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No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

896 points by nkurz 7y ago

nkurz 7y ago
Here's a good background article, but I worried it was too political to submit directly: "On October 17, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), an intergovernmental organization that sets the rules and rates for international mail delivery. The decision to withdraw has been widely seen as another salvo in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it deems as unfair trade practices benefitting China. This post explains what the UPU is, why the Trump administration is withdrawing from it, the legality of withdrawal, how this decision is related to the trade war with China, and what could happen next." https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-union-guide-perplexed https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- towelrod 7y ago
  That post, like everything else I can find about this news, is a year old. Did this really happen?
  - nkurz 7y ago
    I think the summary is that it hasn't happened yet, but it's proceeding on schedule to happen at the end of September 2019.
mikestew 7y ago
If the Trump administration had just opened with this, I think we might have saved ourselves a lot of stock market turbulence with tariff pissing contests. U. S. sellers start in the hole by the fact that they can't even compete on shipping prices with Chinese companies. It reminds me of the Shell gas station owner I worked for many decades ago who complained that the local drugstore could sell quarts of oil cheaper than Shell sold it to him, a Shell station owner. Now how are you supposed to succeed with a rigged system like that? Let's see how it goes when the price of shipping actually reflects the fact that the $1.50 piece of molded plastic had to take a boat ride half way around the world.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  He did open with this, it just took time to get it through.
- ehnto 7y ago
  Tangentially related, but I was surprised at how blatant a lot of supplier price fixing is. Either you sell at the supplier agreed price or they don't supply you. This keeps prices up for the sellers, which presumably is good for the supplier as well. That's in the more open market of independent businesses. In your example, the drugstore may be selling at cost or at a loss to bring people in the door, or he may actually have a cheaper supplier. But for the Shell Station franchisee, he likely has a contract to buy Shell products from a particular distributor, so even if he could find a lower priced distributor he is unable to use it. That's all part of the franchise business model, where the franchiser double dips by taking licence fees and contractually obliges you to use their services as well. Subway charges high margins for their mandatory dishwashing soap supply for one example.
- mreome 7y ago
  Your drugstore/gas-station anecdote doesn't quite apply here though. The ePacket delivery option comes with size, weight and cost limitations such that it's not useful for shipping retail quantities. It's almost exclusively used for suppliers in China to ship directly to end-customers.
- nkurz 7y ago
  I can see the theory, but I don't think it's true in practice. First, the USPS withdrawal from the UPU was announced in October 2018, which I think predates most of the tariffs: https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-union-guide-perplexed https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio... Second, China is already paying for the cost of shipping the item to the US shores. The change affects how much the the USPS charges for the final delivery once it arrives here.
magduf 7y ago
This actually sounds like a good thing. It costs Chinese shippers almost nothing to send stuff directly from China, while it costs me quite a lot to send stuff within the US, largely because I'm subsidizing all the Chinese shippers. Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers.
- HNcantBtrustd 7y ago
  Does this mean lower government spending? Kind of blows my mind the government gets tax money and private people get the benefits.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Huh? I'm not sure what this has to do with taxes or government spending. The USPS doesn't get tax money; it's financed by its customers, like any other business, it just happens to be wholly owned by the federal government. Postal rates are high because they're forced by the UPU agreement to deliver Chinese mail for almost nothing, so they pass the costs on to US customers.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      This is incorrect. There's no mechanism by which cheaper prices for UPU mail translates into higher prices for US customers. If they had pricing power they'd raise prices regardless of fixed losses elsewhere.
      - Consultant32452 7y ago
        The USPS has to ask permission from regulators to raise prices, unlike their more private counterparts.
        ikeboy 7y ago
        And that is evaluated on a per market basis. The assertion that losing money on some services causes them to raise prices elsewhere is baseless. Even if there was a mechanism the numbers don't work - there's orders of magnitude more packages sent within the US than into the US from UPU.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
Great planet money episode on the topic: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
- ikeboy 7y ago
  >FOUNTAIN: Anna sent us a chart that estimates how much less. And it says, if you or I wanted to send a three-quarter-pound package somewhere in the U.S., the U.S. Postal Service would charge around $4.76 for the last leg of the journey. >MALONE: Yeah, the so-called final mile. However, if that same package came in from China, the USPS would only charge China Post $1.39. That means the USPS charges you and me roughly 3 1/2 times more than what they charge China Post. Comparisons like this are very misleading. They aren't comparing apples to apples. In particular, they take a retail price for fast shipping with tracking and compare to a wholesale price for slow shipping without tracking. It's true in general that UPU rates are cheaper than the comparable US rates but by 10-20%, not a factor of 3.5.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    Do US sellers have access to this slow shipping option? If so, it's curious why they wouldn't (based on the comments in the link) offer it as an option to compete with Chinese sellers.
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      You can get costs down on small, light packages by putting it in a big envelope and using good old fashioned stamps.
      - mistermann 7y ago
        Interesting. Now, back to my question: Do US sellers have access to this slow shipping option?
        7y ago
decoyworker 7y ago
Good. It should not be cheaper to ship across the Pacific ocean than ship domestically.
- zip1234 7y ago
  Bad for the environment as well for trans-pacific shipping to be cheaper
  - iNate2000 7y ago
    Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?
    - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
      In terms of dollars per unit weight moved, yes. They are not only moving massive amounts of cargo with low drag, they're also relatively lightweight compared to the product being moved. Also, there's no maintenance cost to keeping a flat path across the Pacific like there is in keeping roads free of potholes. In terms of environmental damage, not at all. Container ships burn some of the nastiest, most sulphrous and damaging forms of crude oil in existence, with little to no emissions controls. I think rail transport is best, but I could be wrong.
      - wbl 7y ago
        Sulfur dioxide emissions at sea are not that damaging compared to in land. They did make some zero emission cargo ships but it was pretty expensive due to crew complement for the reactor.
        coolspot 7y ago
        Interesting. There is only one operational cargo ship powered by a nuclear reactor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
        7y ago
Zigurd 7y ago
Having bought a couple drop-shipped goods from China, I, for one, won't miss it. The most noticeable effect I have seen is scammy listings on eBay and Amazon, unresponsive sellers, and unreliable delivery time. I have not seen any arguments of the form "but the price of X will go way up."
- entropea 7y ago
  >Having bought a couple drop-shipped goods from China, I, for one, won't miss it. I will, China makes good stuff depending on if you do your research to what's quality and is just a cheap piece of crap.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    I’ve had great success getting all sorts of stuff delivered straight from China (usually sold through eBay). As long as you don’t need it next week (or sometimes next month), you can save a ton. Compared to domestic sellers who want to gouge me $7.99 to ship a 5 square inch bag of diodes 50 miles.
- rubinelli 7y ago
  This could still be a problem if those sellers move to Fulfillment By Amazon. My understanding (and I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong) is that Amazon's current policy is to commingle products with the same SKU from different sellers, so it will become even more likely to pay for the original and get the knockoff.
  - notatoad 7y ago
    Nothing the parent comment said has anything to do with commingling of inventory. I get that HN likes to complain about FBA, but pretending inventory commingling has any relation to unresponsive sellers or long delivery times is misleading and stupid.
    - rubinelli 7y ago
      I may not have phrased it well, but I wasn't implying that the original poster would have the same problems. I was just saying this change -- which I still think is fair -- may not be only upside for American customers and sellers, if current policies don't change.
aantix 7y ago
What would be the concession from the Chinese? Or do they up the ante and impose more tariffs on incoming U.S. goods? Is this something that the Hacker News community actually supports Trump on? More curious than anything - you just don't see a lot of support for any of his initiatives here. ? Why all the downvotes?
- Zigurd 7y ago
  The resolution should be restoration of reciprocity, like having China Post insist on commercial shippers having customs clearance arranged. Other trade war elements like getting out of TPP and bellicosity in general have cost vastly more than the value of stopping drop-shipping Chinese eBay sellers, which is negligible in US China trade.
  - MrMorden 7y ago
    The US withdrawing from TPP directly resulted in a vastly-improved treaty. The problem is that the US didn't sign up to the new version.
    - Zigurd 7y ago
      That's not what I have seen in any description of TPP. It appears that withdrawing from it is pure vandalism of US interests that we now see in the trade war with China, happening outside the framework of TPP.
      - MrMorden 7y ago
        TPP instantly lost the bulk of the intellectual property chapter and a good amount of ISDS-related commitments when the US withdrew. Is there anything in the CPTPP signed version that's worse than the version the US wanted?
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  I support this, and I'm a rabid leftist. Things should cost what they cost. The only time government should interfere with pricing is to force companies to price in externalities.
caseysoftware 7y ago
This is one way to mitigate knock off products from China. If the shipping costs come up to the norm, they won't always (if ever) be the cheapest product so the real one will win out more often. Various products will have different tipping points where it just doesn't make sense to ship and/or they aren't getting enough sales to justify it. Personally, I like it and it seems like everyone wins.. except people who undercut the real product with cheap, inferior knockoffs.
- entropea 7y ago
  Nonsense, not everything from China is a knockoff and there are a lot of genuine non-copied products. How weird to think their economy is just "inferior knockoffs".
  - wolco 7y ago
    Resources aren't copied and value-added products like steel aren't either although techiques to produce or grow may be. Please cite some examples of geniune products. China is known for making existing products cheaper. The techology area is mostly copy-paste.
    - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
      Almost any top brand you can think of manufactures extensively in China.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- thfuran 7y ago
  Rather a lot of name brand stuff is also getting shipped from China.
  - larkost 7y ago
    Yes, but it is being shipped in volume containers. That is both more efficient all around, and much easier for the customs inspectors to find and divert counterfeits than in waves of individually packaged items.
mdturnerphys 7y ago
". . . all USPS international GEPS contracts will be terminated September 31st." Do courts just do the reasonable thing when contracts stipulate deadlines on dates that don't exist?
- justinjlynn 7y ago
  Generally, yeah. Of course, your mileage may vary.
- literallycancer 7y ago
  You mean adjust it to the last day of September, right?
- mercutio2 7y ago
  We should make a 21st century version of The Pirates of Penzance with Donald Trump as the Pirate King, or perhaps the Major General, and September 31st the farcical contractual factor.
iNate2000 7y ago
Anybody else notice that they said "September 31st"?
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Probably, the person writing that piece actually got official notification that the termination would occur on September 30 or the end of September, and miswrote, though that kind of error in an official notice is not unheard of.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 7y ago
  This is fine for an end date. Any duration should be specified as half-open, t₀ <= t < t₁. This way it's clear that September, even its last day, is in the period and October is not.
  - ComputerGuru 7y ago
    Yes, but try codifying that and you won’t get far enough to make that comparison. E.g. mentally or on a computer, ‘Date.Parse(“2019-09-31”)’ is an error ;)
    - freehunter 7y ago
      Any properly defined software should take a date that doesn't exist and move it forward or backward to a date that does. Leap years would crash every computer every February if that wasn't taken into account.
      - StyloW 7y ago
        Except that the whole February/leap year case is part of the Gregorian calendar. Moving the date forward or backward to a date that does exist is not a set rule and would only cause unnecessary confusion for a user or other developer for that matter; even worse if you were to do it without notifying the user. Wouldn't you agree that it'd just be better to catch the error and tell the user they "done messed up"?
wnkrshm 7y ago
So what does that mean for US companies sending packages into countries that are part of the UPU (Edit: virtually all countries on Earth)? Can each country now refuseand set their own rates for transporting US parcels the last mile?
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Probably, since everything is bilateral in agreements and negotiations. The point isn’t to minimize costs but to even out the playing field. US companies drop-shipping overseas will likely pay more, but that’s a consequence deemed overall worth it for the US local economy and market.
  - jopsen 7y ago
    Isn't the US already disadvantaged here... Last I ordered in the US (to Denmark) I paid 30USD flat fee for custom processing... On top of shipping and customs. (On an item worth 20 USD)
ajnin 7y ago
Can someone shed light on the subsidy structure behing the current model, are shipments from China being subsidized by shipments from other countries or is there government money involved ? In any case this kind of subsidy is not necessarily bad for developing countries, and it was probably instrumental in China's phenomenal economic growth, but it is now in the conquering superpower category, it's time it loses this advantage.
- 5822130027 7y ago
  > it was probably instrumental in China's phenomenal economic growth Yes, it was subsidized postal shipping by the kind overlord USA that allowed china to become a "conquering superpower", without it Xi would still be in the paddy field.
- rjtavares 7y ago
  There's a good Planet Money episode about this: The Postal Illuminati (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati?t=1566920610293 https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...)
  - sangerSCB 7y ago
    This was the first thing I thought of when I read this, it's fascinating the way this system actually works (or doesn't work.)
