7 ms·

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

by 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
        That quote from the article is about "parcel traffic to the US" not from the US. The next sentence is the relevant one to your argument, I think: "U.S.-based international shippers will also pay more, at least over the short-term, because USPS will cancel negotiated service agreements (NSA) covering international shipments if the withdrawal takes place, White said."
        DuskStar 7y ago
        But how many US manufacturers are there that ship internationally via USPS?
        watchdogtimer 7y ago
        Our company is one. About 20% of our sales are outside the US. We ship international shipments via USPS exclusively because it has always been the best value.
        HarryHirsch 7y ago
        If they sell to the public, probably quite a few. When the sender uses a parcel service the recipient gets to pay the fee for customs brokerage, but with the post it's included. Commercial recipients know about brokerage fees and can estimate how much the surcharge will be, but Joe Random has no idea and will complain.
        zaphirplane 7y ago
        There is a market where people buy from us based companies, the items are made elsewhere but people are more comfortable buying from a us brand
        Fargren 7y ago
        Won't this increase the price of goods imported into the US?
      - vizzier 7y ago
        Practical upshot presumably being the end user will pay more for shipping instead of it being subsidized at the tax level by everyone. For better or worse.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  If flipping the table over never produces a net positive result, it never becomes an acceptable action. I'm having trouble imagining what positive result could come out of this that outweighs the downside of fracturing the global postal system.
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    You could make the argument that China, who refused to negotiate with the US, was the party that fractured the global postal system as they forced the US to take such drastic action. What other options did the US have? They've already tried work it out amicably.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      > You could make the argument that China, who refused to negotiate with the US, was the party that fractured the global postal system as they forced the US to take such drastic action. We're the most powerful nation in the world, not a toddler. "He made me do it!" isn't an argument for adults. We're responsible for our own actions. China may have made a bad decision, but that doesn't give the US a pass for making an even worse decision.
      - chipperyman573 7y ago
        Why would the US not look out for its own best interests? China and the US were in a deal where the only way for the US to be in a favorable (or even just not-terrible) position was to re-negotiate a deal that was made almost 50 years ago when the world was significantly different geopolitically, even more so with regards to China. China refused to negotiate, believing that the US would never pull out and that they had all the leverage. What other option does the US have? Keep subsidizing packages for their main economic rival? Sit back and do nothing while China continues to benefit? Yeah, china "made the US do it" in the same way that a car dealership "makes you not by a car" when they don't give you the deal you wanted, but I don't really see why that means the dealership is doing anything wrong.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  There are lots of ways to deal with this. If you’re going to screw with the Chinese, just slow roll them in customs. Like everything else in this administration, there’s a grift play somewhere. They will play chicken with the issue and fold in the end.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  > at what point does... That really depends on the economic and other consequences of flipping the table. Dies a single, albeit large, bad actor like China warrant a table flip? What proportion of mail comes from them and what from developed nations with whom we'll need to come to new agreements, drastically increasing the friction of overseas shipping to everyone involved? I'm not sure this is the wrong move, in fact I think it might be the right one, but that's my gut. It doesn't seem like a real economic impact analysis has been done though, and that is problematic, making this seem much more politically motivated than from a position of careful consideration of what's in our best interest.
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    There are a variety fraudulent shennanigans that this agreement facilitated such as people in China shipping random packages to the US so they can use the tracking details to validate fake reviews. I purchased a temporary replacement phone via a website that claimed to ship domestically in the United States when it was actually shipped from China. There were several issues with the phone, but to return the device I would have been on the hook for over $100 in shipping. The credit card company refused to help through their purchase protection coverage because I had not returned the device. How was it ever in our interest to force our e-commerce retailers to subsidize shipping for Chinese e-commerce retailers?
  - viraptor 7y ago
