UPS Admits ‘Disposing’ of Parcels as Trump Chaos Creates Backlog
The president’s tariff policy has seen countless packages getting lost in customs.

Robert Alexander/Getty Images
Courier company UPS admits it has started “disposing” of packages sent to American customers because of a massive customs backlog caused by the Trump administration’s sweeping import taxes, NBC News reports. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s totally unprecedented,” said brokerage manager Matthew Wasserbach, who reported thousands of customers complaining about their packages becoming stuck in limbo or even destroyed after becoming lost in a sea of customs regulations. The situation is compounded by UPS’s policy of disposing of shipments that cannot clear customs after three attempts, leaving customers unclear if their packages are in limbo or have been destroyed. “It’s almost impossible to get through to anybody to figure out what is happening,” customer Ashley Freberg told the network after tracking details on some personal items shipped from the U.K. alternated between saying they were in transit, delivered, or disposed of. “Are my packages actually being destroyed or not?” Another customer said $127,000 worth of matcha green tea imported from Japan had also gone missing in transit, with tracking updates displaying contradictory information. UPS claims that 90 percent of the 3.2 million international packages it processes every week are delivered without issue, but even the remaining 10 percent translates to thousands of missing shipments every day.
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