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  I think the issue was in mistaking China for a developing country for so long. It’s different from western countries, but not undeveloped. Its size, population, culture, heritage, and history all play a role in how the ethnocentric West misinterpreted it.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    I'm not sure that "mistaking" is the right word. For years the United States has protested the cheap UPU rates that China gets. But the UPU still classifies it as a "developing" nation. China is the world's second-largest economy. It doesn't need or deserve the artificially cheap rates anymore. China shouldn't pay less to send packages overseas than countries in Africa. By leaving the UPU, the United States can set correct prices. It's one of those situations where China claims to be a developing nation when it suits its needs, and then claims to be a developed nation when it suits its needs. If you're going to play in the big leagues, you have to play by big league rules.
Excel_Wizard 7y ago
I am still able to go on ebay and buy small items (usb cables, camera lens caps, plastic pry tools, etc) shipped from china for $0.80. Is this going to change? What about the same situation for items shipped from Thialand or Vietnam? There's quite a few of those available as well.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Yes and yes. I don’t see any other outcomes.
jermaustin1 7y ago
So is drop shipping from China now dead? A major benefit of drop shipping from China was the pretty much $1 shipping for almost any item via ePacket. Obviously the products are still cheaper, but with a 25% tariff on most goods, and what I can only assume will be a close to DHL price for shipping, a t-shirt drop shipped from China will probably cost more than one made and shipped domestically. To continue to be competitive, drop shippers are going to have to think about bulk imports and warehousing, thus no longer being drop shippers.
- entropea 7y ago
  >So is drop shipping from China now dead? Probably. This is going to drop a lot of sellers off of Amazon and eBay, and likely have major effects on independent small business dollar/99c stores.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Oh great, now I get to buy the same item from Walmart at 20x the price. If I can even find the one I need.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      Wal-Mart merchandise is not shipped via international post. This UPU situation has no influence here.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        If Chinese sellers get locked out, where will I turn to buy those same goods?
        czinck 7y ago
        They won't be locked out, they'll just now have to pay whatever the standard rates for USPS shipping (or whichever carrier they'll use), instead of the artificially low rates mandated by the UPU. Presumably someone (whether in China or in the US) will find it worth selling whatever widget you want, just the shipping cost won't be subsidized.
dubliner2077 7y ago
I think it's fine for the environment to be honest. Sending 1$ sort of thing free shipping overseas does not sound right.
dmix 7y ago
I almost never order stuff from China here in Canada because its very expensive to ship anything and inconsistently takes forever or semi-forever. I was wondering how Wish.com made money...
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > and inconsistently takes forever or semi-forever. As a teenager I ordered a custom mousepad from a website, apparently it was ultimately sourced from China. Never did show up, but it was something like $5 so I never bothered looking into it, chalked it up to a lesson learned. About four years later I'm visiting home, and in my mail pile sits a random Chinese package. Lo and behold my mousepad finally arrived! I figure my $5 went towards building the actual factory.
- notatoad 7y ago
  This is not a us-specific situation, e-packet deliveries ship to Canada too. I get plenty of stuff from AliExpress with free shipping
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    living in canada, I genuinely hope we follow suit and increase the cost of shipping from china to canada. It's encouraging incredibly wasteful buying patterns, and sets up a system canadian companies can NEVER compete with.
calimac 7y ago
FINALLY! The Chinese have had a free ride selling directly into the living rooms of Americans free of tax and regulation for too long. The Chinese manufacturers were financed by the Chinese Gov. and USPS which effectively destroyed segments of retail competition in e-commerce. Trump fixed it unlike another politician before him. #ArtOfTheDeal
Leader2light 7y ago
Support Tump for a 2nd term. Show your support openly. The USA needs change.
entropea 7y ago
Will this even matter when Chinese Alibaba/Aliexpress sellers recently started sending their items to Singapore to avoid tariffs and shipping restrictions?
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  It’s neither a tariff nor a shipping restriction. The UPU affects all international shipping, so Singapore or China is all the same.
genghisjahn 7y ago
If it goes into effect September 31st then it’s never going into effect.
resters 7y ago
Not sure why everyone thinks this is a good thing. If the Chinese government wants to subsidize shipping so that US consumers can buy products for less money, what is the harm? The reason postage is expensive in the US is because there is a legal monopoly on first class mail, and very little competition for premium services (which is why Amazon decided that launching its own shipping carrier would be highly profitable). So the blame for high US shipping prices rests with the US government, certainly not with anything China is doing!
- beowulfey 7y ago
  The Chinese government was not the one subsidizing it. The original UPU treaty [1] stated that countries would pay a flat rate when shipping to another country. This was original passed several decades ago. The USPS only was getting paid $1.50 per package to forward on any parcel that arrived for a USA destination from China. Since no USA tax money was involved, the "subsidizing" gets passed onto domestic shipping in the form of increased fares to help cover the loss in revenue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
- PunchTornado 7y ago
  it's not the Chinese gov who subsidizes shipping, it's the US and developed countries who subsidize Chinese shipping. I think China is no longer a developing country, should be on equal footing with Western countries now.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Some of my friends in NYC were ordering single screws for various electronic devices for < $.20 that were shipped from China with no shipping. I always found that funny...
dev_dull 7y ago
> This is great news for U.S. sellers, especially eBay sellers. Exactly the intended consequence. Why should US taxpayers subsidize shipping costs for products to come from China? It made no sense at all in today's economy unless the only thing you care about is paying less for your goods regardless of the consequences, which I don't think is a majority position of adults today.
- wbl 7y ago
  The goal of the UPU was to have one rate for international shipping based on sending country vs. per destination pricing. Countries agreed to eat the costs. This produced things like the International Postal Coupon which are great.
  - Kadin 7y ago
    Like Internet peering agreements, the UPU model only made sense when there was about the same amount of traffic going in each direction. In that case, it makes sense for each country to just pick up the cost of domestic last-mile delivery, because other countries are doing the same for its outbound packages. The problem is when there's a continuous structural trade imbalance, and more packages flow one direction than in the other. Then you have a de facto subsidy scheme, and it makes sense to terminate or renegotiate the agreement and switch to something more along the lines of sender-pays.
    - wbl 7y ago
      Subsidy to whom exactly? Remember the packages only flow because your end wants them.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  The actual consequence will be Chinese sellers using US warehouses and drop-shipping from there. Others send over a container with each ordered good and slap a local post’s label on it. Possibly that local post’s label is attached in China and the container just gets dropped off at a USPS DC by the private freight forwarder. It’s already fairly common. Overall, a few more US jobs, and maybe more USPS revenue for what are now domestic shipments. Edit: OR these buyers Shift to Amazon, which can deliver for less than USPS can via private courier, and pool every more items per delivery.
mielecmichal 7y ago
The problem here is an organization which has a right of regulating the market by setting artificial rates. The shipping price should depend only on private companies their pricing policies. Bad thing is that people blame China instead of the United Nation bureaucracy. :(
jonknee 7y ago
In addition to Amazon 3rd party sellers, this seems like bad news for Shopify. They host a lot of Chinese drop ship stores that work because of these artificially low rates.
toddmorey 7y ago
Here's a good article on this shipping quirk: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the-postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from-china/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/... I think it's good for the US economy as well as the environment. It makes no sense for something to ship further to bring shipping costs down.
williamDafoe 7y ago
Warehousing won't solve the greed problem at USPS. The $5 poll tax on all shipments is just insanity. Stamping "priority mail" on 1st class packages and using red, white, and blue boxes doesn't justify their greed and incompetence, no matter what the USPS execs think .... I foresee that withing 6 months China will have 100M square feet of dropshipping warehouse space in Vietnam. This is another in a line of Trump "look busy, change nothing" initiatives, the only difference this time (vs the border do nothing initiatives) is that this time the problem is real, unlike the non crisis at the border where immigration is near a multi decade low!
- mistermann 7y ago
  > "look busy, change nothing" initiatives Why would China create more warehouse space in Vietnam, or so many people spend time writing about this topic, if nothing is changing? Have I taken your comment literally when it was intended to be metaphorical? If so, could you more clearly clarify the specific idea you are intending to transmit?
tyingq 7y ago
Ouch for AliExpress.
- autokad 7y ago
  so sounds like this will be bad for alibaba. Has anyone seen any quantitative numbers on this?
- jayess 7y ago
  This will probably drive Wish out of business.
dcchambers 7y ago
Will be interesting to see the effects of this. Especially Shopify drop-shipping stores and Etsy stores full of cheap garbage. Hopefully it helps clean up some of the noise...I don't think those stores were adding much value anyway.
scarejunba 7y ago
So what we should expect is internal shipping costs to go down as a result of this?
jrockway 7y ago
The impression I get from that thread is that the dream here is now Americans can do what they do best, sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent. Previously, you could go to a Chinese website and have the Chinese factory send you a widget directly to your door. Now that will be too expensive, but hey we have a solution! An American will order a bunch of widgets in bulk, ship them over in a cargo ship, come up with some fancy marketing, and then sell the widgets to you at 200% markup. You know these folks will never hire electrical engineers to certify safety and conformance, or work with the factory to improve the product in response to customer feedback. They're there to do one thing: sit in the middle of the transaction and charge Chinese manufacturers for the privilege of selling to Americans. But hey, look on the bright side... at least there is someone you can sue when your widget blows up.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  > sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent This is already a cottage industry, drop shipping. You make a shopify store, put up some marketing of people in sunglasses in front of brick walls, and sell cheap crap like fashion watches. Then when someone buys one, you go on Aliexpress and order it directly to your customers' address. If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dollars at a time. You charge people thousands of dollars to "teach" them how to make their own drop shipping stores.
  - ukoki 7y ago
    > If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dollars at a time. Have you been to Thailand? I estimate these "digital nomad" drop-shippers and drop-shipping-shippers comprise about half the GDP of Chiang Mai
- delfinom 7y ago
  Pretty much. I absolutely fucking hate Amazon now. It's full of white label products. You can tell the seller does no real safety testing of any kind from their broad array of random shit. You can't even trust the kitchen equipment for chance they made the steel with lead or the silicone is mixed with something toxic, etc. Completely unregulated market place of stupid. And this is on top of Amazon's counterfeit problems they half ass enforcement. I'm surprised nobody has died yet from counterfeit or substandard automotive goods of all things.
chromaton 7y ago
I just got an email from eBay Main Street, which is eBay's mailing list for political issues which affect their sellers. This email is tells me to call congress to NOT withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, under the logic that it will make it harder to ship stuff from the US to other countries.
- yumraj 7y ago
  Of course this is bad for eBay, and perhaps etsy, shopify and others. The flood of direct-from-China sellers selling cheap products and shipping for free (on USPS's dime) will stop.
  - busterarm 7y ago
    Definitely bad for eBay and etsy. They're absolutely dependent on the flood of cheap goods. Honestly this is disastrous for etsy, but maybe it'll help them get back to their roots and be useful again.
    - rc_kas 7y ago
      This sounds like a win for America.
boyadjian 7y ago
I am a very good client of Amazon. Love this company, what a terrific invention.
bertjk 7y ago
Related to the website if not the article, but I wish this website did not hijack ctrl-f.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Would any other Americans prefer to have just 3x/week delivery and still have cheap shipping internationally? This seems to be more about propping up the USPS’ inefficiencies at the cost of higher prices for consumers.
- sudosteph 7y ago
  Not me. I had a neighbor for while who worked full-time for USPS. Postal workers provide reliable service, and are able to earn a livable wage without driving themselves into the ground like the contractor delivery services. I like that USPS is a piece of the American infrastructure fabric, and I like that it employs local people in a sustainable way. I do not consume nearly enough things that require international shipping to value cheap shipping more. And even if I did, the ethical implications involved with destroying decent jobs for Americans and losing a piece of our national delivery network would stil not make it worthwhile sacrifice in my book.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    It’s great that the USPS employs people that way. The real question is why are others allowed to do any differently. Buyers voting with their feet will only go so far.
axaxs 7y ago
I don't know why USPS doesn't just raise its rates across the board. I understand why, 50, 20, or even perhaps 15 years ago, it was important to keep mail ultra cheap. But today, I'd argue >95% of mail comes from businesses, and most of that are ads in some form or another. It's ridiculous to me that I can send a piece of mail to the other side of the USA in 2 days for less than $0.50. I don't want prices to go up, of course, but at the same time, I have trouble listening to the woe-is-me attitude of the USPS, while their pricing scheme makes no sense at all.
- pawelk 7y ago
  > I'd argue >95% of mail comes from businesses, and most of that are ads in some form or another. It's ridiculous to me that I can send a piece of mail to the other side of the USA in 2 days for less than $0.50 Don't you think these two facts are somehow related? They have to go by your house every day anyway, carrying paid junk mail, and the marginal cost of delivering an actual letter is quite low. Maybe a bit analogous to newspapers/magazines, where the price you pay may not even cover the printing costs, but the difference is subsidized by the advertisers.
yumraj 7y ago