    > What proportion of mail comes from them That's actually pretty hard to answer it seems. I can't find any straightforward chart from either USPS, or other research that would show the packages volume by year and country. Does anyone know of such source?
  - magduf 7y ago
    >What proportion of mail comes from them and what from developed nations with whom we'll need to come to new agreements, drastically increasing the friction of overseas shipping to everyone involved? I don't see the problem here, nor why the proportion matters at all. The simple fact is that shipping from the US to anywhere else in the world costs a fortune. So flipping the table can't possibly make it any worse.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ttul 7y ago
And once the table is flipped, you have no more leverage. Plus, the other side can tell their population, "the US is being a bully." It looks cool, but it's not nearly as effective as the slow-moving grind of global diplomacy.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  The slow-moving grind hasn't worked. This isn't some whim of the current administration. The United States has been trying to correct this for decades.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    The current administration seems willing to pull the trigger on anything at all that has ever been vaguely pointed in China's direction: postal union complaints, WTO grievances, party poppers, champagne corks, water balloons filled with urine. You name it; if it hurts China even a pinprick diplomatically, they want to use it. If it has ever been proposed and analyzed, just for preparedness, and then left alone for prudent diplomatic reasons, they're now pulling it out of storage and setting it off, or pushing it from the slow-grind to the fast-track. It might have been in the works for decades, but the current administration is why it is actually happening in 2019, instead of getting perpetual postponements, hoping to resolve things amicably, without major economic disruptions. I'm a bit surprised they haven't moved toward recognizing Taiwan as independently sovereign, and I'd bet that someone is carefully redacting any allusions to the fact that Taiwan exists from all briefings, and begging Fox News daily to keep any mentions of it off the air.
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      > I'm a bit surprised they haven't moved toward recognizing Taiwan as independently sovereign Trump wants a trade war, not a real war.
- RaptorJ 7y ago
  Rome, Paris, Kyoto, TPP, landmines, this pattern is not new
phkahler 7y ago
Sometimes you gotta be results oriented. This situation has been going on for decades according to TFA.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  I'd argue the president should always be results-oriented. That is to say, we should be looking at the results of leaving the global postal union, rather than just reacting because it's unfair.
jMyles 7y ago
This seems to be a highly romanticized view of the recent history of international relations.
eloff 7y ago
The US has been overly patient with China. At some point you have to flip the table over. I don't want to bring politics into the discussion, but I actually think it's one of the few things Trump has done that I agree with (I'm a Canadian so I only tangentially have a horse in the race.)
davidw 7y ago
Part of the problem with this admin is that once in a while something like this happens, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's actually a reasonable approach or just more corruption, incompetence, bullying and theatrics.
SolarNet 7y ago
It doesn't help we have a president who has destroyed and/or wasted tons of U.S. soft power.
human20190310 7y ago
Flipping the table over isn't a new tactic. When Nixon was President, the US abandoned convertability of dollars into gold without consultation (the "Nixon Shock" of 1971), which makes leaving the postal union look like small potatoes.
Invictus0 7y ago
Remember the league of nations? The US has always been flipping the table over.
rossdavidh 7y ago
Leaving the postal union in the method specified in the treaty, doesn't seem like "flipping the table over". It's more like, deciding not to play that game any more.
- iNate2000 7y ago
  I heard a story once about a (then) young man. He was newly married and playing Monopoly with his sister and his new wife. He was losing, and he decided not to play the game anymore. He communicated his decision by literally flipping the game board off the table. Little houses and hotels ricocheting and skittering all over the room. This was years ago. I believe that the man now has anti-depressants to help him control his emotions a little bit better.
WillPostForFood 7y ago
The U.S. State Department, which is the lead negotiator for the U.S. in UPU, has submitted a proposal that would allow the U.S. to “self-declare” international postage pricing and to decide on subsidy levels, if any. Unless the UPU agrees to the proposal by a September 30 deadline, the U.S. will leave the Union 17 days later and, over time, begin a framework of bilateral negotiations with individual postal authorities. The self-declare regime would begin in 2020. These are negotiations, not flipping the table.
DeonPenny 7y ago
Hasn't the US always been flip the table over. Or at least muscle other countries into things. I don't really remember many times it used principle approaches.

