🚨 $26.4B in Prime Day Sales. Scripts Are Dead. EU De Minimis Is Gone. Welcome to H2.

This week's signal: Three things happened in the last 72 hours that will define H2 for every DTC brand reading this. Prime Day generated $26.4 billion in US online spend. Shopify Scripts stopped executing at midnight last night. And the EU's de minimis exemption ended this morning. Welcome to July. The landscape just shifted under your feet. Here's your briefing.

1. Prime Day Final Numbers: $26.4 Billion. Up 9.3%. Day 1 Was the Biggest Ecommerce Day of 2026.

Adobe's final numbers came in Saturday: US online spend across all retailers during Prime Day (June 23-26) hit $26.4 billion, up 9.3% year over year. That beat Adobe's $26.3 billion forecast. Day 1 alone generated $8.3 billion, up 5.3% from 2025's opening day and the single largest ecommerce day of 2026 so far. Discounts held at 10-24% throughout all four days, with electronics peaking at 24% off, apparel at 24%, and appliances at 16%. Buy now, pay later orders jumped 9.5%, accounting for $2.1 billion, or 6.6% of all online orders during the period.

What the numbers actually tell you: The average spend per item dropped to $23.23 (from $24.59 in 2025). Two-thirds of items purchased were under $20. Consumers are deal-hunting harder and buying cheaper. The top categories were apparel, household essentials, and health/wellness. Telsey Advisory Group noted that Prime Day "blended with multiple retail promotions around FIFA World Cup, Father's Day, and Independence Day," creating a midyear spending spike that made it harder to isolate the Amazon-only effect. Numerator found 89% were returning Prime Day shoppers. Online spend during the event is now approaching Black Friday and Cyber Monday territory. If you sold through Prime Day, pull your unit economics today. If BNPL drove a material share of your orders, factor the fee structure into your actual margin.

2. Shopify Scripts Died Last Night. If Your Checkout Broke, Here's What Happened.

At midnight June 30, every Shopify Script stopped executing. No warning banner. No error message. No grace period. If you woke up this morning to a checkout that looks normal but isn't applying discounts, is showing every shipping option to every customer, or is displaying payment methods you intended to hide, that's why. Scripts fail silently. Your store doesn't go down. Customers can still complete purchases. They'll just pay the wrong price, see the wrong options, or abandon because the experience doesn't match what they expected.

What to do right now if you're affected: Go to Apps > Script Editor in your Shopify admin and run the customizations report. It lists every Script that was running and links to recommended replacements. For simple discount logic, search the Shopify App Store for Function-based apps that cover your use case. For complex B2B pricing, wholesale tiers, or conditional payment gating, you need a developer to build a custom Shopify Function deployed as a private app. Agencies are quoting 10-14 week lead times. If your store has one or two straightforward Scripts, an emergency fix this week is realistic. For anything complex, accept the temporary break and prioritize the rebuild. The deadline was extended twice before (August 2024, August 2025). This time it was final. We covered this every week since March. If you're reading about it now for the first time, start with the report.

3. EU De Minimis Is Dead. Today Is Day 1. Here's What Changes for Cross-Border DTC.

As of this morning, the EU's €150 de minimis exemption no longer exists. Every shipment to an EU customer, regardless of value, requires full customs declarations and applicable duties. The €3 per-parcel customs handling fee is in effect. Additional member-state-level fees are expected later in 2026. If your checkout doesn't calculate and display duties at point of sale, your EU customers will get hit with surprise charges on delivery, and the data on what happens next is clear: they don't come back.

If you sell cross-border into Europe: Check your checkout today. Literally today. Shopify Markets handles duty calculation natively if you've enabled it. If you're on a custom stack, you need a duty calculation API integrated (Avalara, Zonos, Global-e). The product catalog accuracy matters now — duties are tied to customs classifications, and incorrect HS codes mean incorrect charges. This is the same global trend we've been tracking: the US eliminated de minimis for China/Hong Kong/Macau under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (permanent from July 2027). Duty-free sub-threshold shipping is ending everywhere. If your cross-border logistics model depended on it, that model expired this morning.

4. Shopify Summer '26 Is Live. Here's What to Actually Turn On This Week.

Shopify shipped 150+ updates in its Summer '26 "Everywhere Edition" on June 17. Two weeks in, here's what merchants running $5M-$50M should prioritize. Rollouts (native A/B testing) is live now for themes and checkout configurations. You can schedule, gradually release, and split-test without a third-party app. If you're paying for a testing app, evaluate whether you still need it. Checkout Components hit GA on Plus, making checkout fully composable. Early data shows Checkout Blocks lifting conversion 8-22%.

AI merchandising is built into admin: AI Collection Sort, predictive cross-sell blocks, and a merchandising insights panel. The Horizon theme system lets non-developers modify storefront structure through block-based layouts. And Sidekick can now execute store management tasks through natural language. Storefront API 2026-07 ships today (July 1) with breaking changes to cart discount allocations. If you're running a headless or composable frontend, test against the new API version this week. Don't renew sorting, cross-sell, or A/B testing app contracts this month without evaluating the native replacements first.

5. Section 301 Comments Due in 5 Days. Section 122 Expires in 23. The Tariff Swap Is Close.

The comment deadline for USTR's proposed Section 301 forced labor tariffs is July 6 — five days away. The public hearing is July 7. Proposed rates: 10% on 15 trading partners, 12.5% on 45 others, covering 60 countries and the EU. Exemptions exist for ag products, aviation parts, industrial inputs, minerals, and pharmaceuticals. A textile mechanism would allow some apparel at reduced rates. Separate investigations: 25% proposed on Brazil, IP enforcement investigation into Vietnam.

Section 122's 10% surcharge expires July 24 — 23 days. Congress hasn't moved to extend it. The administration has been explicit: Section 301 is the intended replacement. Unlike Section 122 (150-day cap) or IEEPA (struck down by SCOTUS), Section 301 has no percentage cap and no expiration date. The overcapacity investigation covering 16 economies runs on a separate but parallel track. If goods you import arrive after July 24, your duty rate could change that day. CAPE refund claims for IEEPA duties remain open. If you haven't filed, the portal is still accepting claims. Model your Q3-Q4 landed costs against a 10-25% adder on top of current rates for the 60 named economies. The tariff swap is no longer theoretical. It's 23 days away.

The Next 23 Days

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