Excellent!! This may have a highly desirable side effect of cleaning a lot of junk/fake products on Amazon. This will also impact Etsy, and perhaps Shopify and eBay.
sorryitstrue 7y ago
Now canada can become the shipping hub for epackets and it can be forwarded to US addresses from there. Good opportunity for someone.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  shipping from canada to the usa is fairly expensive and slow (customs delays are fairly common). better to ship to a depo in the usa and mail out from there to individual buyers.
utf985 7y ago
Does this affect me somehow as a consumer in the EU?
blairanderson 7y ago
This genuinely won't change anything on Amazon because top sellers are already using FBA. This is bad news for Ebay/Wish/some-shopify-dropshippers.
- heymijo 7y ago
  I thought/wondered the same regarding wish.com. Although this 2019 Forbes article makes it sound like it's not a death knell. > Shipping is cheap thanks in part to an agreement between China Post and the U.S. Postal Service that allows goods that weigh 4.4 pounds or less to be shipped at low rates. About 15% of Wish’s shipments qualify. https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the-billionaire-who-defied-amazon-and-built-wish-the-worlds-most-downloaded-e-commerce-app/#6095147170f5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the-...
cr0sh 7y ago
I'm wondering how this is going to effect the hobbyist and small business electronics markets here in the United States? Know how cheap and easy it is to get a small number PCBs made in China and shipped to the US? That's over. So is any number of small electronic parts that would've been shipped free or cheaply from China. Cheap ESP8266 boards? Nope. Cheap automotive relays? Nope. Basically any and every kind of piece of electronics components, modules, etc you can think of will jump in price drastically. Even if it doesn't need to - it will (like I've seen on the tariffs, prices jumped for small amounts of electronic components just because, even if they were being shipped directly to the end-user consumer - when that's not a part of the tariffs - direct to consumer sales shouldn't be affected, but because the vendors could do it, they did it anyhow - just to make some extra cash). So where are hobbyists and others supposed to get these parts now? Digikey and Mouser for some of it. Surplus for others. But for boards and modules and such - well, there's just Sparkfun and Adafruit - maybe a couple of others (not sure?). But they are likely to raise their prices too, because they depend on the components (resistors, diodes, mosfets, chips, aka the "raw materials") to make their boards (Sparkfun makes them in-house - or at least some of them - but I don't know what Adafruit does). Or we'll have to pay the extra shipping fees and other costs (because the chinese sellers will just add on some extra cost - just to grab it - it's inevitable). This will have a ripple effect; small entrepreneurs and startups - kickstarter startups especially - won't be able to compete, unless they base themselves in Shenzhen - because where are they going to get the components cheaper than a competitor who is already there? They aren't made in America any longer (and they never will be again - get that fantasy out of your head if you think that's going to happen). Radio Row is gone. The original "silicon valley" is gone. Heck, there used to be a ton of computer (mini) manufacturers and businesses here in Phoenix - they are virtually gone, too. And now with this change - however you feel about it - is going to hobble the next up-and-comers, and current suppliers. At least, that's how I am seeing it. Now I'll admit - it wasn't fair for competition here - but it wasn't as if China was doing something wrong, as far as I understand it. They were playing by the rules set forth by an international body. Maybe it wasn't fair to us. But instead of letting this kind of thing go on for 1-2 decades, it should have been fixed back then. Now it is likely to destroy or severely change at least one or more areas of enthusiast and hobbyist things (think also RC, drones, etc), as well as probably a ton of other non-electronic things. Do we really think there are that many suppliers here in the US that will charge low prices (competitive with Chinese suppliers) and have fair shipping rates to boot? The fact is, it will likely still be cheaper to ship it from China, even with the extra cost on shipping - since you're going to be paying that anyhow. For instance - my goto - 12V DC gearmotors. I can buy one kind from a supplier of Ametek (maybe Mouser or Digikey); I will pay whatever the high cost of shipping such an item to my door in addition to the price. Have you ever priced those motors in small quantities? When you can get them...I've seen prices 10-20x over the equivalent motor from a supplier in China. What would cost $15.00 in China for a single motor, can be up to $100.00 or more from a US manufacturer for the same specs. Let's say it cost $10.00 to ship to my door, whether from China or the US, and let's say the Chinese supplier adds on an extra $5.00 "just because fee" - well, which is cheaper? $110.00 dollars for the US motor, or $30.00 for the Chinese motor? It's all a farce in my opinion - this administration essentially raising prices, which is going to be passed on to the consumer ultimately, trying to gain support from US small businesses (that's the political angle), at the expense of the rest of consumers, and is selling it with some kind of idea or expectation that this is somehow going to lead to the United States becoming a large scale manufacturer of "everything" that we get from China now. Of course what isn't said is that, even if that fantasy somehow did become true - those items manufactured here would still cost a hell of a lot more to make, and they would be virtually unsaleable on the international market because of that (let's ignore the fact that we'll be lucky if other countries ever buy from us again). I see a very, very bleak future ahead for this country - no matter what happens with this current administration or the next. Maybe that was always going to be the case. The problem is, prior to this admin, that date was likely out a few decades - now those decades have been erased, and that future is happening now (and it is worse than it would have been had it happened "naturally" I think). I say if you are an American and are under 30 years of age, and you have any marketable skills at all, you might want to think long and hard about emigrating. Dead serious on this.
buboard 7y ago
This is good for the environment
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Two questions: 1) What are the possible unintended consequences? This is fairly drastic. Certainly, something(s) unforeseen are going to happen. 2) What are the new opportunities? For example, importing in bulk and shipping from here (as opposed to individual orders shipped from China).
- deleted 7y ago
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holoduke 7y ago
I ordered more than 1000 parcels from AliExpress, banggoods, gearbest and hobbyking. Never ever I had to pay import duty costs (Netherlands) and in most cases shipment was either free or a redicilous low amount. If everyone would be like me, no store would exist anymore here in Holland. Even though I am a bit of a hypocrite, I do think it's fair to make the market a bit more fair.
- euph0ria 7y ago
  Just curious, what type of stuff do you buy? I find that the quality often is poor when buying from Aliexpress with artificial ratings boosted by the seller doing anything to get a high review. Banggood has been better with more accurate ratings.
  - tverbeure 7y ago
    Not OP, but I've used AliExpress to stock my home electronics lab with resistors, LEDs, Blue Pill microcontroller boards, connectors, etc. All dirt cheap, often in individual parcels, shipping cost close to zero.
    - holoduke 7y ago
      yes same here. Connectors, crimping tools, wire, electronic components, props, electric motors, control boards, radio sender/receivers, antennas, batteries, tools etc. You need to find your way. The stores have a lot of crap, but once you get a grasp of everything you find out that there is actually quite decent quality stuff out there.
rc_kas 7y ago
Yeah this is the one (and only) thing Trump did right. I can't believe we let China get cheap shipping for so long on our dime.
mmsimanga 7y ago
South African experience. I buy a fair number of items on Aliexpress. Stuff you can never get in any store here. I use the Post Office to ship because courier is just too expensive. It takes 40 to 60 days to arrive. The hold up appears to be the SA Post Office. Since a few months ago the Post Office now charges approximately US$2 processing fee for each package. Its a fair charge I guess but there hasn't been any improvement in delivery times. Sometimes stuff arrives after so long that I have forgotten why I ordered it.
zxcvbn4038 7y ago
It is still going to be cheaper to order directly from China then to pay someone in the US to order it, repackage it, and mail it to me. (Or even to be lazy and order it on my behalf from China, but US companies will repack it so you don't find out their sources). The US just doesn't have the manufacturing capabilities anymore, and even if the US wanted to have its own manufacturing capability people are not going to work China wages, they are going to demand US wages. So again China will end up being cheaper.
hart_russell 7y ago
Glad we're finally waking up to the realization we were siphoning off GDP to a nation that doesn't align with our values.
Marazan 7y ago
It has always struck me as mad that I can order an individual widget from China for less than it would cost for the postage of that widget in my own country.
figgyc 7y ago
Really what needs to happen is that the UPU in general needs to be redefined. The Chinese sellers can still access Europe, Canada, and basically anywhere else, which isn't going to stop especially since most countries are not as aggressive as the US when it comes to China trade. Hopefully the reduction in sales due to the US leaving the UPU kills off a bunch of the Chinese businesses but it is definitely still going to be a problem elsewhere.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  While I would be happy to see a more equitable and sustainable distribution of jobs and industries between the U.S. and China, the phrase "Hopefully...kills off a bunch of the Chinese businesses" uses language which is a bit off-putting. If those businesses changed their business model to sell more to Chinese consumers, or utilized U.S. distributors more, that would be good. I realize that you were not actually suggesting that anybody should get killed, just pointing out how it sounded from my perspective, a little off-putting.
sealthedeal 7y ago
What is the exact reason for all of this? Is this part of the current administration's "trade war" tactics? Or is it something less politically motivated?
homerhomer 7y ago
Always amazed me when buying something of Amazon and it's shipped from China cheaper that if shipped domestically.
elamje 7y ago
For some context as to why this is significant, listen to this great Planet Money podcast about international shipping rates. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
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kinnth 7y ago
"All US and Canadian shipping is crazy expensive" - A Typical Brit
epx 7y ago
In Brazil, the local mail charges R$ 15 (~US$ 4) to deliver international packages from "certain countries" i.e. China. The result is, ultra-cheap freight has almost disappeared, most sites like AliExpress now charge around US$ 4, but the class of this kind of package is not charged again here, so it is still kind of cheap. OTOH mail from USA is damn expensive. I don't buy more things from USA because of this. And local customs tend to target USA packages more so the chance of paying import tax is way higher, too. Even packages from Europe and Japan are cheaper, and one can see they are more distant places.
einpoklum 7y ago
This change seems to only affect the US, apparently.
zizee 7y ago
Lots of speculating why it is cheaper to ship from China than domestically, a lot of it misguided. The root cause is that quite a few years ago the consortium of national postal providers which setup agreements on who pays for which parts of international shipping decided that China was classed as a developing country and given subsidized rates by other countries. This wasn't a big deal when the agreement was made because it was before the days of pervasive online commerce, and there just wasn't that much sent from China to other countries via the postal service. I encourage everyone interested in this to checkout this podcast episode from NPR's Planet Money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis... > The reason for this price gap, Jayme claims, is a secretive group of postal policymakers that meets every four years to fix international shipping rates. A kind of postal illuminati. > Today's episode: A conspiracy theory that's actually real. How the decisions made behind closed doors make it cheap to buy things from across the world, but are also distorting the global economy.
- craftyguy 7y ago
  They did a really good job explaining the situation in that Planet Money episode.
- polyfractal 7y ago
  ++ Came here to post the Planet Money episode. :)
killface 7y ago
I guess this is good, but all it means for us is higher prices. Shipping wasn't the thing killing these "small businesses".
micimize 7y ago
I get how this subsidy came to be in the first place, but am surprised that I hadn't heard anything about it prior to this
ourmandave 7y ago
Aw, now I have to buy everything off AliExpress.com for a fraction of the price and free shipping. Just hope I can remember ordering it when it arrives 30+ days from now.
Animats 7y ago
Oh, Universal Postal Union "terminal dues." Those were scheduled to go up in 2021 anyway. China is still getting the "underdeveloped country" rate, because the last 10 year rate setting was in 2011.[1] [1] http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit-charges/about-terminal-dues-and-transit-charges.html http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit-c...
oferzelig 7y ago
But only for US customers.
standardcitizen 7y ago
Do we have a link besides a random post from some dude we all don’t know?
Bendingo 7y ago
And yet another international agreement unilaterally exited by the US. These agreements (eg INF ABM) are extremely difficult to create, but easily trashed by a single recalcitrant. It seems like the whole international order is breaking down.
firecall 7y ago
Not sure how it works in Australia - but I see Chinese and HK sellers doing super cheap shipping. less than domestic seems to be able to.
p1mrx 7y ago
I buy $1-$5 items from China somewhat regularly. What are they likely to cost next year?
hnick 7y ago
This is an issue in Australia too, and since we are usually followers and not leaders for these kinds of issues it might mean a change is on the cards for us too. Is there an easy way to find out? My hope is that the USPS leaving the Union is enough of a threat to shake up the rules for all countries.
rurban 7y ago
Only in the US. In Europe Aliexpress still rules. No shipping costs from China at all, and much cheaper product costs.
DoctorOetker 7y ago
>The administration has given the UPU an ultimatum, that they: either allow the USPS to set rates for China mail that arrives in the U.S., or the U.S. will officially leave the UPU on October 17th. (Emphasis mine) why "for China mail" ? why not "no exceptions: all over the planet everybody pays the same local rates, or else we leave the UPU" ? This smells like hidden import taxation, but I hope I am wrong. But then why insist on phrasing the ultimatum with referene to "for China mail" specifically ? EDIT: adding another gem: >Global Supply Chain News: After Three Years of Secrecy, Amazon Starting to Ramp Up Global Logistics Services >they are actively looking to compete in the shipping industry ... >The project’s name: Dragon Boat. >As part of that strategy, Bloomberg reported Amazon had plans to take on freight forwarding and brokerage services directly, eliminating a set of middlemen. >... >Among the most important ramifications from Amazon’s vision: small Chinese manufacturer will be able sell to American consumers with no one else than Amazon between them. So if an American company (in this case Amazon), will perform transport within China, does that mean that reciprocally, Chinese companies can also become a mail service in the US? They could be paid a low wage, and eat cheap food that is shipped internally. Is this really about balancing trade or about big corporations doing to mail, what they did with manufacture: export jobs to China for increased profit?