by wbl 7y ago

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
      That quote from the article is about "parcel traffic to the US" not from the US. The next sentence is the relevant one to your argument, I think: "U.S.-based international shippers will also pay more, at least over the short-term, because USPS will cancel negotiated service agreements (NSA) covering international shipments if the withdrawal takes place, White said."
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        But how many US manufacturers are there that ship internationally via USPS?
        watchdogtimer 7y ago
        Our company is one. About 20% of our sales are outside the US. We ship international shipments via USPS exclusively because it has always been the best value.
        HarryHirsch 7y ago
        If they sell to the public, probably quite a few. When the sender uses a parcel service the recipient gets to pay the fee for customs brokerage, but with the post it's included. Commercial recipients know about brokerage fees and can estimate how much the surcharge will be, but Joe Random has no idea and will complain.
        zaphirplane 7y ago
        There is a market where people buy from us based companies, the items are made elsewhere but people are more comfortable buying from a us brand
      - Fargren 7y ago
        Won't this increase the price of goods imported into the US?
    - vizzier 7y ago
      Practical upshot presumably being the end user will pay more for shipping instead of it being subsidized at the tax level by everyone. For better or worse.
kerkeslager 7y ago
If flipping the table over never produces a net positive result, it never becomes an acceptable action. I'm having trouble imagining what positive result could come out of this that outweighs the downside of fracturing the global postal system.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  You could make the argument that China, who refused to negotiate with the US, was the party that fractured the global postal system as they forced the US to take such drastic action. What other options did the US have? They've already tried work it out amicably.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > You could make the argument that China, who refused to negotiate with the US, was the party that fractured the global postal system as they forced the US to take such drastic action. We're the most powerful nation in the world, not a toddler. "He made me do it!" isn't an argument for adults. We're responsible for our own actions. China may have made a bad decision, but that doesn't give the US a pass for making an even worse decision.
    - chipperyman573 7y ago
      Why would the US not look out for its own best interests? China and the US were in a deal where the only way for the US to be in a favorable (or even just not-terrible) position was to re-negotiate a deal that was made almost 50 years ago when the world was significantly different geopolitically, even more so with regards to China. China refused to negotiate, believing that the US would never pull out and that they had all the leverage. What other option does the US have? Keep subsidizing packages for their main economic rival? Sit back and do nothing while China continues to benefit? Yeah, china "made the US do it" in the same way that a car dealership "makes you not by a car" when they don't give you the deal you wanted, but I don't really see why that means the dealership is doing anything wrong.
Spooky23 7y ago
There are lots of ways to deal with this. If you’re going to screw with the Chinese, just slow roll them in customs. Like everything else in this administration, there’s a grift play somewhere. They will play chicken with the issue and fold in the end.
ineedasername 7y ago
> at what point does... That really depends on the economic and other consequences of flipping the table. Dies a single, albeit large, bad actor like China warrant a table flip? What proportion of mail comes from them and what from developed nations with whom we'll need to come to new agreements, drastically increasing the friction of overseas shipping to everyone involved? I'm not sure this is the wrong move, in fact I think it might be the right one, but that's my gut. It doesn't seem like a real economic impact analysis has been done though, and that is problematic, making this seem much more politically motivated than from a position of careful consideration of what's in our best interest.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  There are a variety fraudulent shennanigans that this agreement facilitated such as people in China shipping random packages to the US so they can use the tracking details to validate fake reviews. I purchased a temporary replacement phone via a website that claimed to ship domestically in the United States when it was actually shipped from China. There were several issues with the phone, but to return the device I would have been on the hook for over $100 in shipping. The credit card company refused to help through their purchase protection coverage because I had not returned the device. How was it ever in our interest to force our e-commerce retailers to subsidize shipping for Chinese e-commerce retailers?
- viraptor 7y ago
  > What proportion of mail comes from them That's actually pretty hard to answer it seems. I can't find any straightforward chart from either USPS, or other research that would show the packages volume by year and country. Does anyone know of such source?
- magduf 7y ago
  >What proportion of mail comes from them and what from developed nations with whom we'll need to come to new agreements, drastically increasing the friction of overseas shipping to everyone involved? I don't see the problem here, nor why the proportion matters at all. The simple fact is that shipping from the US to anywhere else in the world costs a fortune. So flipping the table can't possibly make it any worse.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ttul 7y ago

