# De Minimis **The model:** *De minimis non curat lex* — the law does not concern itself with trifles. Below some threshold, harms are ignored rather than adjudicated, because the cost of process would exceed the value at stake. The doctrine is a proportionality valve: it keeps the machinery pointed at what matters. ## The Mechanism Every rule system needs a floor, and where the floor sits is a policy choice wearing a technicality's clothes. Set it high and real harms become invisible (wage theft at scale is millions of de minimis thefts); set it low and process weaponizes (litigating everything as harassment-by-procedure). The model's general form: thresholds are power. Whoever sets the "too small to count" line decides what accumulates unexamined. ## KB Applications ### The de minimis tariff loophole as case study The §321 exemption (imports under $800 duty-free) built the Shein/Temu logistics model and became a 2025–26 trade-war flashpoint — a textbook instance of a triviality threshold aggregating into a structural force. Cross-file with [[Tariffs]] and the vault's trade-policy materials. ### Trifle-aggregation as political strategy Election-law microviolations, small-dollar straw donations, and drip-feed emoluments each stay under enforcement floors while compounding — the [[Elite Impunity]] files repeatedly show scale achieved by staying individually beneath notice. The countermeasure is aggregation accounting: audit the *sum* of the trifles, not the instances. ## See Also - Proximate Cause — the companion cutoff for attribution - [[Tipping Point]] — when accumulated trifles stop being trivial - [[Strict Liability]] — thresholds' opposite: liability regardless