Incredibly, there is still no way to send packages with merchandise from Taiwan to the USA* through public postal services. We are not alone. Since August 25th, over 88 countries have placed some form of shipping restrictions on packages going to America due to an incomplete sanctions regime implemented by the USA. 88 countries is rather breathtaking in scope, as is the fact that after so many weeks there has been such little movement on fixing this problem.
The problem is not with the countries shipping to the USA being unwilling to pay the sanctions. They, and we, are wiling to pay extra to ship to the USA. The problem lies in those countries not being ABLE TO pay the sanctions. In Taiwan for example, there is no mechanism to pay the 20% sanctions on goods going to the United States and that 20% payment is required to be collected in the country of origin before any package is allowed to be exported to the US. It is a little Kafkaesque if you ask us and is quite the catch. We not alone in scratching our heads at these choices of implementation and the impact on our business and the lives of millions of others worldwide has been dire. The US market has historically hosted over 50% of our customers.
To be clear, the inability to ship to the USA is not because countries are unwilling to pay the sanctions. The issue is that it is currently impossible for them to do so using the global public postal system**. The rules are so unclear that national postal services have no idea on how to comply and so have simply stopped shipping to the US!
While we think we might understand some of the many reasons why it is happening, we are obviously not alone in thinking it could have been done is a more thoughtful, measured and smooth way. Perhaps carefully planned over a lot of pots of tea, for example. Unfortunately that is not what has happened, and we are all dealing with the sanctions in real time.
So what are we doing about it? For us, our goal of sharing our friend’s clean, world-class tea has not changed, but we are changing how we do it a little bit. As globalization wanes and cross border commerce becomes harder, we have decided to open a brick and mortar shop here in Hualien. Well, wood and stone anyways. It has been a long while since we have regularly served tea in person and a move in this direction was something that needed to be done anyways. We are looking forward to it. Building face to face relationships with tea drinkers will give us the opportunity to introduce our friend’s teas to a more local audience as well as giving a place to host our tea friends from abroad.
We have no plans to open a base of operations in the USA. We are not large enough to make it worthwhile, especially as right now the costs for opening up such a procurement center would be extreme given the short term demand is so high. Perhaps most importantly, until international commerce gets even mildly predictable, all the work of setting up in the US might be for nothing if the next sanctions policy destroys our well laid plans.
We will begin to focus on education both in person and online. Our new place will hopefully have a classroom where we will offer classes about the various aspects of Taiwanese tea that we feel comfortable teaching about. And we will try to film and share as much of that as we can.
Tea trips will also start to get planned and we are working on our first ‘Spring Harvest Trip’ for April/May 2026. We are uniquely set up for this style of tea trip as the first interaction of this company was ‘Hualien Outdoors’, an adventure company we ran for a decade. (Check out our past blog post for more details on a potential Spring Trip)
This situation might get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. We have no doubt about that. Please rest assured that Mountain Stream Teas will continue to offer the best agrochemical free teas in Taiwan to as many people as we are able. We might be changing our focus slightly, but we will not be changing what we do.
Notes:
*Through the national postal service of both countries, which we use
**It is possible to send packages through private operators such as DHL, but the charges are complex and punitive, with some demanding a 160USD tariff charge no matter the declared value of the package
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