And once the table is flipped, you have no more leverage. Plus, the other side can tell their population, "the US is being a bully." It looks cool, but it's not nearly as effective as the slow-moving grind of global diplomacy.

reaperducer 7y ago
The slow-moving grind hasn't worked. This isn't some whim of the current administration. The United States has been trying to correct this for decades.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  The current administration seems willing to pull the trigger on anything at all that has ever been vaguely pointed in China's direction: postal union complaints, WTO grievances, party poppers, champagne corks, water balloons filled with urine. You name it; if it hurts China even a pinprick diplomatically, they want to use it. If it has ever been proposed and analyzed, just for preparedness, and then left alone for prudent diplomatic reasons, they're now pulling it out of storage and setting it off, or pushing it from the slow-grind to the fast-track. It might have been in the works for decades, but the current administration is why it is actually happening in 2019, instead of getting perpetual postponements, hoping to resolve things amicably, without major economic disruptions. I'm a bit surprised they haven't moved toward recognizing Taiwan as independently sovereign, and I'd bet that someone is carefully redacting any allusions to the fact that Taiwan exists from all briefings, and begging Fox News daily to keep any mentions of it off the air.
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    > I'm a bit surprised they haven't moved toward recognizing Taiwan as independently sovereign Trump wants a trade war, not a real war.
RaptorJ 7y ago
Rome, Paris, Kyoto, TPP, landmines, this pattern is not new

phkahler 7y ago

Sometimes you gotta be results oriented. This situation has been going on for decades according to TFA.

kerkeslager 7y ago
I'd argue the president should always be results-oriented. That is to say, we should be looking at the results of leaving the global postal union, rather than just reacting because it's unfair.

jMyles 7y ago

This seems to be a highly romanticized view of the recent history of international relations.

eloff 7y ago

The US has been overly patient with China. At some point you have to flip the table over. I don't want to bring politics into the discussion, but I actually think it's one of the few things Trump has done that I agree with (I'm a Canadian so I only tangentially have a horse in the race.)

davidw 7y ago

Part of the problem with this admin is that once in a while something like this happens, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's actually a reasonable approach or just more corruption, incompetence, bullying and theatrics.

SolarNet 7y ago

It doesn't help we have a president who has destroyed and/or wasted tons of U.S. soft power.

human20190310 7y ago

Flipping the table over isn't a new tactic. When Nixon was President, the US abandoned convertability of dollars into gold without consultation (the "Nixon Shock" of 1971), which makes leaving the postal union look like small potatoes.

Invictus0 7y ago

Remember the league of nations? The US has always been flipping the table over.

rossdavidh 7y ago

Leaving the postal union in the method specified in the treaty, doesn't seem like "flipping the table over". It's more like, deciding not to play that game any more.

iNate2000 7y ago
I heard a story once about a (then) young man. He was newly married and playing Monopoly with his sister and his new wife. He was losing, and he decided not to play the game anymore. He communicated his decision by literally flipping the game board off the table. Little houses and hotels ricocheting and skittering all over the room. This was years ago. I believe that the man now has anti-depressants to help him control his emotions a little bit better.

WillPostForFood 7y ago

The U.S. State Department, which is the lead negotiator for the U.S. in UPU, has submitted a proposal that would allow the U.S. to “self-declare” international postage pricing and to decide on subsidy levels, if any. Unless the UPU agrees to the proposal by a September 30 deadline, the U.S. will leave the Union 17 days later and, over time, begin a framework of bilateral negotiations with individual postal authorities. The self-declare regime would begin in 2020. These are negotiations, not flipping the table.

DeonPenny 7y ago

Hasn't the US always been flip the table over. Or at least muscle other countries into things. I don't really remember many times it used principle approaches.