I worked for an online pharmacy in Canada for many years, and it’s fraught and full of grey areas for sure. But so so many Americans count on importing generics to afford their medication. You’re talking several times the price difference for the same pills, life changing amounts of money for older people on fixed incomes with health problems. They will simply not be able to access their medication anymore.
Yeah, it would...and yet, they covered that as well with another recent change:
Packages from foreign and Canadian online pharmacies will be prohibited from entering the U.S. if the same medication is sold domestically or if the foreign pharmacy targets U.S. buyers.
10 years of believing your color coded wave of choice is going to happen and still winding up with a 50-50 senate
the seats necessary to alter that aren't even open, how gullible do people have to be? well, not very, independents are the largest bloc now, but of the remaining partisans... hello? your algorithm is fake
There's nothing in the CBP rule that prohibits importing prescriptions, although there will no longer be a duty exemption for them. The rule is about suspending the 'de minimis' exemption for shipments valued under $800...
Starting Oct 22, packages from foreign and Canadian online pharmacies will be prohibited from entering the U.S. if the same medication is sold domestically or if the foreign pharmacy targets U.S. buyers.
This was the case for at least a year. I used to use AliExpress for affordable small electronics, and when this came into effect, it killed the whole thing (and my hobby, because no way I'm paying the Amazon or eBay tax).
Various pharmacies in Canada will accept a US prescription and send you the medication via mail, usually at far cheaper than what you would pay for the same in the US.
Canadian pharmacies pay Canadian tariffs. Americans pay American tariffs. American importers are no longer exempted from paying American tariffs applied by the US government for goods de minimis goods they import from Canada.
This post is about American importers no longer having exemption on tariffs they would have otherwise paid to the US government.
At no point has Canadian pharmacies ever paid American tariffs. This is fiction you invented.
I don’t know what you’re saying, but for those confused. Starting in 2025, the de minimis exception was removed. This added delays to purchases of drugs from Canada to the US, and required consumers to pay new duties. These duties were collected by the pharmacies at order time, or at least my experience was that the pharmacies would charge your card for them. This is the common sense understanding of what I said above.
These duties were annoying but bearable. However these new changes will effectively shut down all consumer orders of drugs from Canada starting on Oct 22. So if you need these drugs to stay alive, order them right now.
PS This new rule is going to put my family’s health at risk and I’m deeply pissed about it. Having some HNer pick this moment for pedantry is incredibly on brand.
> This is the common sense understanding of what I said above.
It's very dangerous to assume common understanding here when Trump has been loudly claiming the opposite, i.e. that the tariffs would be paid by the sender rather than the importer. It would have been more accurate to state that "Canadian pharmacies have already been including the tarrifs in the total order cost".
Trump is trying to trade the petro dollar and opec for Venezuelan oil that will tank the dollar and make debt unpayable (every advisor has said this), how he's trying to make medicine unaffordable before alternatives are ready. Sheesh.
Every use case for tarrifs include got subsidy and small trade barriers so it can grow with market share.
He didn't manage to sell them. Everyone hates the tariffs, which are widely understood to have contributed to high prices and economic stagnation.
What he did manage to do is bully the abjectly servile GOP leaders of Congress into not doing anything about the tariffs, even though setting trade policy is expressly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution, and Trump has repeatedly exceeded any legal authority.
He gets away with it because a lot of right-wing elites _love_ the idea of taxing consumption rather than income (or, heaven forbid, wealth).
Additionally, Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs... and a lot of their base would rather believe that than admit that they got suckered by an obvious scam.
He doesn't actually "get away" with it. A lot of people, left and right, are unhappy about tariffs. But for now, he controls the executive, so it is what it is.
The problem is it was never an executive power to begin with. The unitary executive theory pushed by the Heritage Foundation is counter to everything the US was founded on. Decisions from the current SCOTUS are questionable given the conflicts of interest with certain spouses and the endless improper gifts.
His core base (a solid 25-50% of the party) would rather die than vote for a democrat and all this DSA scare mongering is only entrenching them further/pulling the more moderate among them back into the fold.
