I was in a very similar situation few months back, where I needed a small LED panel which was only available on Aliexpress, after a lot of search I found a similar product on a US Website. On Aliexpress it was costing just $2 and eventually I bought it from US which costed me $10 for the product and $10 for the shipping.
Funny part: I eventually figured that this US guy drop shipped it to me from some Chinese Seller as it came through China. fortunately, there was no additional custom or any extra charges on me.
This makes me wonder that buying stuff from China is not actually a problem, but instead buying it via aliexpress is a problem.
There are few US shipping services guys in the Forum, may be they can help on this query!