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I'm not sure what the unintended consequences are but I believe this is the right move. It is completely unfair that it's cheaper to ship from China to the Unit

I'm not sure what the unintended consequences are but I believe this is the right move. It is completely unfair that it's cheaper to ship from China to the United States than it is to ship from Chicago to New York. It naturally puts American businesses at a disadvantage. There is always the argument of semantics of what makes a developing country a developing country, but I think being the second largest economy on Earth isn't afforded that label.

ppeetteerr 7y ago
Agreed. This loophole needed to be closed a long time ago. I hope other countries follow suit.
solotronics 7y ago
They are obviously playing by a totally different set of rules than we were. This is starting to even the playing field a little bit which we must do or get totally overtaken by China.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  If you look at how the world is currently "overtaken" by the USA then realise that China has about the same land resources but 4+ times the population, then the unescapable conclusion is that China is bound to absolutely overtake the USA and the world. India probably is, too.
  - solotronics 7y ago
    I think there may be some parallels to draw here with the USSR. The CCP is another top down model that has some advantages and some disadvantages compared with western liberal democracy. Can China convince countries to align with its goals? If they can do this better than the US then they will win.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      The USSR had a comparable (corrected: not small as I first wrote) population and a small economy compared to the USA's. Moreover their economy was highly disfunctional. It's a bit like all the fear mongering about Japan in the 80s. The hard truth is that Japan was way too small to be a threat. China, on the other hand, is much bigger than the USA. The fact that the USA are currently so much stronger than China is therefore the anomaly in a historical perspective.
      - wil421 7y ago
        The USSR was the 3rd most populated country in 1990, ahead of the US. The US census calculated 248 million in 1990 vs 286 million for the USSR in 1989. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_United_States_Census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_United_States_Census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989)
  - brobinson 7y ago
    Considering their population has already stopped growing and will start to shrink starting in ~10 years and the US has population growth projected through at least 2050, I don't think that outcome is likely. China has still yet to escape the "Middle Income Trap". Their GDP per capita is terrible. The PRC as a state is wealthy, but the wealth per citizen is quite poor.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      China's population is more than 1 billion larger than the USA's. Relative growth rates until the end of the century are irrelevant. The fact that China is still relatively poor per capita while already being the 2nd largest economy overall shows the potential they have left to become the world's central economy (along with India's) Squabbles about postage rates are distractions.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        Population growth rates aren't irrelevant, as Japan's example should show. As the demographic pyramid stops being a pyramid and the retirees start outnumbering the 20-somethings, burdens to health care and other systems start to add up fast. If your population keeps growing, you can keep some semblance of a pyramid shape. But if it's stagnant, and your people reliably survive into old age...
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        What's important here is the overall size of the country and its economy, not really its relative growth. Switzerland's population might grow faster than the US's at some point, for example, but that'd be irrelevant because it is way too small in any case to threaten the US's position.
        DuskStar 7y ago
        My point was that population demographics, which are related to growth rates, impact the efficiency of an economy, or at least the fraction that can be directed towards external ends and not health care for unproductive segments of society.
wbl 7y ago
The traditional US way to change the rules: get other countries together to back up your position, suggest a principled approach, be willing to make concessions in other areas. The new way: flip the table over.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  Hasn't the US been trying to do that (regarding China's categorization in the global postal union) for years, with no success? At what point does 'flipping the table over' become an acceptable action under your models?
  - AimForTheBushes 7y ago
    Correct. This is the final straw to correct what is arguably an unfair model.
  - hsnewman 7y ago
    It's not "flipping the table over", it's stabbing your eye with a pen because you can't get your way. Self inflicted injury.
    - theflyinghorse 7y ago
      How is this disadvantageous for the US?
      - givinguflac 7y ago
        literally from the article: "The practical effect of the exit of the U.S. would be a rate increase of at least 300 percent on postal parcel traffic to the U.S. from heavy net exporting countries as rates kept artificially low for decades begin to normalize" 3x increase in costs for shipping sounds pretty disadvantageous. It's not like the US is producing a lot of stuff being shipped international via post.
        joemi 7y ago
arbuge 7y ago
Agreed, 100%, and certainly hoping there is no last-minute action. The change is sorely needed and long overdue.
elicash 7y ago
If this is about China, then why wouldn't other countries want to join us in changing the fee structure? Better to team up with other nations than pull out and be all alone on a framework that's far bigger than China and relates to all global shipping, no? Genuinely asking because I am unfamiliar with these issues.
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago
  That is the route they are currently pursuing. Leaving the global postal union is dependent on the outcome of a vote.
- Svip 7y ago
  The current US President approaches diplomacy likes real estate deals. A good approach - in real estate markets - is to threaten to walk away from a deal. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite the same way in international diplomacy.
  - ttul 7y ago
    Yes, because international diplomacy is like 18-dimensional chess. The two parties are negotiating over a multitude of different things in parallel.
  - blfr 7y ago
