The trade policy shifts of 2025 and 2026 didn't just raise import costs. They quietly made product returns more expensive, more complicated, and more strategically important than ever. Here's what DTC brands need to understand before the next return lands on their dock.
De Minimis Is Gone. Your Returns Math Just Changed.
For years, the de minimis exemption allowed goods valued under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free, a rule that quietly subsidized the economics of international e-commerce. That exemption was suspended in August 2025 and has not been restored. For DTC brands sourcing internationally and selling to U.S. customers, this creates a compounding problem: higher landed costs on the way in, and now, higher costs on returned goods coming back through customs. A product that cost $12 to import now carries duties on both legs of its journey if it's returned. For brands running 20 to 30 percent return rates, that's not a rounding error. It's a structural margin problem.
Tariff Volatility Is Making Disposition Decisions Harder
The broader tariff environment has added a new layer of complexity to returns disposition. When tariff rates shift, the financial case for restocking, refurbishing, or liquidating returned inventory changes with them. A product that made sense to refurbish and resell at a 40 percent tariff rate may not pencil out at 145 percent. Brands that lack a dynamic disposition strategy, one that can adapt to changing cost structures, are absorbing losses that a more deliberate approach would avoid. The companies navigating this best are those that built returns infrastructure before the tariff environment forced their hand.
Duty Drawback: The Underused Lever Most Brands Are Missing
There is a legal mechanism that allows importers to recover up to 99 percent of duties paid on goods that are subsequently exported or destroyed: duty drawback. For DTC brands with significant international return volumes, this can represent a meaningful recovery. The challenge is that duty drawback requires precise documentation, matching import and export records at the SKU level, and filing within a three-year window. Most brands don't have the systems to capture this data automatically, and by the time they realize the opportunity, the window has closed. Building the data infrastructure to support duty drawback claims is one of the highest-return investments a tariff-affected brand can make right now.
What to Do Now
The brands that will come out ahead are not waiting for trade policy to stabilize. They're auditing their full returns cost stack, including duties, processing, and disposition, to understand where the real losses are. They're building disposition playbooks that account for tariff scenarios. And they're investing in the data systems that make duty drawback and landed cost optimization possible. Returns have always been expensive. In 2026, they're expensive in new ways. The brands that treat this as a strategic problem, rather than an operational nuisance, will find margin that their competitors are leaving on the table.
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Schedule a free consultation with Eddie to discuss how Vertistics can help your business recover more value from every return.
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