Delivered Duty Paid

And this one matters particularly to UK and other non-US shops selling physical products to people within the US.

Etsy's current guidance says that from the 9th of July, 2026, Sellers shipping from outside the US to US buyers, right, are expected to use delivery duty paid or DDP.

DDP basically means that tariffs, duties and import fees are all accounted for up front rather than the customer unexpectedly asking to pay them in a weird way.

And I think for a lot of people, this is better because you're not going to get those random messages saying, oh, I've just received a letter in the post from FedEx saying I owe them like 60 quid.

Like, I think this is actually quite a good change myself.

But I'll leave that up to you.

Let me know in the comments what you think.

Etsy says that using DDP is now required for US-bound orders to qualify for Etsy purchase protection.

So many of these things are sort of like they weren't necessarily part of the initial plan, or at least not this that early in the business, but we ended up having literally a cold call from DHL.

And they were like, we have DDP service, which means that we as the seller can pay all customs and duties to be able to ship an order internationally.

They manage that completely.

You don't need to register for any sort of like sales tax or VAT, GST, HST, and any other country.

So let's swing the pendulum to the absolute opposite end of the spectrum, maximum seller obligation.

This is DDP, or delivered duty paid.

Right.

DDP represents the path of least logistical resistance for the buyer.

Basically, the seller assumes responsibility for the entire journey.

Sounds nice.

They arrange the final truck delivery right to your facility.

The risk does not transfer to you until that truck pulls up to your warehouse.

Exactly.

But what about the third option, DDP, delivered duty paid? Under DDP, the vendor covers absolutely everything to my warehouse door.

So what does this all mean for the buyer? Because honestly, if I'm a small brand, paying someone else to handle that headache seems like a no-brainer.

Why shouldn't I just use DDP and sleep well at night?

If we connect this to the bigger picture of global trade relinquishing that level of control is incredibly risky.

Vendors are manufacturers not logistics experts.

They hedge against ocean freight volatility by heavily padding the margins on your invoice

so it eats your profits.

Is that something they can do that would then remove the CBAM liability from them? Because are they still the reporting declarants? Is there still potentially that liability with them there later?

Yeah, well, under the Incoterms DDP, all customs liabilities and CBAM liabilities will fall with the exporter.

But for the exporter to actually be registered as an authorized CBAM declarant, in the importing country, they have to have a presence on the ground in that country, or they need to appoint somebody to act as the authorised decorant on their behalf.

So Winko terms is important.

But yeah, they just need to make sure that they check their customs declaration and ensure that even though the equal terms are DDP, that their CBAM number is not being used and they are not being used as the authorized CBAM decrement on each customs import.

Okay, so it's a case of checking the fine print on what I imagine are much bigger contracts now.

Yeah, checking the contracts, John, and also checking each individual customs entry to ensure that the correct procedure is being used, the correct incoterms are actually being used, and that the authorised CBAM declarant is actually the exporter or somebody acting on their behalf if the incoterms are DDP.

Okay, right.