We do have customs duties in the USA. The amount is determined by the value of the item(s) being imported. You might not have had to pay them because, for many types of goods, there is a value below which the goods are exempt from duties.
And because chinese companies just don’t give a F lol.
If everything were correctly labeled youd probably have to pay duty and taxes on every single you order, but that would make ordering from china more expensive and inconvenient, and we might be less likely to do it. And the sellers don’t see any of that money, so they have a few tricks to avoid those fees.
Mostly dropshipping and just flat out mail fraud lol. One time I had some oxy-fuel welding equipment sent to me, I forget what exactly, think it was some torch nozzles or tips or something. They were only like $20 but would’ve been $200 here. Customs declaration just said “metal tubes- $0.01”. Technically they were metal tubes.
Yeah we do. I think it’s like a $1000 personal exemption or something like that. After that it is only 3% duty. A different set of rules for alcohol or tobacco. Of course that would depend on a correct valuation of whats coming in. I would think that customs has much more important things to do than value every small order from overseas.