The blue wave will likely be a result of blue turnout and some small number of red sitting at home. And sadly the senate is still a toss up
It's silly to claim that a lot of people on the right are unhappy about tariffs.
When Obama put a tariff on Chinese tires, right-wingers (correctly) argued that it was a bad idea that caused American consumers to pay almost a million dollars per "job saved" in the tire industry.
Today the right is in control of the executive, the legislative, the judicial, and and far more news media and... basically just crickets.
As for "he controls the executive". Bullshit. When a Democrat is in office, right-wingers remember that the President is not a king.
Please don't "both sides" this extremely one-sided attack on the American worker.
> Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs
I'm starting to see this backfire with a lot of "personal responsibility" type old-school republicans to whom I talk. They're getting fed up with the administration just blanket blaming anything bad on Biden. Whether that will translate to actual political change, I do not know. But I found it interesting that I'm hearing the frustration more lately.
It doesn't need to translate to actual political change. It needs to translate to them staying at home instead of enthusiastically voting for more sadistic traitorous insanity.
Which is looking quite likely.
Although it does assume there are no peculiar and unexpected anomalies with the vote counting.
Populists of all stripes love tariffs and the illusory promise of autarky. We didn’t see Biden remove any of Trump 1’s tariffs and not a single Democrat in congress has committed to repealing the tariffs.
If only it were so simple. Many of CBP's policies are clearly defined by U.S. Congress (most recent example, which actually establishes CBP: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/644/...). That said, Congress appears to have ceded their oversight role by allowing these rules to change without comment.
I flagged this and wanted to explain my reasoning.
At the time of writing, the article states something that its own link doesn't support (i.e. it is inaccurate). CBP hasn't "suspended all personal prescription importation." What they've done is removed De Minimis Exemption (i.e. duty free below $800), and that's it. Meaning you can still important personal medication before and after Oct 22nd, what has changed is that now it is subject to normal duty.
Do I think this is bad for people importing personal medication? Absolutely I do, and I oppose it. However, I don't think misstating the argument is constructive nor warranted. You could make the argument using the facts on the ground, and then re-state that in the thread title.
So the story is worthy of discussion, and interesting (even the personal medication POV). But this link and this title aren't "it." Hopefully we can get a higher quality source and title on this topic.
It's not as simple as "You will now pay duty." Senders will be required to pay bond, and there will be a crushing load of new paperwork. Combined with extra duty, that will have the same effect as an outright ban.
This will be financially catastrophic for many Americans who may suddenly have to find hundreds of dollars a month.
This is actually tragic.
I worked for an online pharmacy in Canada for many years, and it’s fraught and full of grey areas for sure. But so so many Americans count on importing generics to afford their medication. You’re talking several times the price difference for the same pills, life changing amounts of money for older people on fixed incomes with health problems. They will simply not be able to access their medication anymore.
Are we talking duties imposed on the generics, or generics imports outright banned?
I'd imagine even with duty added they'd still end up being multiple times cheaper
Yeah, it would...and yet, they covered that as well with another recent change: Packages from foreign and Canadian online pharmacies will be prohibited from entering the U.S. if the same medication is sold domestically or if the foreign pharmacy targets U.S. buyers.
The hoops you poor Americans have to jump through to get affordable health care is ridiculous in what is presented as a developed nation.
The hoops are in place to ensure those at the top continue to get their take.
goes into effect 12 days before a midterm election that is already starting to look like a blue tsunami.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.
Never interrupt your enemy when they are busy making a mistake.
Never assume your enemy is making a mistake either, unless you possess the gift of perfect knowledge.
10 years of believing your color coded wave of choice is going to happen and still winding up with a 50-50 senate
the seats necessary to alter that aren't even open, how gullible do people have to be? well, not very, independents are the largest bloc now, but of the remaining partisans... hello? your algorithm is fake
> the seats necessary to alter that aren't even open
Seems to be anyone's win right now: https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/senate/2026/toss-up (and RCP is considered to be conservative).
Assuming there is no chicanery
midterms are in November?
