This is a long one. Grab a coffee.
If you are in the US and have been following RhPf for a while, you already know this story has had a few chapters. This one is the latest, and the most complicated. Full transparency is what you deserve: what is happening, what you pay when you order, where that money goes, and where we personally stand on all of it.
A quick recap
In August 2025, we had to stop shipping to the US overnight. New customs rules, almost no notice, Swiss Post suspended all goods shipments. We wrote about it here.
A few weeks later, we found a way back using Swiss Post’s PDDP service. PDDP means we prepay your US import costs on our side so you receive the pedal at the door without any surprise charges. We absorbed those costs and kept our prices the same. We wrote about that here too.
What we could not fully anticipate was what happened next.
The invoice situation
Between September 2025 and February 2026, US customs applied duties to our shipments at rates that had no legal basis. The correct duty rate for our product under HTS code 8543.70.98.20 is 2.6%, which you can verify yourself on the official US International Trade Commission database. Instead, we were retroactively charged approximately 39% of declared value, and other random fees under so-called IEEPA emergency tariffs that the executive order imposed.
In February 2026, a US federal court and then the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not give the President authority to impose tariffs, making those tariffs illegal retroactively.
This same month, we received surprise invoices totaling CHF 4 701.18 (USD 5 647.72), that is about USD 141.90 for EACH pedal we shipped to the US between September 2025 and February 2026.
The invoices were disputed immediately. CBP entry documents, exact HTS codes used, the duty rate applied, the legal basis for the calculation: all of it was formally requested. We put payment on hold and escalated the matter.
Swiss Post’s response, in plain words: the US government were not able to provide the requested documentation, we know this may not be legally solid, but we advanced the money on your behalf to the US government, so you owe us. Pay first, and we will work on getting it back from the US government later. No timeline. No promises. Still being discussed.
Paying was not a choice we made freely. It was the only way to avoid legal enforcement action, so we paid under explicit reservation of rights, meaning we do not accept these charges as legally valid. Months later, that disputed amount is still sitting in limbo, with no reimbursement mechanism in place and no clarity on when or whether we will ever see it back.
Swiss Post
This needs to be said publicly: Swiss Post did not handle this well. Choosing them was a deliberate decision, a vote of confidence in a local partner we believed we could trust. As an independent brand building guitar pedals in Basel, that trust mattered. When things went wrong through no fault of ours, they told us we should have known better. That is not the support a small local business deserves from a national postal service, and we hope it changes. We are still using them while we assess realistic alternatives, unhappily, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Meanwhile, invoices from US customs for shipments made months ago keep arriving. Some are accurate. Many are not. We pay each one upfront to avoid legal complications, then file individual claims to dispute the incorrect ones, and hope to eventually recover some of it. For our team, that administrative weight adds up fast.
February 24, 2026: the IEEPA tariffs end. A new surcharge begins.
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruling forced the White House to end the IEEPA tariff programs.
On the same day, the White House signed a new 10% import surcharge into law under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. You can read the full presidential proclamation here. The official justification is ambiguous. The surcharge applies to imports from all countries, with some exceptions carved out for billion-dollar industries. Guitar pedals are not excepted.
This surcharge expires on July 24, 2026, 150 days after it took effect. Whether it gets extended beyond that is not something we can predict.
To avoid repeating the scenario from September 2025 to February 2026, Swiss Post now requires senders to pay customs duties to the US upfront, before the parcel leaves Switzerland.
So the current duty picture on a RhPf pedal shipped to the US looks like this:
For one pedal at CHF 149:
- US import duty at 2.6% (HTS 8543.70.98.20, permanent rate): CHF 3.87
- Section 122 surcharge at 10% (temporary, expires July 24): CHF 14.90
- Total duties: CHF 18.77
- Swiss Post PDDP flat fee: CHF 10.00
- Swiss Post disbursement fee at 2% of duties: CHF 0.38
- Total duties and fees: CHF 29.15
- Shipping: CHF 22.50
- PayPal fee and conversion: CHF 26.35
- Total added cost to get one pedal to your door: CHF 78.00, which equals USD 93.70
None of that comes to us. The duties go to the US government. The fees go to Swiss Post. The rest goes to PayPal.
The US, since August 2025, is the only country in the world that requires the sender to prepay duties before the parcel even leaves the origin country. That is an unusual burden to place on independent businesses, and it is worth naming. As long as it is the case, we will charge the recipient of the goods to compensate for this unilateral decision that did not properly account for the consequences on individuals.
We almost stopped
It is important for us to be honest about this part.
We spent several days genuinely debating whether to stop US shipping altogether. Not for commercial reasons. For personal ones.
When you order from us, 10% of what you pay goes to the artists who inspired each pedal or local artists we support. Another 5% goes to ThanksGiver Schweiz, the food bank we volunteer for here in Basel. The rest covers what it actually costs to build a pedal and keep this going.
When we prepay US import duties, that money goes to the US federal government. Here is where we need to be clear that what follows is our personal opinion, stated as such: a significant part of current US federal spending goes toward military operations, arms programs, and domestic enforcement agencies we want no part of. No specific conflicts or agencies will be named. None need to be. The work we put into these pedals is fundamentally about music, creativity, and giving something back to the world. Turning that into a vehicle for funding spending we disagree with is something we are not willing to do quietly.
We do care
That is uncomfortable to write. We are writing it anyway because it is true and because you deserve to know where we stand.
The US represents 18.4% of our sales. More importantly, the people behind those orders are people we genuinely care about. They found us on their own, support what we do, and send us recordings and messages that remind us why we started this. Stopping would not be a financial decision. It would be a values decision, and that point has not been reached yet.
So we keep going, for now. Every cost passes through transparently, and the full breakdown is visible at checkout. Absorbing the duties is no longer something we do, not only because we were operating at a loss, but also because doing so would mean quietly subsidising a system we disagree with on your behalf. Honesty feels better.
We will reassess as the situation develops. If we ever reach the point where we feel we cannot in good conscience continue, we will say so clearly and we will say it before we act.
What you see at checkout
Everything breaks out as separate line items. Here is what each one means:
- Pedal price: unchanged. We have not raised prices.
- Shipping: Swiss Post postage to the US. Scales with how many pedals you order.
- US Import Duties and Fees (prepaid via Swiss Post PDDP): the 2.6% permanent duty plus the 10% Section 122 surcharge, plus Swiss Post’s CHF 10 flat fee and their 2% disbursement charge. This goes to US customs and Swiss Post. Not to us.
A note on PayPal payment fees
PayPal fees are absorbed on our end and do not pass on to you. They appear here only because they are part of the real cost picture of getting a pedal from our workshop in Basel to a guitarist in the US, and the full picture is what this post is about.
Where things stand
The Swiss Post reimbursement situation for duties that US customs incorrectly applied between September 2025 and February 2026 remains unresolved. We are pursuing it. We are not optimistic about the timeline but we are not dropping it either.
And we continue to watch the broader political situation in the US with concern, as we imagine many of you do too.
Thank you for reading all of this. Thank you for being part of what RhPf is. It means more than we can say.
With love from Basel, Thomas and Simone