896 points by nkurz 7y ago

Here's a good background article, but I worried it was too political to submit directly: "On October 17, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), an intergovernmental organization that sets the rules and rates for international mail delivery. The decision to withdraw has been widely seen as another salvo in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it deems as unfair trade practices benefitting China. This post explains what the UPU is, why the Trump administration is withdrawing from it, the legality of withdrawal, how this decision is related to the trade war with China, and what could happen next." https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-union-guide-perplexed https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio...

deleted 7y ago
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towelrod 7y ago
That post, like everything else I can find about this news, is a year old. Did this really happen?
- nkurz 7y ago
  I think the summary is that it hasn't happened yet, but it's proceeding on schedule to happen at the end of September 2019.

mikestew 7y ago

If the Trump administration had just opened with this, I think we might have saved ourselves a lot of stock market turbulence with tariff pissing contests. U. S. sellers start in the hole by the fact that they can't even compete on shipping prices with Chinese companies. It reminds me of the Shell gas station owner I worked for many decades ago who complained that the local drugstore could sell quarts of oil cheaper than Shell sold it to him, a Shell station owner. Now how are you supposed to succeed with a rigged system like that? Let's see how it goes when the price of shipping actually reflects the fact that the $1.50 piece of molded plastic had to take a boat ride half way around the world.