"The compliance date for 19 CFR 145.12(a)(2)(v) and (vi) is on October 22, 2026"
Canadian pharmacies are duct tape for Americas broken health care system. If we rip the tape off first without a fix we're gonna be in trouble.
I know very little about this topic, but this ultimately helps force a real solution to our prescription drug cost problem?
There's nothing in the CBP rule that prohibits importing prescriptions, although there will no longer be a duty exemption for them. The rule is about suspending the 'de minimis' exemption for shipments valued under $800...
Starting Oct 22, packages from foreign and Canadian online pharmacies will be prohibited from entering the U.S. if the same medication is sold domestically or if the foreign pharmacy targets U.S. buyers.
Wasn't that already suspended in, like, 2025?
I believe it had a phased rollout, which impacts all parcels soon.
I was charged $46 of import fees on a $137 of art supplies from the Czech Republic this May.
This was the case for at least a year. I used to use AliExpress for affordable small electronics, and when this came into effect, it killed the whole thing (and my hobby, because no way I'm paying the Amazon or eBay tax).
Hasn't it effectively been suspended for over a year now?
Yes, and it has driven the decline of Temu and Shein
What does this actually mean?
Various pharmacies in Canada will accept a US prescription and send you the medication via mail, usually at far cheaper than what you would pay for the same in the US.
This prevents it.
Interesting. Got some examples of the pharmacies?
Okay Kash, you almost got him this time.
It’ll likely be a rep hit but - I’d argue livestock imports and booze imports over pharma would be Kash’s interest.
Means you can no longer legally^W practically buy far cheaper prescription medicines from Canada, Mexico, India, China etc and ship them to the US.
Their own primer on the topic: https://www.personalimportation.org/understand-the-issue
That’s not what it says. It’s still legal. You just have to pay duties. It’s also not just on medication. They shared these rules a while ago too.
Well... the legal route is no longer "far cheaper" than domestic supply.
Canadian pharmacies already pay tariffs. What does this actually change?
Your comment is nonsense.
Canadian pharmacies pay Canadian tariffs. Americans pay American tariffs. American importers are no longer exempted from paying American tariffs applied by the US government for goods de minimis goods they import from Canada.
This post is about American importers no longer having exemption on tariffs they would have otherwise paid to the US government.
At no point has Canadian pharmacies ever paid American tariffs. This is fiction you invented.
I don’t know what you’re saying, but for those confused. Starting in 2025, the de minimis exception was removed. This added delays to purchases of drugs from Canada to the US, and required consumers to pay new duties. These duties were collected by the pharmacies at order time, or at least my experience was that the pharmacies would charge your card for them. This is the common sense understanding of what I said above.
These duties were annoying but bearable. However these new changes will effectively shut down all consumer orders of drugs from Canada starting on Oct 22. So if you need these drugs to stay alive, order them right now.
PS This new rule is going to put my family’s health at risk and I’m deeply pissed about it. Having some HNer pick this moment for pedantry is incredibly on brand.
Nobody is being a pedant. How you phrased it is wrong and, more importantly, politically charged.
> This is the common sense understanding of what I said above.
It's very dangerous to assume common understanding here when Trump has been loudly claiming the opposite, i.e. that the tariffs would be paid by the sender rather than the importer. It would have been more accurate to state that "Canadian pharmacies have already been including the tarrifs in the total order cost".
The people in charge betting they only need to count the "red" ballots this time?
Trump is trying to trade the petro dollar and opec for Venezuelan oil that will tank the dollar and make debt unpayable (every advisor has said this), how he's trying to make medicine unaffordable before alternatives are ready. Sheesh.
Every use case for tarrifs include got subsidy and small trade barriers so it can grow with market share.
It truly boggles the mind how Trump managed to sell tariffs as anything other than a tax on American consumers
> managed to sell tariffs
He didn't manage to sell them. Everyone hates the tariffs, which are widely understood to have contributed to high prices and economic stagnation.
What he did manage to do is bully the abjectly servile GOP leaders of Congress into not doing anything about the tariffs, even though setting trade policy is expressly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution, and Trump has repeatedly exceeded any legal authority.
He gets away with it because a lot of right-wing elites _love_ the idea of taxing consumption rather than income (or, heaven forbid, wealth).
