The regime now treats cheap imports the same as any other goods, ending the long de minimis threshold and subjecting low-value parcels to duties with only a narrow $100 gift exception. In practice that means a lot of inexpensive items from abroad will no longer sail in tax-free, and the online marketplace economics—especially for budget goods from platforms known for ultra-cheap shipments—will be rewritten. Opinions diverge on safety: officials point to past misuse of untaxed shipments (hazardous items, counterfeit goods, drugs) as justification for a tighter regime; critics worry about higher costs, delays, and reduced choice for American shoppers, plus harder access for small foreign exporters.

From a libertarian perspective, this is state intervention masquerading as public safety and consumer protection. The knowledge problem shown by Hayek is stark here: centralized decisions about what to tax, how to police imports, and which goods “deserve” relief cannot be tuned to dispersed, local realities in millions of transactions. The price signals that once guided buyers and sellers across borders are distorted by a blanket duty on everything under a threshold, undermining the spontaneous order of markets that would allocate resources more efficiently than any regulator’s rulebook.

Nozick would insist that individuals own themselves and their labor and, by extension, the products of voluntary exchange. Taxing imported goods at the border is a coercive redistribution to favored interests—no better than a tax on voluntary exchange imposed by the state. If a person consents to trade with a foreign supplier, that exchange is, from a rights-centric view, legitimate. When the state steps in with duties and thresholds, it fragments property rights and channels wealth to government coffers and protected domestic interests, not to the rightful owners who earned it in free exchange.

Rand would say the same in moral terms: the moral case for laissez-faire exchange rests on rational selfishness and the primacy of individual choice. When policy creates friction in trade—especially for create-your-own-comfort-price goods—society pays in cheaper goods and broader opportunity. The de minimis rule, however imperfect, was a simple acknowledgment that voluntary exchange across borders benefits both buyers and sellers; stripping that away under the guise of safety invites protectionism and cronyism, not safety.

If the aim is genuine safety, libertarian logic would prefer private, liability-based mechanisms over top-down thresholds. Let private standards, testing, and insurance compete; let importers bear the risk for the goods they bring in; let courts adjudicate disputes rather than regulators micromanaging the balance of risk and trade. A more radical stance would call for freer trade across the board, with defenses limited to the necessary, constitutionally legitimate functions of government that protect individual rights, not economic allocation through tariffs.

Pragmatically, the policy could be reoriented toward restoring free cross-border commerce while preserving individual rights and voluntary safety obligations: restore zero or near-zero duties on most consumer imports, eliminate blanket thresholds that distort price signals, and rely on private accountability rather than centralized gatekeeping. Remove the state’s prerogative to pick winners and losers in the global marketplace, and let competition—driven by consumer choice and private risk assessment—do the heavy lifting. And if safety is truly a concern, address it through liability, consumer education, and transparent certification schemes that emerge from market competition, not through a universal confiscation of value at the border.