ThomPete 7y ago
He did open with this, it just took time to get it through.
ehnto 7y ago
Tangentially related, but I was surprised at how blatant a lot of supplier price fixing is. Either you sell at the supplier agreed price or they don't supply you. This keeps prices up for the sellers, which presumably is good for the supplier as well. That's in the more open market of independent businesses. In your example, the drugstore may be selling at cost or at a loss to bring people in the door, or he may actually have a cheaper supplier. But for the Shell Station franchisee, he likely has a contract to buy Shell products from a particular distributor, so even if he could find a lower priced distributor he is unable to use it. That's all part of the franchise business model, where the franchiser double dips by taking licence fees and contractually obliges you to use their services as well. Subway charges high margins for their mandatory dishwashing soap supply for one example.
mreome 7y ago
Your drugstore/gas-station anecdote doesn't quite apply here though. The ePacket delivery option comes with size, weight and cost limitations such that it's not useful for shipping retail quantities. It's almost exclusively used for suppliers in China to ship directly to end-customers.
nkurz 7y ago
I can see the theory, but I don't think it's true in practice. First, the USPS withdrawal from the UPU was announced in October 2018, which I think predates most of the tariffs: https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-union-guide-perplexed https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio... Second, China is already paying for the cost of shipping the item to the US shores. The change affects how much the the USPS charges for the final delivery once it arrives here.

magduf 7y ago

This actually sounds like a good thing. It costs Chinese shippers almost nothing to send stuff directly from China, while it costs me quite a lot to send stuff within the US, largely because I'm subsidizing all the Chinese shippers. Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers.

HNcantBtrustd 7y ago
Does this mean lower government spending? Kind of blows my mind the government gets tax money and private people get the benefits.
- magduf 7y ago
  Huh? I'm not sure what this has to do with taxes or government spending. The USPS doesn't get tax money; it's financed by its customers, like any other business, it just happens to be wholly owned by the federal government. Postal rates are high because they're forced by the UPU agreement to deliver Chinese mail for almost nothing, so they pass the costs on to US customers.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    This is incorrect. There's no mechanism by which cheaper prices for UPU mail translates into higher prices for US customers. If they had pricing power they'd raise prices regardless of fixed losses elsewhere.
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      The USPS has to ask permission from regulators to raise prices, unlike their more private counterparts.
      - ikeboy 7y ago
        And that is evaluated on a per market basis. The assertion that losing money on some services causes them to raise prices elsewhere is baseless. Even if there was a mechanism the numbers don't work - there's orders of magnitude more packages sent within the US than into the US from UPU.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

Great planet money episode on the topic: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

ikeboy 7y ago
>FOUNTAIN: Anna sent us a chart that estimates how much less. And it says, if you or I wanted to send a three-quarter-pound package somewhere in the U.S., the U.S. Postal Service would charge around $4.76 for the last leg of the journey. >MALONE: Yeah, the so-called final mile. However, if that same package came in from China, the USPS would only charge China Post $1.39. That means the USPS charges you and me roughly 3 1/2 times more than what they charge China Post. Comparisons like this are very misleading. They aren't comparing apples to apples. In particular, they take a retail price for fast shipping with tracking and compare to a wholesale price for slow shipping without tracking. It's true in general that UPU rates are cheaper than the comparable US rates but by 10-20%, not a factor of 3.5.
- mistermann 7y ago
  Do US sellers have access to this slow shipping option? If so, it's curious why they wouldn't (based on the comments in the link) offer it as an option to compete with Chinese sellers.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    You can get costs down on small, light packages by putting it in a big envelope and using good old fashioned stamps.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      Interesting. Now, back to my question: Do US sellers have access to this slow shipping option?
      - 7y ago

decoyworker 7y ago

Good. It should not be cheaper to ship across the Pacific ocean than ship domestically.

zip1234 7y ago
Bad for the environment as well for trans-pacific shipping to be cheaper
- iNate2000 7y ago
  Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    In terms of dollars per unit weight moved, yes. They are not only moving massive amounts of cargo with low drag, they're also relatively lightweight compared to the product being moved. Also, there's no maintenance cost to keeping a flat path across the Pacific like there is in keeping roads free of potholes. In terms of environmental damage, not at all. Container ships burn some of the nastiest, most sulphrous and damaging forms of crude oil in existence, with little to no emissions controls. I think rail transport is best, but I could be wrong.
    - wbl 7y ago
      Sulfur dioxide emissions at sea are not that damaging compared to in land. They did make some zero emission cargo ships but it was pretty expensive due to crew complement for the reactor.
      - coolspot 7y ago
        Interesting. There is only one operational cargo ship powered by a nuclear reactor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
      - 7y ago

Zigurd 7y ago

Having bought a couple drop-shipped goods from China, I, for one, won't miss it. The most noticeable effect I have seen is scammy listings on eBay and Amazon, unresponsive sellers, and unreliable delivery time. I have not seen any arguments of the form "but the price of X will go way up."

entropea 7y ago
>Having bought a couple drop-shipped goods from China, I, for one, won't miss it. I will, China makes good stuff depending on if you do your research to what's quality and is just a cheap piece of crap.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  I’ve had great success getting all sorts of stuff delivered straight from China (usually sold through eBay). As long as you don’t need it next week (or sometimes next month), you can save a ton. Compared to domestic sellers who want to gouge me $7.99 to ship a 5 square inch bag of diodes 50 miles.
rubinelli 7y ago
This could still be a problem if those sellers move to Fulfillment By Amazon. My understanding (and I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong) is that Amazon's current policy is to commingle products with the same SKU from different sellers, so it will become even more likely to pay for the original and get the knockoff.
- notatoad 7y ago
  Nothing the parent comment said has anything to do with commingling of inventory. I get that HN likes to complain about FBA, but pretending inventory commingling has any relation to unresponsive sellers or long delivery times is misleading and stupid.
  - rubinelli 7y ago
    I may not have phrased it well, but I wasn't implying that the original poster would have the same problems. I was just saying this change -- which I still think is fair -- may not be only upside for American customers and sellers, if current policies don't change.

aantix 7y ago

What would be the concession from the Chinese? Or do they up the ante and impose more tariffs on incoming U.S. goods? Is this something that the Hacker News community actually supports Trump on? More curious than anything - you just don't see a lot of support for any of his initiatives here. ? Why all the downvotes?

Zigurd 7y ago
The resolution should be restoration of reciprocity, like having China Post insist on commercial shippers having customs clearance arranged. Other trade war elements like getting out of TPP and bellicosity in general have cost vastly more than the value of stopping drop-shipping Chinese eBay sellers, which is negligible in US China trade.
- MrMorden 7y ago
  The US withdrawing from TPP directly resulted in a vastly-improved treaty. The problem is that the US didn't sign up to the new version.
  - Zigurd 7y ago
    That's not what I have seen in any description of TPP. It appears that withdrawing from it is pure vandalism of US interests that we now see in the trade war with China, happening outside the framework of TPP.
    - MrMorden 7y ago
      TPP instantly lost the bulk of the intellectual property chapter and a good amount of ISDS-related commitments when the US withdrew. Is there anything in the CPTPP signed version that's worse than the version the US wanted?
orthecreedence 7y ago
I support this, and I'm a rabid leftist. Things should cost what they cost. The only time government should interfere with pricing is to force companies to price in externalities.

caseysoftware 7y ago

This is one way to mitigate knock off products from China. If the shipping costs come up to the norm, they won't always (if ever) be the cheapest product so the real one will win out more often. Various products will have different tipping points where it just doesn't make sense to ship and/or they aren't getting enough sales to justify it. Personally, I like it and it seems like everyone wins.. except people who undercut the real product with cheap, inferior knockoffs.

entropea 7y ago
Nonsense, not everything from China is a knockoff and there are a lot of genuine non-copied products. How weird to think their economy is just "inferior knockoffs".
- wolco 7y ago
  Resources aren't copied and value-added products like steel aren't either although techiques to produce or grow may be. Please cite some examples of geniune products. China is known for making existing products cheaper. The techology area is mostly copy-paste.
  - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
    Almost any top brand you can think of manufactures extensively in China.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
thfuran 7y ago
Rather a lot of name brand stuff is also getting shipped from China.
- larkost 7y ago
  Yes, but it is being shipped in volume containers. That is both more efficient all around, and much easier for the customs inspectors to find and divert counterfeits than in waves of individually packaged items.

mdturnerphys 7y ago

". . . all USPS international GEPS contracts will be terminated September 31st." Do courts just do the reasonable thing when contracts stipulate deadlines on dates that don't exist?

justinjlynn 7y ago
Generally, yeah. Of course, your mileage may vary.
literallycancer 7y ago
You mean adjust it to the last day of September, right?
mercutio2 7y ago
We should make a 21st century version of The Pirates of Penzance with Donald Trump as the Pirate King, or perhaps the Major General, and September 31st the farcical contractual factor.

iNate2000 7y ago

Anybody else notice that they said "September 31st"?

dragonwriter 7y ago
Probably, the person writing that piece actually got official notification that the termination would occur on September 30 or the end of September, and miswrote, though that kind of error in an official notice is not unheard of.
deleted 7y ago
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jessaustin 7y ago
This is fine for an end date. Any duration should be specified as half-open, t₀ <= t < t₁. This way it's clear that September, even its last day, is in the period and October is not.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Yes, but try codifying that and you won’t get far enough to make that comparison. E.g. mentally or on a computer, ‘Date.Parse(“2019-09-31”)’ is an error ;)
  - freehunter 7y ago
    Any properly defined software should take a date that doesn't exist and move it forward or backward to a date that does. Leap years would crash every computer every February if that wasn't taken into account.
    - StyloW 7y ago
      Except that the whole February/leap year case is part of the Gregorian calendar. Moving the date forward or backward to a date that does exist is not a set rule and would only cause unnecessary confusion for a user or other developer for that matter; even worse if you were to do it without notifying the user. Wouldn't you agree that it'd just be better to catch the error and tell the user they "done messed up"?

wnkrshm 7y ago

So what does that mean for US companies sending packages into countries that are part of the UPU (Edit: virtually all countries on Earth)? Can each country now refuseand set their own rates for transporting US parcels the last mile?

