For years, a parcel moving through the international mail network dodged the compliance net that every other import had to clear. No formal entry meant no data trail, and no data trail meant no certificate requirement, no matter what was inside the box. That gap closes on October 22, 2026.
What is Changing
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) started the process earlier this year when it suspended the de minimis exemption for mail shipments and introduced a new postal entry process, Entry Type 13. For the first time, low value parcels moving by mail carry the same entry data requirements as a container of freight: ten digit HTS classification, country of origin, value, duty calculation. CBP’s deadline for adoptions is October 22 ’26.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) requirements, fall in line with the new CBP requirements and also become a requirement on the same day. CPSC is one of dozens of Partner Government Agencies, or PGAs, agencies beyond CBP itself with jurisdiction over specific imported goods, whose data requirements ride alongside CBP’s own at the point of entry.
Once a mail shipment has an entry, CPSC can finally attach its PGA requirement to it: a Certificate of Compliance, filed electronically through ACE via the PGA Message Set. Any regulated consumer product moving through the mail channel, toys, children’s products, electronics, needs that certificate data filed the same way freight shipments have had to since July.
What this means for imports
If your goods move by international mail and fall under $2,500, you will need to process the informal entry through Entry Type 13, but there are now new obligations as well: a bond, full classification data, and, if CPSC or another PGA has jurisdiction over the product, that agency’s data filed electronically before the shipment clears.
No PGA data, no release. Goods carrying antidumping or countervailing duties, tariff quotas, or Section 301 and 232 remedies don’t get the informal option; they go through formal entry regardless of value.
Mail was the channel of choice precisely because it skipped this process. Direct to consumer brands, marketplace sellers, and anyone fulfilling from an overseas warehouse into US mailboxes are the ones who’ll feel this first, and hardest, because their operations were built around the exemption that no longer exists. The volumes involved with these changes are not small, by any stretch.
The practical risk is simple: shipments held at the port, certificates filed too late or not at all, and a scramble that starts on October 23 instead of finishing before October 22.
Hurricane GTE is already built for this
Global Trade Ecosystem was built to handle exactly this kind of regulatory convergence, HTS classification, country of origin data, and PGA certificate filing across the entry types CBP and CPSC now require, mail included.
GTE flags any consignments that require CPSC certification and filing as son as they hit our systems allowing you to be ready for customs clearance, and any clients running shipments through GTE are ready now for October 22nd, with a data pipeline designed to cope.
If your mail channel volume hasn’t been mapped against Entry Type 13 yet, get in touch using the form below and we can ensure you’re ready too.