    Being able to walk away from the deal is crucial in every negotiation. There is no limit to real estate. It's the same in employment, business, and yes, international diplomacy.
    - Svip 7y ago
      Except in real estate, employment and business, you are usually only talking about a single contract during negotiations. There is little either party can offer the other outside of that contract. In diplomacy, there is so much going on between states, that you can offer completely unrelated incentives in negotiations.
  - 7y ago
Arnt 7y ago
Shipping something from Germany to Argentina cost €3.70 recently; the same thing (a large padded envelope, about 400g) would appear to cost $7-8 if from Chicago to New York. If that's unfair, who's at fault?
- defertoreptar 7y ago
  Part of the reason interstate shipping is high is due to the fact that the USPS must ship below cost on these kind of international packages. One subsidizes the other.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    Do you think you could estimate that part of the reason? "Part of the reason" could mean 1%, or equally well 99%. EDIT: I ask because the Chicago-NY price is >100% above German international rates. >100% is a big number and German prices are high to begin with. That makes "part of" too fuzzy for my taste.
- ncarroll 7y ago
  That's interesting. Before about January of 2019, I was able to ship for about those rates to the U.S. Recently, I took an envelope to the German post office and was informed that the Global Postal Union has barred shipping of goods in envelopes at postal instead of package prices. I pay €16,- minimum whether in an envelope or a box but can send up to 2 kg of goodies.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    https://www.deutschepost.de/de/b/briefe-ins-ausland/warenpost-international.html https://www.deutschepost.de/de/b/briefe-ins-ausland/warenpos...
- pnw_hazor 7y ago
  Germany privatized its postal service and now has one of the best postal services in the world. DHL is the German postal service. Meanwhile, the US Postal service is a quasi-government agency that is predictably a mess. On one hand it is supposed to be self-sufficient but on the other hand it is burdened with federal agency restrictions or limitation. And, it distorts the mail market in general by having a government granted monopoly on regular mail.
sschueller 7y ago
This problem effects a lot of other countries as well. For example Switzerland which is dealing with a huge amount of packages classified as mail but can't be run through automated sorting systems. Switzerland is putting the pressure on but it's a tiny country. The US jumping ship doesn't help anyone. Switzerland is planning on charging receivers for the extra postage to make up for the huge losses until the postage union changes the rules. Why doesn't the US do something similar? They don't seem to have a problem applying tariffs on imports.
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago
  Honestly, I don't think band-aiding a broken system is the solution here. "Hoping for a better outcome later" is not what I want to see when we're directly subsidizing our biggest competitor, economically and democratically speaking.
- AnssiH 7y ago
  > Switzerland is planning on charging receivers for the extra postage to make up for the huge losses until the postage union changes the rules. I'd like to know more, do you have a source? Could not find via Google. Many postal services have a charge for customs clearance services, but I haven't heard of anyone charging extra postage yet. > Why doesn't the US do something similar? The U.S. STOP Act of 2018 established a fee of $1 for inbound EMS parcels starting in 2020 to cover customs processing costs. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr5788/summary https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr5788/summary But as noted, customs processing fee is a bit different from charging extra postage. And I believe small letter post items are the bigger issue, not EMS.
tolmasky 7y ago
China's GDP per capita is behind Brazil's and 73rd overall, so I think there can be strong arguments to label it a developing country (and arguably, strong arguments for why "developing country" shouldn't be the metric used!). Just want to point out that merely circling a very large piece of land with a tremendous amount of people and saying "in absolute terms this area has a very big economy" is not necessarily a good metric.
sgc 7y ago
> I'm not sure what the unintended consequences are but I believe this is the right move. I don't know how that works. If you don't know the effects, how can you know it is a good action? Knee jerk actions tend to poorer results than well planned ones.
- gwright 7y ago
  That works because almost all decisions are made without 100% certainty. "I'm not sure ... but I believe" is simply a statement of the obvious that everyone makes decisions with incomplete information. Characterizing decisions made with incomplete information as "knee jerk" reactions is a bit much. That isn't to say that a certain amount of effort should be made to understand the consequences of any decision.
kelnos 7y ago
The biggest unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequence I expect is that companies that ship from China will pass the extra shipping fees along to the customer, either through higher prices in general, or higher add-on shipping fees. So in other words, many goods will just get more expensive. Having a USPS a bit more flush with cash might have other positive effects, though. I also wonder how the private couriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.) will react to this. Do they currently under-price a bit for shipments from some countries to the US in order to compete better with USPS? If so, they might consider raising prices if this goes through. At the end of the day, though, shipping costs should accurately reflect the effort it takes to ship, and not be artificially depressed unless there's a good reason. It seems like (at least in the case of China) that good reason (under the assumption it was good in the first place) expired decades ago.
- ericmay 7y ago
