Postal services in Australia and Switzerland have become the latest to announce a suspension of deliveries to the United States, joining a growing list of countries halting shipments in response to the Trump administration’s sudden tariff changes.

The move comes ahead of new levies set to take effect on Friday, August 29. Several other countries, including India, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Denmark, had already declared similar pauses in shipping goods to the United States.

Australia Post on Tuesday confirmed that it will “temporarily partially suspend postal sending to the United States (US) and Puerto Rico, effective 26 August 2025, until further notice.” The agency said the decision was necessary due to “recent significant changes the US Government has made to customs and import tariff rules for parcels sent to the US.”

It explained that the changes include the suspension of the De Minimis exemption for inbound goods valued below $800 and a requirement that tariffs be prepaid before items arrive in the US. As a result, Australian businesses will be unable to send products to American customers using Australia Post from Tuesday onwards.

Until now, parcels worth less than $800 (about AUD 1,230) entered the US tax-free, a loophole heavily relied upon by Australian retailers selling abroad, according to local media reports. That exemption will formally end on August 29, when all low-value parcels will be subjected to tariffs or flat fees. The decision, laid out in an executive order signed on July 30, has left many postal services around the world scrambling to comply.

In a parallel move, Swiss Post of Switzerland announced it will no longer accept postal consignments destined for the United States, with the exception of urgent express mail such as official documents and certificates. The agency said on Monday that it would temporarily halt parcel deliveries, citing new US customs regulations that obstruct the regular shipping process.

It added that the decision mirrors those taken by other European postal operators. Swiss Post noted that the US government’s sudden removal of the $800 exemption has created major uncertainty for global carriers. It is currently considering ways to allow limited consignments, such as gifts exchanged between private individuals valued at up to $100, to resume.

The postal service is also exploring alternative methods outside traditional postal networks to keep some flows of goods moving. Recently, India also confirmed that it will suspend the majority of parcel shipments to the US beginning August 25, with exceptions only for letters and small gifts.

France’s La Poste complained that the abrupt policy shift gave them no time to reconfigure digital systems to handle the new customs requirements. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s Royal Mail said it would suspend shipments starting Tuesday to ensure all deliveries cleared before duties come into force. According to CBS News, the new rules stem from a decree signed by President Donald Trump in July.

Beginning August 29, all international parcels previously covered under the de minimis rule will be subject to import duties. The only exemptions will be for letters, books, documents, and small gifts worth less than $100.

-IANS

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Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), a leading Swiss daily has reported that Israel’s Mossad is suspected of having bombed and issued threats to German and Swiss companies that “energetically worked” to aid Pakistan in its quest to develop its nuclear weapons program in the 1980s.

In 1981, Israel had launched a daring air attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor about 10 miles (16 km) outside Baghdad in Iraq and it also viewed Islamabad acquiring nuclear capabilities as an “existential threat”.

The Jerusalem Post quoted a prominent Swiss daily report that “the suspicion that Mossad carried out the attacks and issued threats soon arose” after the three bombings in 1981 on three of these companies following an unsuccessful intervention by the United States to stop the activities”.

“For Israel, the prospect that Pakistan, for the first time, could become an Islamic State with an atomic bomb posed an existential threat,” Swiss daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ) reported on Sunday.

Pakistan on May 28, 1998, conducted five simultaneous underground nuclear tests at Ras Koh Hills in Chagai district of Baluchistan province. Codenamed Chagai-I. A second nuclear test, Chagai-II, followed on May 30 in the same year and Pakistan declared itself an Islamic Nuclear Powered State.

Pakistan was also involved in nuclear proliferation throughout the 1980s and it also helped the Islamic Republic of Iran develop nuclear weapons devices in which German and Swiss companies provided technical aid for their nuclear program.

The report which is now in the public domain claims, “New, previously unknown, documents from archives in Bern and Washington sharpen this picture,”.

NZZ report also mentions the role of disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist, the late Abdul Qadeer Khan, who with the help of the Pakistan Army traveled over Western Europe during the 1980s to secure technology and blueprints from Western institutions and companies to develop a nuclear bomb.

During this time, the US was closely involved in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union and did not make an effort to stop Pakistan’s “fast-moving efforts” to jumpstart its nuclear weapons program. However, it did try to convince German and Swiss governments to crack down on the aiding companies but was unsuccessful.

Suspected Mossad agents are then said to have “taken action” against the companies and the engineers involved in aiding Pakistan.

“A few months after the unsuccessful intervention of the American state department in Bonn and Bern, unknown perpetrators carried out explosive attacks on three of these companies – on February 20, 1981 on the house of a leading employee of Cora Engineering Chur; on May 18, 1981 on the factory building of the Walischmiller company in Markdorf and on November 6, 1981, on the engineering office of Heinz Mebus in Erlangen,” NZZ reported.

“The attack that we carried out against the Walischmiller company could happen to you too – this is how the Leybold-Heraeus administration office was intimidated.

“Siegfried Schertler, the owner of VAT at the time and his head salesman Tinner were called several times on their private lines. Schertler also reported to the Swiss Federal Police that the Israeli secret service had contacted him. This emerges from the investigation files, which the NZZ was able to see for the first time,” the report said.

“Many of these suppliers, mainly from Germany and Switzerland, soon entered into business worth millions with Pakistan: Leybold-Heraeus, Walischmiller, Cora Engineering Chur, Vakuum-Apparate-Technik (VAT, with the chief buyer Friedrich Tinner) or the Buchs metal works, to name a few.

“They benefited from an important circumstance: the German and Swiss authorities interpreted their dual-use provisions very generously: Most of the components that are required for uranium enrichment, for example, high-precision vacuum valves, are primarily used for civil purposes,” NZZ reported.

The National Security Archive in Washington has also recently published diplomatic correspondence from the US State Department from Bonn and Bern in 1980 bringing new information out which has now shed more light on how the West allowed Pakistan to acquire nuclear technology.

The report also indicated that Bern’s behavior, the erstwhile capital of West Germany as a “hands-off approach” and the local authorities were accused of “turning a blind eye” in these communications.

“In the now released dispatches, which were previously classified as secret, those companies are listed for the first time that the US has accused of supporting the Pakistani nuclear weapons program with their deliveries. The list included around half a dozen companies each from Germany and Switzerland,” the Swiss daily is said to have reported.

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Featured Image: A campaign poster for the Swiss referendum | Credits: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

In a referendum held on Sunday (local time), Switzerland voted in favour of banning full facial coverings, including the niqab and burqa, in almost all public places, reports Livemint. As many as 51.21 per cent of the voters voted in support of the proposal banning the burqa and the niqab.

Although the Swiss media referred to the referendum’s proposal as the “burqa ban”, the proposal does not mention Islam specifically.

Facial coverings will now be banned in all publicly accessible places, including on the streets, in public offices, on public transport, in restaurants, shops and in the countryside.

However, Muslim women would be able to cover their faces at places of worship, in situations where it is necessary for health and safety reasons, and in situations where it is “local custom” such as carnivals. It should be noted though that there will be no additional exceptions, for instance, to tourists.

The proposed ban received opposition from Swiss religious organizations, human rights and civic groups and the federal government. The Swiss Federal Council, which serves as the country’s federal government, and the Swiss Parliament had actually advised people to vote against it.

In 2011, France banned burqas and niqabs in public places, becoming the first country in Europe to outlaw facial coverings in public places. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban in 2014.

In Switzerland, the referendum comes after years of debates on the issue. Twelve years ago, another referendum had outlawed the construction of minarets in Switzerland.

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