DHL is looking at new markets to increase hiring in the event the Trump administration goes forward with a ban on tax-free, low-value shipments entering the U.S. from China.
John Pearson, CEO of the logistics giant’s DHL Express segment, told Bloomberg Wednesday that the company could hire roughly 200 more international workers to help process shipments through its network.
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“If [the de minimis suspension] came back, we would hire more people, not necessarily in our U.S. gateways, but maybe in Malaysia,” Pearson said, without identifying other potential markets for new hires. Malaysia is home to the company’s 140,000-square-foot facility located in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, which includes a fully automated sorting system with a 1.2-mile long conveyor belt that can process 10,000 items per hour.
The 200 potential hires would be a relative drop in the bucket for a department that employs almost 116,000 workers worldwide and 1,300 employees in Malaysia, but speaks to the possible chokepoints created across the supply chain if more goods are instead originating or shipped from other trade partners.
As more American businesses attempt to decouple their supply chains from China, more made-in-China inputs are also likely moving to other countries where they are used in the production of goods that are exported to the U.S.
The potential decision comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive order to terminate de minimis for goods out of China in early February, before pulling an about-face just days later.
That executive order temporarily suspended a tax exemption for packages shipped into the U.S. carrying goods valued at fewer than $800, and was partially designed to curb the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. But such an abrupt move immediately put a burden on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is tasked with processing and analyzing these shipments, as well as logistics players like the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
The brief ban was already creating a supply chain backlog for de minimis-eligible and non-de minimis shipments alike, putting companies like DHL in a position where they would need more manpower to handle a bottleneck if it happened again. Alongside the quick de minimis suspension, the USPS halted all inbound shipments from China and Hong Kong on Feb. 4, before reversing the decision just 12 hours later.