  > I expect is that companies that ship from China will pass the extra shipping fees along to the customer Right, which means that if other companies are selling similar products they can more fairly compete, since the cost of the Chinese product was literally being subsidized. I see a lot of conversation about how "terrible" it is that tariff or shipping costs will be passed on to the US consumer, but I don't think that's an accurate picture. On one hand, sure if you can only buy a product only from China, then perhaps the company importing it and the company exporting it may raise prices to compensate. They may also not, because you might decide to find a substitute product or because a competitor's product becomes more attractive. They may raise the price, and then Chinese products become less competitive in the U.S. market anyway (assuming there are ready alternatives, which generally there is). Alternatively a higher price means that there may be more participants in the market since there is profit to be made. If prices are artificially low and you can compete on cost with exploitive labor, that's a market inefficiency that should be corrected. For some reason people have this expectation or entitlement mentality that all of this stuff should be cheap, built on the backs of people who work incredibly hard for not a lot of money. Products naturally should be expensive unless labor is being exploited - people need to be paid a living wage, have good work conditions, and a great life. If that means buying a new set of wine glasses costs $25 instead of $4.99, then you need to spend money more wisely, or not buy the wine glasses, or make sure that you really want the wine glasses. Cheap products based on cheap fossil fuel energy and cheap, exploitive labor fuel consumerist consumption patterns.
pravda 7y ago
>It naturally puts American businesses at a disadvantage. Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! Are there more consumers or businesses? I only hope the small Chinese sellers will be able to send their packages thru Malaysia or Vietnam for reasonable rates. I've noticed that some of my eBay purchases of Chinese stuff come via those countries, at least according to the return address on the package.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! Are there more consumers or businesses? Most American consumers are dependent on American businesses (including American subsidiaries of multinationals) for income, whether through labor or capital.
- wang_li 7y ago
  The actual cost to ship a package isn’t changing. Just who pays. Previously it’s all users of the US postal service, whether they are involved in shipments from China or not. It makes enormous sense to charge the person who is actually benefiting and not everyone.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  > Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! No, US customers are paying either way. Lower cost shipping from China was paid for by higher cost domestic shipping. AFAIK the USPS is not subsidized by either the American or Chinese governments.
- m000 7y ago
  > Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! Are there more consumers or businesses? Interesting perspective. I can see a parallel with healthcare insurance: - one big non-profit subsidized provider -> cheap baseline service for the masses, third party providers cover for the niches of the market, third party providers forced to innovate - lack of subsidies/regulation -> expensive baseline service for the masses, essentially the subsidy that gave you cheap service now becomes profit for the third party providers, no need to innovate when you can comfortably get rich by inflating the baseline service prices
faster 7y ago
It might be cheaper to ship from China to the US than to ship from Chicago to NY, but it is also far slower. I think it's fair to charge less for "as you have space" shipping. http://track-chinapost.com/?p=774 http://track-chinapost.com/?p=774 I've had a couple hundred small packages (components for prototypes, tools, etc.) shipped via China Post in the last few years, and only 2 of them arrived in less than 3 weeks. Several didn't arrive at all. I'm not willing to pay as much for that kind of service as I am to send a package from e.g. Chicago to NY with fast and reliable delivery. The rates are probably unfairly low, but you can't look only at the price. You have to look at price, delivery speed, and reliability at a minimum.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  You're missing the point. Shipping from LA to NYC in X days should be cheaper than shipping from Shanghai to LA in Y days PLUS shipping from LA to NYC in X days. China Post charges some amount to get from Shanghai to LA, and they do that slowly. At that point it enters the USPS system, and they deliver the package to its final destination in NYC. But by UPU rules, the USPS has to charge less for that China Post package than they do for a package that originated in LA, even though they use the same infrastructure.
  - faster 7y ago
    Do you know what the rates are, relative to something like bulk mail? I can't think of anything else that has low delivery priority like these packages seem to have. Sometimes even after arriving in the US, the packages take 2-3 more weeks to be delivered though it's usually more like a week. I would say that indicates a lower priority than a comparable package that is sent within the US. I guess I'm saying that China Post packages are not going from LA to NYC in X days, more like 2X or 3X and sometimes up to 5X. The rates are probably still too low, but I haven't found any authoritative numbers.
cbhl 7y ago
I was always under the impression that the UPU rules were (1) originally intended for letter-mail, not "stuff", and (2) originally intended to reduce USPS' last-mile delivery costs in other countries (which had to be negotiated country-by-country before). If I live in America and my mother lives in some far-flung country, the idea is that we should be able to send each other letters at a cost that is proportional to typical incomes in our nations. Both e-mail and e-commerce totally turned this on its head -- letter volumes went down, and we started buying things from China (as opposed to making things and sending them there). I agree that something needs to change, but I'm worried that the end result is other countries will just stop accepting Americans' mail. It's worth noting that China is maybe #80 in GDP per capita?
mrb 7y ago
The article gives only half of the facts. The universal postal union has already reclassified China as a "developed" country since 2018. Their terminal dues have already been increasing two years in a row and will continue to increase: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20967141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20967141
mcv 7y ago
It's not just unfair; it's also bad for the environment. Shipping stuff from the other side of the world costs more in transportation and thus fuel than shipping domestically or locally. If we want environmental costs to be transparent, the real environmental cost (of shipping and other products or services) needs to be reflected in the price, which means it shouldn't be kept artificially low. I may disagree with Trump on almost everything, but this might be the one area where I actually agree. I have no idea whether this is the best or most effective approach, but I do agree that this is an issue that needs to be fixed.

