‘De minimis’: The rarely-examined trade clause about to become a very big deal

The thing about trade, and the economics of trade, is that it is simultaneously desperately boring and desperately important. For example, consider a little bit of legal small print no one spent all that much time thinking about until recently – a clause in most countries’ customs arrangements known as “de minimis”. The idea behind de minimis is quite simple. Collecting customs can be an expensive business. You need to employ lots of people to check goods, police the system and collect the relevant customs and tariffs. In theory, you could fund that via the customs you’re charging people to…