ComputerGuru 7y ago
Probably, since everything is bilateral in agreements and negotiations. The point isn’t to minimize costs but to even out the playing field. US companies drop-shipping overseas will likely pay more, but that’s a consequence deemed overall worth it for the US local economy and market.
- jopsen 7y ago
  Isn't the US already disadvantaged here... Last I ordered in the US (to Denmark) I paid 30USD flat fee for custom processing... On top of shipping and customs. (On an item worth 20 USD)

ajnin 7y ago

Can someone shed light on the subsidy structure behing the current model, are shipments from China being subsidized by shipments from other countries or is there government money involved ? In any case this kind of subsidy is not necessarily bad for developing countries, and it was probably instrumental in China's phenomenal economic growth, but it is now in the conquering superpower category, it's time it loses this advantage.

5822130027 7y ago
> it was probably instrumental in China's phenomenal economic growth Yes, it was subsidized postal shipping by the kind overlord USA that allowed china to become a "conquering superpower", without it Xi would still be in the paddy field.
rjtavares 7y ago
There's a good Planet Money episode about this: The Postal Illuminati (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati?t=1566920610293 https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...)
- sangerSCB 7y ago
  This was the first thing I thought of when I read this, it's fascinating the way this system actually works (or doesn't work.)
ComputerGuru 7y ago
I think the issue was in mistaking China for a developing country for so long. It’s different from western countries, but not undeveloped. Its size, population, culture, heritage, and history all play a role in how the ethnocentric West misinterpreted it.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I'm not sure that "mistaking" is the right word. For years the United States has protested the cheap UPU rates that China gets. But the UPU still classifies it as a "developing" nation. China is the world's second-largest economy. It doesn't need or deserve the artificially cheap rates anymore. China shouldn't pay less to send packages overseas than countries in Africa. By leaving the UPU, the United States can set correct prices. It's one of those situations where China claims to be a developing nation when it suits its needs, and then claims to be a developed nation when it suits its needs. If you're going to play in the big leagues, you have to play by big league rules.

Excel_Wizard 7y ago

I am still able to go on ebay and buy small items (usb cables, camera lens caps, plastic pry tools, etc) shipped from china for $0.80. Is this going to change? What about the same situation for items shipped from Thialand or Vietnam? There's quite a few of those available as well.

ComputerGuru 7y ago
Yes and yes. I don’t see any other outcomes.

jermaustin1 7y ago

So is drop shipping from China now dead? A major benefit of drop shipping from China was the pretty much $1 shipping for almost any item via ePacket. Obviously the products are still cheaper, but with a 25% tariff on most goods, and what I can only assume will be a close to DHL price for shipping, a t-shirt drop shipped from China will probably cost more than one made and shipped domestically. To continue to be competitive, drop shippers are going to have to think about bulk imports and warehousing, thus no longer being drop shippers.

entropea 7y ago
>So is drop shipping from China now dead? Probably. This is going to drop a lot of sellers off of Amazon and eBay, and likely have major effects on independent small business dollar/99c stores.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Oh great, now I get to buy the same item from Walmart at 20x the price. If I can even find the one I need.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    Wal-Mart merchandise is not shipped via international post. This UPU situation has no influence here.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      If Chinese sellers get locked out, where will I turn to buy those same goods?
      - czinck 7y ago
        They won't be locked out, they'll just now have to pay whatever the standard rates for USPS shipping (or whichever carrier they'll use), instead of the artificially low rates mandated by the UPU. Presumably someone (whether in China or in the US) will find it worth selling whatever widget you want, just the shipping cost won't be subsidized.

dubliner2077 7y ago

I think it's fine for the environment to be honest. Sending 1$ sort of thing free shipping overseas does not sound right.

dmix 7y ago

I almost never order stuff from China here in Canada because its very expensive to ship anything and inconsistently takes forever or semi-forever. I was wondering how Wish.com made money...

mieseratte 7y ago
> and inconsistently takes forever or semi-forever. As a teenager I ordered a custom mousepad from a website, apparently it was ultimately sourced from China. Never did show up, but it was something like $5 so I never bothered looking into it, chalked it up to a lesson learned. About four years later I'm visiting home, and in my mail pile sits a random Chinese package. Lo and behold my mousepad finally arrived! I figure my $5 went towards building the actual factory.
notatoad 7y ago
This is not a us-specific situation, e-packet deliveries ship to Canada too. I get plenty of stuff from AliExpress with free shipping
- kennywinker 7y ago
  living in canada, I genuinely hope we follow suit and increase the cost of shipping from china to canada. It's encouraging incredibly wasteful buying patterns, and sets up a system canadian companies can NEVER compete with.

calimac 7y ago

FINALLY! The Chinese have had a free ride selling directly into the living rooms of Americans free of tax and regulation for too long. The Chinese manufacturers were financed by the Chinese Gov. and USPS which effectively destroyed segments of retail competition in e-commerce. Trump fixed it unlike another politician before him. #ArtOfTheDeal

Leader2light 7y ago

Support Tump for a 2nd term. Show your support openly. The USA needs change.

entropea 7y ago

Will this even matter when Chinese Alibaba/Aliexpress sellers recently started sending their items to Singapore to avoid tariffs and shipping restrictions?

ComputerGuru 7y ago
It’s neither a tariff nor a shipping restriction. The UPU affects all international shipping, so Singapore or China is all the same.

genghisjahn 7y ago

If it goes into effect September 31st then it’s never going into effect.

resters 7y ago

Not sure why everyone thinks this is a good thing. If the Chinese government wants to subsidize shipping so that US consumers can buy products for less money, what is the harm? The reason postage is expensive in the US is because there is a legal monopoly on first class mail, and very little competition for premium services (which is why Amazon decided that launching its own shipping carrier would be highly profitable). So the blame for high US shipping prices rests with the US government, certainly not with anything China is doing!

beowulfey 7y ago
The Chinese government was not the one subsidizing it. The original UPU treaty [1] stated that countries would pay a flat rate when shipping to another country. This was original passed several decades ago. The USPS only was getting paid $1.50 per package to forward on any parcel that arrived for a USA destination from China. Since no USA tax money was involved, the "subsidizing" gets passed onto domestic shipping in the form of increased fares to help cover the loss in revenue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
PunchTornado 7y ago
it's not the Chinese gov who subsidizes shipping, it's the US and developed countries who subsidize Chinese shipping. I think China is no longer a developing country, should be on equal footing with Western countries now.
deleted 7y ago
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mensetmanusman 7y ago

Some of my friends in NYC were ordering single screws for various electronic devices for < $.20 that were shipped from China with no shipping. I always found that funny...

dev_dull 7y ago

> This is great news for U.S. sellers, especially eBay sellers. Exactly the intended consequence. Why should US taxpayers subsidize shipping costs for products to come from China? It made no sense at all in today's economy unless the only thing you care about is paying less for your goods regardless of the consequences, which I don't think is a majority position of adults today.

wbl 7y ago
The goal of the UPU was to have one rate for international shipping based on sending country vs. per destination pricing. Countries agreed to eat the costs. This produced things like the International Postal Coupon which are great.
- Kadin 7y ago
  Like Internet peering agreements, the UPU model only made sense when there was about the same amount of traffic going in each direction. In that case, it makes sense for each country to just pick up the cost of domestic last-mile delivery, because other countries are doing the same for its outbound packages. The problem is when there's a continuous structural trade imbalance, and more packages flow one direction than in the other. Then you have a de facto subsidy scheme, and it makes sense to terminate or renegotiate the agreement and switch to something more along the lines of sender-pays.
  - wbl 7y ago
    Subsidy to whom exactly? Remember the packages only flow because your end wants them.
Scoundreller 7y ago
The actual consequence will be Chinese sellers using US warehouses and drop-shipping from there. Others send over a container with each ordered good and slap a local post’s label on it. Possibly that local post’s label is attached in China and the container just gets dropped off at a USPS DC by the private freight forwarder. It’s already fairly common. Overall, a few more US jobs, and maybe more USPS revenue for what are now domestic shipments. Edit: OR these buyers Shift to Amazon, which can deliver for less than USPS can via private courier, and pool every more items per delivery.

mielecmichal 7y ago

The problem here is an organization which has a right of regulating the market by setting artificial rates. The shipping price should depend only on private companies their pricing policies. Bad thing is that people blame China instead of the United Nation bureaucracy. :(

jonknee 7y ago

In addition to Amazon 3rd party sellers, this seems like bad news for Shopify. They host a lot of Chinese drop ship stores that work because of these artificially low rates.

