Update – Sept 17: We can now ship again to the U.S. Limited edition prints and greeting cards are allowed through, but they’re slapped with a 35% tariff at checkout (subject to change). Our regular framed and unframed prints are unaffected. For the full story, see our new post: Part 2: Tariff Boogaloo.
The information in this post is now out of date.
We want to clear up some important details about shipping to the United States.
The good news first: if you’re ordering regular art prints or framed prints, nothing has changed. These products are produced and fulfilled within the U.S., so they continue to ship to American customers without interruption.
The problem lies with items we ship directly from our Montréal studio—greeting cards and limited edition prints. As of late August 2025, we are unable to send these across the border to the US.
Customers in all other countries are not affected. Orders outside the United States continue to ship as usual!
Why? Until now, under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, also known to our American friends as USMCA), there was free trade on most goods moving between Canada and the United States, including the Ugly Cat Studio's artwork. On top of that, the U.S. had a “de minimis” rule that allowed packages under $800 to enter duty-free, as long as it had the proper paperwork.
These rules have been removed.
Because of the slapdash way these changes have been rolled out, there isn’t even currently a system in place yet for couriers to process duties on small packages.
Instead of risking chaos, they’ve just stopped accepting these shipments altogether. Which means right now, no greeting cards and no limited editions can cross the border from our studio, unless we hire (and pay for!) a customs broker to handle our packages.
We're simply not big enough to be able to do that.
We know this is incredibly frustrating. Believe me, it’s very frustrating for us too. Making art and sharing it with folks is what we love to do, and having to tell U.S. customers “not right now” breaks our hearts a little.
We don’t know how long this situation will last. What we can say is that we’re working hard with our shipping partners to find a way forward. The moment there is a reliable solution, we will be ready to start sending greeting cards and limited editions to U.S. customers again.
In the meantime, everything else—our open edition prints and framed prints—remains available to U.S. customers without any problems. We’ll keep you updated here (and via our newsletter and social media!) the moment things change.
Thank you for your patience and for sticking with us while we sort this out!