ppeetteerr 7y ago

Agreed. This loophole needed to be closed a long time ago. I hope other countries follow suit.

solotronics 7y ago

They are obviously playing by a totally different set of rules than we were. This is starting to even the playing field a little bit which we must do or get totally overtaken by China.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
If you look at how the world is currently "overtaken" by the USA then realise that China has about the same land resources but 4+ times the population, then the unescapable conclusion is that China is bound to absolutely overtake the USA and the world. India probably is, too.
- solotronics 7y ago
  I think there may be some parallels to draw here with the USSR. The CCP is another top down model that has some advantages and some disadvantages compared with western liberal democracy. Can China convince countries to align with its goals? If they can do this better than the US then they will win.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    The USSR had a comparable (corrected: not small as I first wrote) population and a small economy compared to the USA's. Moreover their economy was highly disfunctional. It's a bit like all the fear mongering about Japan in the 80s. The hard truth is that Japan was way too small to be a threat. China, on the other hand, is much bigger than the USA. The fact that the USA are currently so much stronger than China is therefore the anomaly in a historical perspective.
    - wil421 7y ago
      The USSR was the 3rd most populated country in 1990, ahead of the US. The US census calculated 248 million in 1990 vs 286 million for the USSR in 1989. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_United_States_Census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_United_States_Census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989)
- brobinson 7y ago
  Considering their population has already stopped growing and will start to shrink starting in ~10 years and the US has population growth projected through at least 2050, I don't think that outcome is likely. China has still yet to escape the "Middle Income Trap". Their GDP per capita is terrible. The PRC as a state is wealthy, but the wealth per citizen is quite poor.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    China's population is more than 1 billion larger than the USA's. Relative growth rates until the end of the century are irrelevant. The fact that China is still relatively poor per capita while already being the 2nd largest economy overall shows the potential they have left to become the world's central economy (along with India's) Squabbles about postage rates are distractions.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      Population growth rates aren't irrelevant, as Japan's example should show. As the demographic pyramid stops being a pyramid and the retirees start outnumbering the 20-somethings, burdens to health care and other systems start to add up fast. If your population keeps growing, you can keep some semblance of a pyramid shape. But if it's stagnant, and your people reliably survive into old age...
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        What's important here is the overall size of the country and its economy, not really its relative growth. Switzerland's population might grow faster than the US's at some point, for example, but that'd be irrelevant because it is way too small in any case to threaten the US's position.
        DuskStar 7y ago
        My point was that population demographics, which are related to growth rates, impact the efficiency of an economy, or at least the fraction that can be directed towards external ends and not health care for unproductive segments of society.