toddmorey 7y ago

Here's a good article on this shipping quirk: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the-postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from-china/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/... I think it's good for the US economy as well as the environment. It makes no sense for something to ship further to bring shipping costs down.

williamDafoe 7y ago

Warehousing won't solve the greed problem at USPS. The $5 poll tax on all shipments is just insanity. Stamping "priority mail" on 1st class packages and using red, white, and blue boxes doesn't justify their greed and incompetence, no matter what the USPS execs think .... I foresee that withing 6 months China will have 100M square feet of dropshipping warehouse space in Vietnam. This is another in a line of Trump "look busy, change nothing" initiatives, the only difference this time (vs the border do nothing initiatives) is that this time the problem is real, unlike the non crisis at the border where immigration is near a multi decade low!

mistermann 7y ago
> "look busy, change nothing" initiatives Why would China create more warehouse space in Vietnam, or so many people spend time writing about this topic, if nothing is changing? Have I taken your comment literally when it was intended to be metaphorical? If so, could you more clearly clarify the specific idea you are intending to transmit?

tyingq 7y ago

Ouch for AliExpress.

autokad 7y ago
so sounds like this will be bad for alibaba. Has anyone seen any quantitative numbers on this?
jayess 7y ago
This will probably drive Wish out of business.

dcchambers 7y ago

Will be interesting to see the effects of this. Especially Shopify drop-shipping stores and Etsy stores full of cheap garbage. Hopefully it helps clean up some of the noise...I don't think those stores were adding much value anyway.

scarejunba 7y ago

So what we should expect is internal shipping costs to go down as a result of this?

jrockway 7y ago

The impression I get from that thread is that the dream here is now Americans can do what they do best, sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent. Previously, you could go to a Chinese website and have the Chinese factory send you a widget directly to your door. Now that will be too expensive, but hey we have a solution! An American will order a bunch of widgets in bulk, ship them over in a cargo ship, come up with some fancy marketing, and then sell the widgets to you at 200% markup. You know these folks will never hire electrical engineers to certify safety and conformance, or work with the factory to improve the product in response to customer feedback. They're there to do one thing: sit in the middle of the transaction and charge Chinese manufacturers for the privilege of selling to Americans. But hey, look on the bright side... at least there is someone you can sue when your widget blows up.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
> sit in the middle of transactions and collect rent This is already a cottage industry, drop shipping. You make a shopify store, put up some marketing of people in sunglasses in front of brick walls, and sell cheap crap like fashion watches. Then when someone buys one, you go on Aliexpress and order it directly to your customers' address. If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dollars at a time. You charge people thousands of dollars to "teach" them how to make their own drop shipping stores.
- ukoki 7y ago
  > If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dollars at a time. Have you been to Thailand? I estimate these "digital nomad" drop-shippers and drop-shipping-shippers comprise about half the GDP of Chiang Mai
delfinom 7y ago
Pretty much. I absolutely fucking hate Amazon now. It's full of white label products. You can tell the seller does no real safety testing of any kind from their broad array of random shit. You can't even trust the kitchen equipment for chance they made the steel with lead or the silicone is mixed with something toxic, etc. Completely unregulated market place of stupid. And this is on top of Amazon's counterfeit problems they half ass enforcement. I'm surprised nobody has died yet from counterfeit or substandard automotive goods of all things.

chromaton 7y ago

I just got an email from eBay Main Street, which is eBay's mailing list for political issues which affect their sellers. This email is tells me to call congress to NOT withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, under the logic that it will make it harder to ship stuff from the US to other countries.

yumraj 7y ago
Of course this is bad for eBay, and perhaps etsy, shopify and others. The flood of direct-from-China sellers selling cheap products and shipping for free (on USPS's dime) will stop.
- busterarm 7y ago
  Definitely bad for eBay and etsy. They're absolutely dependent on the flood of cheap goods. Honestly this is disastrous for etsy, but maybe it'll help them get back to their roots and be useful again.
  - rc_kas 7y ago
    This sounds like a win for America.

boyadjian 7y ago

I am a very good client of Amazon. Love this company, what a terrific invention.

bertjk 7y ago

Related to the website if not the article, but I wish this website did not hijack ctrl-f.

Scoundreller 7y ago

Would any other Americans prefer to have just 3x/week delivery and still have cheap shipping internationally? This seems to be more about propping up the USPS’ inefficiencies at the cost of higher prices for consumers.

sudosteph 7y ago
Not me. I had a neighbor for while who worked full-time for USPS. Postal workers provide reliable service, and are able to earn a livable wage without driving themselves into the ground like the contractor delivery services. I like that USPS is a piece of the American infrastructure fabric, and I like that it employs local people in a sustainable way. I do not consume nearly enough things that require international shipping to value cheap shipping more. And even if I did, the ethical implications involved with destroying decent jobs for Americans and losing a piece of our national delivery network would stil not make it worthwhile sacrifice in my book.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  It’s great that the USPS employs people that way. The real question is why are others allowed to do any differently. Buyers voting with their feet will only go so far.

axaxs 7y ago

I don't know why USPS doesn't just raise its rates across the board. I understand why, 50, 20, or even perhaps 15 years ago, it was important to keep mail ultra cheap. But today, I'd argue >95% of mail comes from businesses, and most of that are ads in some form or another. It's ridiculous to me that I can send a piece of mail to the other side of the USA in 2 days for less than $0.50. I don't want prices to go up, of course, but at the same time, I have trouble listening to the woe-is-me attitude of the USPS, while their pricing scheme makes no sense at all.

pawelk 7y ago
> I'd argue >95% of mail comes from businesses, and most of that are ads in some form or another. It's ridiculous to me that I can send a piece of mail to the other side of the USA in 2 days for less than $0.50 Don't you think these two facts are somehow related? They have to go by your house every day anyway, carrying paid junk mail, and the marginal cost of delivering an actual letter is quite low. Maybe a bit analogous to newspapers/magazines, where the price you pay may not even cover the printing costs, but the difference is subsidized by the advertisers.

yumraj 7y ago

Excellent!! This may have a highly desirable side effect of cleaning a lot of junk/fake products on Amazon. This will also impact Etsy, and perhaps Shopify and eBay.

sorryitstrue 7y ago

Now canada can become the shipping hub for epackets and it can be forwarded to US addresses from there. Good opportunity for someone.

kennywinker 7y ago
shipping from canada to the usa is fairly expensive and slow (customs delays are fairly common). better to ship to a depo in the usa and mail out from there to individual buyers.

utf985 7y ago

Does this affect me somehow as a consumer in the EU?

blairanderson 7y ago

This genuinely won't change anything on Amazon because top sellers are already using FBA. This is bad news for Ebay/Wish/some-shopify-dropshippers.

heymijo 7y ago
I thought/wondered the same regarding wish.com. Although this 2019 Forbes article makes it sound like it's not a death knell. > Shipping is cheap thanks in part to an agreement between China Post and the U.S. Postal Service that allows goods that weigh 4.4 pounds or less to be shipped at low rates. About 15% of Wish’s shipments qualify. https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the-billionaire-who-defied-amazon-and-built-wish-the-worlds-most-downloaded-e-commerce-app/#6095147170f5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the-...

cr0sh 7y ago

I'm wondering how this is going to effect the hobbyist and small business electronics markets here in the United States? Know how cheap and easy it is to get a small number PCBs made in China and shipped to the US? That's over. So is any number of small electronic parts that would've been shipped free or cheaply from China. Cheap ESP8266 boards? Nope. Cheap automotive relays? Nope. Basically any and every kind of piece of electronics components, modules, etc you can think of will jump in price drastically. Even if it doesn't need to - it will (like I've seen on the tariffs, prices jumped for small amounts of electronic components just because, even if they were being shipped directly to the end-user consumer - when that's not a part of the tariffs - direct to consumer sales shouldn't be affected, but because the vendors could do it, they did it anyhow - just to make some extra cash). So where are hobbyists and others supposed to get these parts now? Digikey and Mouser for some of it. Surplus for others. But for boards and modules and such - well, there's just Sparkfun and Adafruit - maybe a couple of others (not sure?). But they are likely to raise their prices too, because they depend on the components (resistors, diodes, mosfets, chips, aka the "raw materials") to make their boards (Sparkfun makes them in-house - or at least some of them - but I don't know what Adafruit does). Or we'll have to pay the extra shipping fees and other costs (because the chinese sellers will just add on some extra cost - just to grab it - it's inevitable). This will have a ripple effect; small entrepreneurs and startups - kickstarter startups especially - won't be able to compete, unless they base themselves in Shenzhen - because where are they going to get the components cheaper than a competitor who is already there? They aren't made in America any longer (and they never will be again - get that fantasy out of your head if you think that's going to happen). Radio Row is gone. The original "silicon valley" is gone. Heck, there used to be a ton of computer (mini) manufacturers and businesses here in Phoenix - they are virtually gone, too. And now with this change - however you feel about it - is going to hobble the next up-and-comers, and current suppliers. At least, that's how I am seeing it. Now I'll admit - it wasn't fair for competition here - but it wasn't as if China was doing something wrong, as far as I understand it. They were playing by the rules set forth by an international body. Maybe it wasn't fair to us. But instead of letting this kind of thing go on for 1-2 decades, it should have been fixed back then. Now it is likely to destroy or severely change at least one or more areas of enthusiast and hobbyist things (think also RC, drones, etc), as well as probably a ton of other non-electronic things. Do we really think there are that many suppliers here in the US that will charge low prices (competitive with Chinese suppliers) and have fair shipping rates to boot? The fact is, it will likely still be cheaper to ship it from China, even with the extra cost on shipping - since you're going to be paying that anyhow. For instance - my goto - 12V DC gearmotors. I can buy one kind from a supplier of Ametek (maybe Mouser or Digikey); I will pay whatever the high cost of shipping such an item to my door in addition to the price. Have you ever priced those motors in small quantities? When you can get them...I've seen prices 10-20x over the equivalent motor from a supplier in China. What would cost $15.00 in China for a single motor, can be up to $100.00 or more from a US manufacturer for the same specs. Let's say it cost $10.00 to ship to my door, whether from China or the US, and let's say the Chinese supplier adds on an extra $5.00 "just because fee" - well, which is cheaper? $110.00 dollars for the US motor, or $30.00 for the Chinese motor? It's all a farce in my opinion - this administration essentially raising prices, which is going to be passed on to the consumer ultimately, trying to gain support from US small businesses (that's the political angle), at the expense of the rest of consumers, and is selling it with some kind of idea or expectation that this is somehow going to lead to the United States becoming a large scale manufacturer of "everything" that we get from China now. Of course what isn't said is that, even if that fantasy somehow did become true - those items manufactured here would still cost a hell of a lot more to make, and they would be virtually unsaleable on the international market because of that (let's ignore the fact that we'll be lucky if other countries ever buy from us again). I see a very, very bleak future ahead for this country - no matter what happens with this current administration or the next. Maybe that was always going to be the case. The problem is, prior to this admin, that date was likely out a few decades - now those decades have been erased, and that future is happening now (and it is worse than it would have been had it happened "naturally" I think). I say if you are an American and are under 30 years of age, and you have any marketable skills at all, you might want to think long and hard about emigrating. Dead serious on this.

