UPS Automates 90% of Daily Customs Clearances With AI Agents

A package crossing into the United States used to depend on a person to review it, classify and catch any errors, slowing the process with days-long delays at the border. Sorting more packages faster is a warehouse problem. Reviewing them accurately is a judgment problem, and judgment has historically required more people as volume grows.

UPS has shown how quickly that can change. The United States eliminated its de minimis exemption globally effective Aug. 29, 2025, ending duty-free treatment for shipments valued at $800 or less, under an executive order President Donald Trump signed last July. The change triggered what UPS CEO Carol Tomé called a “ten-fold surge in daily customs entries,” she said on the company’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call.

In March 2025, 13,000 packages arrived daily that required dutiable clearance, and UPS cleared about 21% of them without manual intervention, Tomé said. By September, 112,000 packages a day required clearance, and the company cleared 90% of them the same way, Supply Chain Dive reported. The share needing no human review climbed from one in five packages to nine in ten, even as daily volume grew nearly ninefold.

How Agentic AI Now Runs Nearly the Entire UPS Customs Process