharges for the Q4 holiday rush. Stack a fuel-driven increase on top of a seasonal surcharge, and international shipping costs from October through December can end up noticeably higher than shipping the same box today.

If you’re ordering from US retailers and forwarding packages overseas, this is the part that actually hits your wallet — most international carriers price by chargeable weight, so every per-kilo increase multiplies across everything you send.

How to Protect Your Shipping Budget
- Ship sooner rather than later. If you have packages sitting and waiting, moving them out before peak-season surcharges land is usually cheaper than waiting until closer to the holidays.
- Consolidate multiple orders into one shipment. Combining several purchases into a single box cuts packaging weight and the number of times you pay a base shipping fee — since rates are climbing per kilo, trimming total billable weight matters more than usual right now. This is essentially what Viabox’s package consolidation does: multiple US orders land at one warehouse address and go out as a single, tightly packed shipment instead of several separate ones.
- Compare service levels. A slightly slower shipping option can be substantially cheaper than express air, and for non-urgent orders the savings are usually worth the extra day or two.
- Watch for surcharge notices. Fuel and peak-season surcharges are typically announced weeks ahead of time — if you see one coming, treat it as your signal to ship now.
The Bottom Line

None of this means international shipping is suddenly unaffordable — rates are still moving in small weekly increments, not overnight spikes. But the direction is clear: fuel costs are up sharply, capacity is tight, and peak season hasn’t even started. Shoppers who plan ahead and consolidate what they can will feel a lot less of this than those who wait until December. If you’re stacking up orders from US stores, now’s a good time to check your Viabox account, group what you can into one shipment, and get it moving before the season’s rate increases catch up with you.

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August 24, 2026
Panama Canal Drought Cuts Could Raise Your Peak-Season Shipping Bill
The Panama Canal Authority has spent the summer quietly tightening the taps. Facing an intensifying El Nino, the canal has cut the maximum draft allowed for large ships in stages: 49.5 feet in early July, down to 49.0 feet on July 24, 48.5 feet on August 15, and 48.0 feet as of August 26. Rainfall across the canal’s watershed has run 34 percent below the historical average during the May-to-August hydrological year, starving Gatun Lake, the freshwater reservoir that fills the lock system. NOAA now puts the odds of this El Nino reaching “very strong” status by late 2026 at 81 percent, and the canal authority has already scheduled further restrictions for September, with more possible if the dry pattern holds.

Why a Drought a World Away Raises Your Shipping Bill

A lower draft limit doesn’t stop ships from transiting, but it does stop them from riding as low in the water, which means less cargo per vessel. Carriers respond by either sailing partially loaded or shifting cargo to the next available ship, and both options cost money. Major ocean lines including MSC and CMA CGM have already added or updated Panama Canal surcharges to cover the shortfall. Those fees don’t stay with the shipping line — they move down the chain, first to the importers bringing goods into the US, then often onto the price tag at the same online stores you shop from every day.

The Timing Couldn’t Be Worse

These cuts are landing just as US retailers ramp up for the fourth-quarter shopping season, historically the tightest and most expensive stretch of the year for both ocean and air cargo capacity. The canal’s 2023-24 drought is the cautionary tale here: when restrictions deepened that year, transit delays and cost increases rippled through global supply chains for months. Nobody is predicting a repeat of that scale yet, but the ingredients — a strengthening El Nino and a canal authority already several cuts into a rationing plan — are the same ones that started it last time.

What This Means If You Ship From the US

The direct hit falls on large-volume ocean freight — the pallet and container-scale shipments bigger importers and resellers rely on. But the pressure doesn’t stay contained to ocean lanes. When ocean capacity tightens and gets more expensive, some of that volume shifts onto air and express networks instead, which are the lanes most international parcels actually travel on. The practical effect for anyone shopping US stores or reselling internationally is a general firming of rates and slightly longer transit windows heading into Q4, not just for big freight but for everyday parcels too.

A few things are worth doing now rather than waiting:
- Order and ship earlier than usual. Moving purchases before the deepest peak-season crunch avoids both the highest rates and the longest queues.
- If you ship in bulk as a reseller, plan around the September restriction dates rather than reacting to them after the fact. Capacity booked now is capacity you’re not competing for in November.
- Consolidate where you can. Rate increases tend to apply per shipment or per surcharge event, so five separate parcels absorb five separate hits while one combined shipment absorbs one. This is exactly the problem Viabox’s package consolidation is built to solve: your purchases land at our Portland warehouse, we combine what you want into a single outbound shipment, and you ship once instead of five times right when carriers are raising fees across the board.
None of this means panic. The canal is managing the drought with the same water-saving measures it has used before, and a full repeat of 2023-24 isn’t guaranteed. But the direction for the next few months is clear: less slack in the system, more surcharges layered on top of normal rates, right as everyone’s shipping volume goes up for the holidays. If you’ve been putting off a restock or a big order from a US store, the next few weeks are a better time to move than the next few months will be.

Ready to put your US address to work? Log in to your Viabox dashboard to manage shipments and consolidate packages — or create your free US address in minutes.

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August 23, 2026