buboard 7y ago

This is good for the environment

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Two questions: 1) What are the possible unintended consequences? This is fairly drastic. Certainly, something(s) unforeseen are going to happen. 2) What are the new opportunities? For example, importing in bulk and shipping from here (as opposed to individual orders shipped from China).

deleted 7y ago
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holoduke 7y ago

I ordered more than 1000 parcels from AliExpress, banggoods, gearbest and hobbyking. Never ever I had to pay import duty costs (Netherlands) and in most cases shipment was either free or a redicilous low amount. If everyone would be like me, no store would exist anymore here in Holland. Even though I am a bit of a hypocrite, I do think it's fair to make the market a bit more fair.

euph0ria 7y ago
Just curious, what type of stuff do you buy? I find that the quality often is poor when buying from Aliexpress with artificial ratings boosted by the seller doing anything to get a high review. Banggood has been better with more accurate ratings.
- tverbeure 7y ago
  Not OP, but I've used AliExpress to stock my home electronics lab with resistors, LEDs, Blue Pill microcontroller boards, connectors, etc. All dirt cheap, often in individual parcels, shipping cost close to zero.
  - holoduke 7y ago
    yes same here. Connectors, crimping tools, wire, electronic components, props, electric motors, control boards, radio sender/receivers, antennas, batteries, tools etc. You need to find your way. The stores have a lot of crap, but once you get a grasp of everything you find out that there is actually quite decent quality stuff out there.

rc_kas 7y ago

Yeah this is the one (and only) thing Trump did right. I can't believe we let China get cheap shipping for so long on our dime.

mmsimanga 7y ago

South African experience. I buy a fair number of items on Aliexpress. Stuff you can never get in any store here. I use the Post Office to ship because courier is just too expensive. It takes 40 to 60 days to arrive. The hold up appears to be the SA Post Office. Since a few months ago the Post Office now charges approximately US$2 processing fee for each package. Its a fair charge I guess but there hasn't been any improvement in delivery times. Sometimes stuff arrives after so long that I have forgotten why I ordered it.

zxcvbn4038 7y ago

It is still going to be cheaper to order directly from China then to pay someone in the US to order it, repackage it, and mail it to me. (Or even to be lazy and order it on my behalf from China, but US companies will repack it so you don't find out their sources). The US just doesn't have the manufacturing capabilities anymore, and even if the US wanted to have its own manufacturing capability people are not going to work China wages, they are going to demand US wages. So again China will end up being cheaper.

hart_russell 7y ago

Glad we're finally waking up to the realization we were siphoning off GDP to a nation that doesn't align with our values.

Marazan 7y ago

It has always struck me as mad that I can order an individual widget from China for less than it would cost for the postage of that widget in my own country.

figgyc 7y ago

Really what needs to happen is that the UPU in general needs to be redefined. The Chinese sellers can still access Europe, Canada, and basically anywhere else, which isn't going to stop especially since most countries are not as aggressive as the US when it comes to China trade. Hopefully the reduction in sales due to the US leaving the UPU kills off a bunch of the Chinese businesses but it is definitely still going to be a problem elsewhere.

rossdavidh 7y ago
While I would be happy to see a more equitable and sustainable distribution of jobs and industries between the U.S. and China, the phrase "Hopefully...kills off a bunch of the Chinese businesses" uses language which is a bit off-putting. If those businesses changed their business model to sell more to Chinese consumers, or utilized U.S. distributors more, that would be good. I realize that you were not actually suggesting that anybody should get killed, just pointing out how it sounded from my perspective, a little off-putting.

sealthedeal 7y ago

What is the exact reason for all of this? Is this part of the current administration's "trade war" tactics? Or is it something less politically motivated?

homerhomer 7y ago

Always amazed me when buying something of Amazon and it's shipped from China cheaper that if shipped domestically.

elamje 7y ago

For some context as to why this is significant, listen to this great Planet Money podcast about international shipping rates. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

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kinnth 7y ago

"All US and Canadian shipping is crazy expensive" - A Typical Brit

epx 7y ago

In Brazil, the local mail charges R$ 15 (~US$ 4) to deliver international packages from "certain countries" i.e. China. The result is, ultra-cheap freight has almost disappeared, most sites like AliExpress now charge around US$ 4, but the class of this kind of package is not charged again here, so it is still kind of cheap. OTOH mail from USA is damn expensive. I don't buy more things from USA because of this. And local customs tend to target USA packages more so the chance of paying import tax is way higher, too. Even packages from Europe and Japan are cheaper, and one can see they are more distant places.

einpoklum 7y ago

This change seems to only affect the US, apparently.

zizee 7y ago

Lots of speculating why it is cheaper to ship from China than domestically, a lot of it misguided. The root cause is that quite a few years ago the consortium of national postal providers which setup agreements on who pays for which parts of international shipping decided that China was classed as a developing country and given subsidized rates by other countries. This wasn't a big deal when the agreement was made because it was before the days of pervasive online commerce, and there just wasn't that much sent from China to other countries via the postal service. I encourage everyone interested in this to checkout this podcast episode from NPR's Planet Money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-postal-illuminati https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis... > The reason for this price gap, Jayme claims, is a secretive group of postal policymakers that meets every four years to fix international shipping rates. A kind of postal illuminati. > Today's episode: A conspiracy theory that's actually real. How the decisions made behind closed doors make it cheap to buy things from across the world, but are also distorting the global economy.

craftyguy 7y ago
They did a really good job explaining the situation in that Planet Money episode.
polyfractal 7y ago
++ Came here to post the Planet Money episode. :)

killface 7y ago

I guess this is good, but all it means for us is higher prices. Shipping wasn't the thing killing these "small businesses".

micimize 7y ago

I get how this subsidy came to be in the first place, but am surprised that I hadn't heard anything about it prior to this

ourmandave 7y ago

Aw, now I have to buy everything off AliExpress.com for a fraction of the price and free shipping. Just hope I can remember ordering it when it arrives 30+ days from now.

Animats 7y ago

Oh, Universal Postal Union "terminal dues." Those were scheduled to go up in 2021 anyway. China is still getting the "underdeveloped country" rate, because the last 10 year rate setting was in 2011.[1] [1] http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit-charges/about-terminal-dues-and-transit-charges.html http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit-c...

oferzelig 7y ago

But only for US customers.

standardcitizen 7y ago

Do we have a link besides a random post from some dude we all don’t know?

Bendingo 7y ago

And yet another international agreement unilaterally exited by the US. These agreements (eg INF ABM) are extremely difficult to create, but easily trashed by a single recalcitrant. It seems like the whole international order is breaking down.

firecall 7y ago

Not sure how it works in Australia - but I see Chinese and HK sellers doing super cheap shipping. less than domestic seems to be able to.

p1mrx 7y ago

I buy $1-$5 items from China somewhat regularly. What are they likely to cost next year?

hnick 7y ago

This is an issue in Australia too, and since we are usually followers and not leaders for these kinds of issues it might mean a change is on the cards for us too. Is there an easy way to find out? My hope is that the USPS leaving the Union is enough of a threat to shake up the rules for all countries.

rurban 7y ago

Only in the US. In Europe Aliexpress still rules. No shipping costs from China at all, and much cheaper product costs.

DoctorOetker 7y ago

>The administration has given the UPU an ultimatum, that they: either allow the USPS to set rates for China mail that arrives in the U.S., or the U.S. will officially leave the UPU on October 17th. (Emphasis mine) why "for China mail" ? why not "no exceptions: all over the planet everybody pays the same local rates, or else we leave the UPU" ? This smells like hidden import taxation, but I hope I am wrong. But then why insist on phrasing the ultimatum with referene to "for China mail" specifically ? EDIT: adding another gem: >Global Supply Chain News: After Three Years of Secrecy, Amazon Starting to Ramp Up Global Logistics Services >they are actively looking to compete in the shipping industry ... >The project’s name: Dragon Boat. >As part of that strategy, Bloomberg reported Amazon had plans to take on freight forwarding and brokerage services directly, eliminating a set of middlemen. >... >Among the most important ramifications from Amazon’s vision: small Chinese manufacturer will be able sell to American consumers with no one else than Amazon between them. So if an American company (in this case Amazon), will perform transport within China, does that mean that reciprocally, Chinese companies can also become a mail service in the US? They could be paid a low wage, and eat cheap food that is shipped internally. Is this really about balancing trade or about big corporations doing to mail, what they did with manufacture: export jobs to China for increased profit?