wbl 7y ago

The traditional US way to change the rules: get other countries together to back up your position, suggest a principled approach, be willing to make concessions in other areas. The new way: flip the table over.

DuskStar 7y ago
Hasn't the US been trying to do that (regarding China's categorization in the global postal union) for years, with no success? At what point does 'flipping the table over' become an acceptable action under your models?
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago
  Correct. This is the final straw to correct what is arguably an unfair model.
- hsnewman 7y ago
  It's not "flipping the table over", it's stabbing your eye with a pen because you can't get your way. Self inflicted injury.
  - theflyinghorse 7y ago
    How is this disadvantageous for the US?
    - givinguflac 7y ago
      literally from the article: "The practical effect of the exit of the U.S. would be a rate increase of at least 300 percent on postal parcel traffic to the U.S. from heavy net exporting countries as rates kept artificially low for decades begin to normalize" 3x increase in costs for shipping sounds pretty disadvantageous. It's not like the US is producing a lot of stuff being shipped international via post.
      - joemi 7y ago

arbuge 7y ago

Agreed, 100%, and certainly hoping there is no last-minute action. The change is sorely needed and long overdue.

elicash 7y ago

If this is about China, then why wouldn't other countries want to join us in changing the fee structure? Better to team up with other nations than pull out and be all alone on a framework that's far bigger than China and relates to all global shipping, no? Genuinely asking because I am unfamiliar with these issues.

AimForTheBushes 7y ago
That is the route they are currently pursuing. Leaving the global postal union is dependent on the outcome of a vote.
Svip 7y ago
The current US President approaches diplomacy likes real estate deals. A good approach - in real estate markets - is to threaten to walk away from a deal. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite the same way in international diplomacy.
- ttul 7y ago
  Yes, because international diplomacy is like 18-dimensional chess. The two parties are negotiating over a multitude of different things in parallel.
- blfr 7y ago
  Being able to walk away from the deal is crucial in every negotiation. There is no limit to real estate. It's the same in employment, business, and yes, international diplomacy.
  - Svip 7y ago
    Except in real estate, employment and business, you are usually only talking about a single contract during negotiations. There is little either party can offer the other outside of that contract. In diplomacy, there is so much going on between states, that you can offer completely unrelated incentives in negotiations.
- 7y ago

Arnt 7y ago

Shipping something from Germany to Argentina cost €3.70 recently; the same thing (a large padded envelope, about 400g) would appear to cost $7-8 if from Chicago to New York. If that's unfair, who's at fault?

defertoreptar 7y ago
Part of the reason interstate shipping is high is due to the fact that the USPS must ship below cost on these kind of international packages. One subsidizes the other.
- Arnt 7y ago
  Do you think you could estimate that part of the reason? "Part of the reason" could mean 1%, or equally well 99%. EDIT: I ask because the Chicago-NY price is >100% above German international rates. >100% is a big number and German prices are high to begin with. That makes "part of" too fuzzy for my taste.
ncarroll 7y ago
That's interesting. Before about January of 2019, I was able to ship for about those rates to the U.S. Recently, I took an envelope to the German post office and was informed that the Global Postal Union has barred shipping of goods in envelopes at postal instead of package prices. I pay €16,- minimum whether in an envelope or a box but can send up to 2 kg of goodies.
- Arnt 7y ago
  https://www.deutschepost.de/de/b/briefe-ins-ausland/warenpost-international.html https://www.deutschepost.de/de/b/briefe-ins-ausland/warenpos...
pnw_hazor 7y ago
Germany privatized its postal service and now has one of the best postal services in the world. DHL is the German postal service. Meanwhile, the US Postal service is a quasi-government agency that is predictably a mess. On one hand it is supposed to be self-sufficient but on the other hand it is burdened with federal agency restrictions or limitation. And, it distorts the mail market in general by having a government granted monopoly on regular mail.

sschueller 7y ago

This problem effects a lot of other countries as well. For example Switzerland which is dealing with a huge amount of packages classified as mail but can't be run through automated sorting systems. Switzerland is putting the pressure on but it's a tiny country. The US jumping ship doesn't help anyone. Switzerland is planning on charging receivers for the extra postage to make up for the huge losses until the postage union changes the rules. Why doesn't the US do something similar? They don't seem to have a problem applying tariffs on imports.

