Got a letter from Nin Nin today saying starting tomorrow they are suspending all shipments to the USA, and that the entire Japan Post might follow later in the week. No word on how long they'll cease shipping, it's TBD right now. Like other sites, they are offering unlimited hold time on Private Warehouses.
I paid $88 w/shipping for MAFEX Rogue with them, which was already steep, but $22 less than BBTS shipped (actually ~$34 less than BBTS if I'm also including tax.) Looks like she'll be $168 shipped with the de minimis added in. Which is a little more expensive than what it would have cost me to have ordered two MAFEX figures, shipped.
I'm going to keep her and the other stuff in my warehouse all in Japan, as well as whatever POs come in through the fall/winter (I have three more with them) to see if the TACO TACO's. Nothing I ordered from China ever got hit with a de minimis, even though it was supposed to, but they may have finally figured out how to charge it to US customers. I had 3 packages come in under the radar. Depending on the total cost I'll either see if I can get a refund (my guess is no) or if I can group everything together in a certain way to suffer the smallest penalty.
I am curious to know how this will effect companies like SHF and MAFEX, especially with their Disney properties that they can't outright sell in the US because of Hasbro's hold on the license. Suddenly the Maximum Series seem a better value compared to a $168 alternative, but maybe not so much against a $70-$88 figure.
At the end of the day there are bigger things to bemoan and I feel lucky to be able to have the collection I have and the ability to afford action figures at all. But considering this is all to subsidize tax breaks for the wealthy by imposing a shadow tax on all our goods, wrapped up in a patriotic scam that MAGA will gobble up blindly... it is my humble feeling that Trump and the GOP can make a beeline directly to the place they are certainly headed to according to the rules of their own garbled Christian cosmology that they pretend to believe in.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.