Additionally, Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs... and a lot of their base would rather believe that than admit that they got suckered by an obvious scam.
He doesn't actually "get away" with it. A lot of people, left and right, are unhappy about tariffs. But for now, he controls the executive, so it is what it is.
The problem is it was never an executive power to begin with. The unitary executive theory pushed by the Heritage Foundation is counter to everything the US was founded on. Decisions from the current SCOTUS are questionable given the conflicts of interest with certain spouses and the endless improper gifts.
This is entirely in the “rights” control right now, any of them “unhappy” with it are outliers.
We'll have to wait and see how many of those outliers end up voting, and how.
His core base (a solid 25-50% of the party) would rather die than vote for a democrat and all this DSA scare mongering is only entrenching them further/pulling the more moderate among them back into the fold.
The blue wave will likely be a result of blue turnout and some small number of red sitting at home. And sadly the senate is still a toss up
It's silly to claim that a lot of people on the right are unhappy about tariffs.
When Obama put a tariff on Chinese tires, right-wingers (correctly) argued that it was a bad idea that caused American consumers to pay almost a million dollars per "job saved" in the tire industry.
Today the right is in control of the executive, the legislative, the judicial, and and far more news media and... basically just crickets.
As for "he controls the executive". Bullshit. When a Democrat is in office, right-wingers remember that the President is not a king.
Please don't "both sides" this extremely one-sided attack on the American worker.
A lot of his base believe his lie that the other countries are paying the tariffs.
His followers are literally beyond reason and will accept anything he says. It's so very depressing.
> Trump, Hassett, etc are still blaming Biden for inflation caused by the tariffs
I'm starting to see this backfire with a lot of "personal responsibility" type old-school republicans to whom I talk. They're getting fed up with the administration just blanket blaming anything bad on Biden. Whether that will translate to actual political change, I do not know. But I found it interesting that I'm hearing the frustration more lately.
Narrator: It did NOT translate to actual political change.
It doesn't need to translate to actual political change. It needs to translate to them staying at home instead of enthusiastically voting for more sadistic traitorous insanity.
Which is looking quite likely.
Although it does assume there are no peculiar and unexpected anomalies with the vote counting.
It will not because there are still immigrants and trans people to hate.
Populists of all stripes love tariffs and the illusory promise of autarky. We didn’t see Biden remove any of Trump 1’s tariffs and not a single Democrat in congress has committed to repealing the tariffs.
If that were true, the Republicans would implement a VAT. Trump is legitimately just a moron with a cult of personality.
weird title change.
Is this even in CBP's wheelhouse or is this another egregious overreach?
this is their thing, yeah.
the C in CBP, "Customs", is specifically this kind of stuff.
If only it were so simple. Many of CBP's policies are clearly defined by U.S. Congress (most recent example, which actually establishes CBP: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/644/...). That said, Congress appears to have ceded their oversight role by allowing these rules to change without comment.
> Congress appears to have ceded their oversight role
If there is one most-bipartisan-thing-ever, ceding oversight is it. ex:FastTrack Trade
I flagged this and wanted to explain my reasoning.
At the time of writing, the article states something that its own link doesn't support (i.e. it is inaccurate). CBP hasn't "suspended all personal prescription importation." What they've done is removed De Minimis Exemption (i.e. duty free below $800), and that's it. Meaning you can still important personal medication before and after Oct 22nd, what has changed is that now it is subject to normal duty.
Do I think this is bad for people importing personal medication? Absolutely I do, and I oppose it. However, I don't think misstating the argument is constructive nor warranted. You could make the argument using the facts on the ground, and then re-state that in the thread title.
So the story is worthy of discussion, and interesting (even the personal medication POV). But this link and this title aren't "it." Hopefully we can get a higher quality source and title on this topic.
It's not as simple as "You will now pay duty." Senders will be required to pay bond, and there will be a crushing load of new paperwork. Combined with extra duty, that will have the same effect as an outright ban.
This will be financially catastrophic for many Americans who may suddenly have to find hundreds of dollars a month.
Better link: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/24/2026-12...