AimForTheBushes 7y ago
Honestly, I don't think band-aiding a broken system is the solution here. "Hoping for a better outcome later" is not what I want to see when we're directly subsidizing our biggest competitor, economically and democratically speaking.
AnssiH 7y ago
> Switzerland is planning on charging receivers for the extra postage to make up for the huge losses until the postage union changes the rules. I'd like to know more, do you have a source? Could not find via Google. Many postal services have a charge for customs clearance services, but I haven't heard of anyone charging extra postage yet. > Why doesn't the US do something similar? The U.S. STOP Act of 2018 established a fee of $1 for inbound EMS parcels starting in 2020 to cover customs processing costs. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr5788/summary https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr5788/summary But as noted, customs processing fee is a bit different from charging extra postage. And I believe small letter post items are the bigger issue, not EMS.

tolmasky 7y ago

China's GDP per capita is behind Brazil's and 73rd overall, so I think there can be strong arguments to label it a developing country (and arguably, strong arguments for why "developing country" shouldn't be the metric used!). Just want to point out that merely circling a very large piece of land with a tremendous amount of people and saying "in absolute terms this area has a very big economy" is not necessarily a good metric.

sgc 7y ago

> I'm not sure what the unintended consequences are but I believe this is the right move. I don't know how that works. If you don't know the effects, how can you know it is a good action? Knee jerk actions tend to poorer results than well planned ones.

gwright 7y ago
That works because almost all decisions are made without 100% certainty. "I'm not sure ... but I believe" is simply a statement of the obvious that everyone makes decisions with incomplete information. Characterizing decisions made with incomplete information as "knee jerk" reactions is a bit much. That isn't to say that a certain amount of effort should be made to understand the consequences of any decision.

kelnos 7y ago

The biggest unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequence I expect is that companies that ship from China will pass the extra shipping fees along to the customer, either through higher prices in general, or higher add-on shipping fees. So in other words, many goods will just get more expensive. Having a USPS a bit more flush with cash might have other positive effects, though. I also wonder how the private couriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.) will react to this. Do they currently under-price a bit for shipments from some countries to the US in order to compete better with USPS? If so, they might consider raising prices if this goes through. At the end of the day, though, shipping costs should accurately reflect the effort it takes to ship, and not be artificially depressed unless there's a good reason. It seems like (at least in the case of China) that good reason (under the assumption it was good in the first place) expired decades ago.

ericmay 7y ago
> I expect is that companies that ship from China will pass the extra shipping fees along to the customer Right, which means that if other companies are selling similar products they can more fairly compete, since the cost of the Chinese product was literally being subsidized. I see a lot of conversation about how "terrible" it is that tariff or shipping costs will be passed on to the US consumer, but I don't think that's an accurate picture. On one hand, sure if you can only buy a product only from China, then perhaps the company importing it and the company exporting it may raise prices to compensate. They may also not, because you might decide to find a substitute product or because a competitor's product becomes more attractive. They may raise the price, and then Chinese products become less competitive in the U.S. market anyway (assuming there are ready alternatives, which generally there is). Alternatively a higher price means that there may be more participants in the market since there is profit to be made. If prices are artificially low and you can compete on cost with exploitive labor, that's a market inefficiency that should be corrected. For some reason people have this expectation or entitlement mentality that all of this stuff should be cheap, built on the backs of people who work incredibly hard for not a lot of money. Products naturally should be expensive unless labor is being exploited - people need to be paid a living wage, have good work conditions, and a great life. If that means buying a new set of wine glasses costs $25 instead of $4.99, then you need to spend money more wisely, or not buy the wine glasses, or make sure that you really want the wine glasses. Cheap products based on cheap fossil fuel energy and cheap, exploitive labor fuel consumerist consumption patterns.

pravda 7y ago

>It naturally puts American businesses at a disadvantage. Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! Are there more consumers or businesses? I only hope the small Chinese sellers will be able to send their packages thru Malaysia or Vietnam for reasonable rates. I've noticed that some of my eBay purchases of Chinese stuff come via those countries, at least according to the return address on the package.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! Are there more consumers or businesses? Most American consumers are dependent on American businesses (including American subsidiaries of multinationals) for income, whether through labor or capital.
wang_li 7y ago
The actual cost to ship a package isn’t changing. Just who pays. Previously it’s all users of the US postal service, whether they are involved in shipments from China or not. It makes enormous sense to charge the person who is actually benefiting and not everyone.
shkkmo 7y ago
> Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! No, US customers are paying either way. Lower cost shipping from China was paid for by higher cost domestic shipping. AFAIK the USPS is not subsidized by either the American or Chinese governments.
m000 7y ago
> Yes, but it puts American consumers at an advantage! Are there more consumers or businesses? Interesting perspective. I can see a parallel with healthcare insurance: - one big non-profit subsidized provider -> cheap baseline service for the masses, third party providers cover for the niches of the market, third party providers forced to innovate - lack of subsidies/regulation -> expensive baseline service for the masses, essentially the subsidy that gave you cheap service now becomes profit for the third party providers, no need to innovate when you can comfortably get rich by inflating the baseline service prices

faster 7y ago

It might be cheaper to ship from China to the US than to ship from Chicago to NY, but it is also far slower. I think it's fair to charge less for "as you have space" shipping. http://track-chinapost.com/?p=774 http://track-chinapost.com/?p=774 I've had a couple hundred small packages (components for prototypes, tools, etc.) shipped via China Post in the last few years, and only 2 of them arrived in less than 3 weeks. Several didn't arrive at all. I'm not willing to pay as much for that kind of service as I am to send a package from e.g. Chicago to NY with fast and reliable delivery. The rates are probably unfairly low, but you can't look only at the price. You have to look at price, delivery speed, and reliability at a minimum.

DuskStar 7y ago
You're missing the point. Shipping from LA to NYC in X days should be cheaper than shipping from Shanghai to LA in Y days PLUS shipping from LA to NYC in X days. China Post charges some amount to get from Shanghai to LA, and they do that slowly. At that point it enters the USPS system, and they deliver the package to its final destination in NYC. But by UPU rules, the USPS has to charge less for that China Post package than they do for a package that originated in LA, even though they use the same infrastructure.
- faster 7y ago
  Do you know what the rates are, relative to something like bulk mail? I can't think of anything else that has low delivery priority like these packages seem to have. Sometimes even after arriving in the US, the packages take 2-3 more weeks to be delivered though it's usually more like a week. I would say that indicates a lower priority than a comparable package that is sent within the US. I guess I'm saying that China Post packages are not going from LA to NYC in X days, more like 2X or 3X and sometimes up to 5X. The rates are probably still too low, but I haven't found any authoritative numbers.

cbhl 7y ago

I was always under the impression that the UPU rules were (1) originally intended for letter-mail, not "stuff", and (2) originally intended to reduce USPS' last-mile delivery costs in other countries (which had to be negotiated country-by-country before). If I live in America and my mother lives in some far-flung country, the idea is that we should be able to send each other letters at a cost that is proportional to typical incomes in our nations. Both e-mail and e-commerce totally turned this on its head -- letter volumes went down, and we started buying things from China (as opposed to making things and sending them there). I agree that something needs to change, but I'm worried that the end result is other countries will just stop accepting Americans' mail. It's worth noting that China is maybe #80 in GDP per capita?

mrb 7y ago

The article gives only half of the facts. The universal postal union has already reclassified China as a "developed" country since 2018. Their terminal dues have already been increasing two years in a row and will continue to increase: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20967141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20967141

mcv 7y ago

It's not just unfair; it's also bad for the environment. Shipping stuff from the other side of the world costs more in transportation and thus fuel than shipping domestically or locally. If we want environmental costs to be transparent, the real environmental cost (of shipping and other products or services) needs to be reflected in the price, which means it shouldn't be kept artificially low. I may disagree with Trump on almost everything, but this might be the one area where I actually agree. I have no idea whether this is the best or most effective approach, but I do agree that this is an issue that needs to be fixed.