23 ms·

The U.S. can now set its own rates for mail from China and other countries

413 points by rjzzleep 6y ago

gremlinsinc 6y ago
Easy solution: Raise postage, make china pay for it, or stop delivering to China.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Rates are determined by the United Nations Universal Postal Union. The US was threatening to withdraw over this last year, but settled on the ability to raise rates on China starting next month. [1] This is covered in the article, too. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-postal-union-withdraw.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-postal...
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    It’s amazing how we had to threaten the UN to get them to end this OBVIOUSLY uncompetitive practice. Why should US company tax dollars go to subsidize the cost of a foreign competitor? And we’re not talking about helping our a 3rd world country here, we’re taking about our largest rival for world power. The UN being unwilling to separate China from the rest of the lot until being threatened says enough.
    - nelaboras 6y ago
      No, this was by design. The US and Europe wanted to encourage trade by developing countries, so built in cheaper rates for them. This also still makes sense for Rwanda or Nepal, less so for China which simply developed at an unexpected speed and scale. Obviously a mistake not to build any kind of automatic adjustment in...
      - jariel 6y ago
        "No, this was by design" No, it was not 'designed' to fund Chinese competition and outsource massive numbers of manufacturing jobs over there. This was a side-effect of the program gone obviously and terribly awry. The original program is ancient and really was a matter of national courtesy in delivering other nation's international mail. EDIT, FYI: "The Treaty of Bern was signed on October 9, 1874, establishing what was then known as the General Postal Union. The treaty provided that: There should be a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world Postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail Each country should retain all money it has collected for international postage." The current practice of giving China free postage was established 150 years ago, not in some modern trade strategy, and it was a means of simplifying postage and not having to worry about balancing accounts (i.e. host nation keeps the fee). This kind of economic reciprocity is basically unheard of in anything else, but it makes sense for a strategic industry that's not necessarily very expensive. For shipping goods, obviously, it makes no sense. I challenge anyone to explain how an agreement made in 1874 for critical international communications, that has unexpectedly given China a massive trade advantage in developing industries, was part of any plan. The argument that the terms may have been advanced due to helping places like Africa with trade just don't hold in the current context. The US government subsidisation of Chinese e-commerce doesn't really make any sense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
        ketzu 6y ago
        You are ignoring that the Union was established 150 years ago, but the agreement is changing over time. And like every other country, the US is trying to modify it in a way it sees profitable for themselves at the time. According to your wikipedia article in 2010 the US blocked increases because they were on the winning end of the treaty. But as unforseen changes actually made them lose money on the deal, it was suddenly unfair and out of date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shifting_balances_and_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin...
        6y ago
- bsder 6y ago
  Postal service is much like internet transit, normally you are happy to deliver other people's stuff as long as they deliver yours. This breaks down when one of the parties starts sending a lot more than they receive.
  - Animats 6y ago
    Exactly. First-class letter mail used to dominate the postal system, and it tends to have about equal traffic in each direction. So the UPU wasn't that concerned about settlements. Until 1969, there weren't any settlements; countries "peered" at no charge, like the Internet. Then came "terminal dues", the charges the delivering postal system charges the originating postal system.[1] Also, there's a price break for "underdeveloped countries", and 20 years ago, at the last round of rate setting, China qualified. Despite all the noise from the Trump administration back in 2018, 2020 was the next scheduled year for updating terminal dues. Here we are in 2020, and there's a new terminal dues agreement, as scheduled. [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...
SecurityMinded 6y ago
Why aren't they asking the recipients pay for the loss ?Obviously people are so gung-ho for buying cheap chinese crap from ali-express or wish, they can pay the additional couple of bucks to hav etheir packages delivered to them or send them back to china.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Tariffs are determined by international treaty.
- pkaye 6y ago
  The seller can charge the extra amount for shipping if they choose to.
- Johnny555 6y ago
  That sounds like a bigger loss of money - having the postman collect a couple dollars for every package would be labor intensive and result in multiple delivery attempts, and if the recipient didn't pay, then they'd have to return the package to the shipper, so the package would have 2 trips through the system. Collecting more money from the sender sounds like the better solution.
mwnivek 6y ago
The title could probably be improved to reflect that changes to rates begin in three days: > On September 25, 2019, the United States and United Nations reached a deal for America to stay in the UPU in return for being allowed greater flexibility in setting prices. In other words, the U.S. can now set rates for mail from China and other countries. The U.S. will be allowed to set its own postal rates starting on July 2020 and other countries will be allowed to starting in 2021. There will be a five-year period of phasing in new rates. > The maximum annual increases for all countries cumulatively from 2020 to 2025 will be between 119%-164% (with China being on the upper end). This works out to annual increases of 15% in 2021 and 2022, 16% in 2023 and 2024, and 17% in 2025.
- dang 6y ago
  OK, I've attempted changed the title above to something representative from what you quoted. Submitted title was "USPS loses on average $1.10 for each package it delivers from China"
chaostheory 6y ago
This is old news. I'm not a fan of Trump, but his gambit on withdrawing from the UN Postal Union is one of the few good things that came from his administration.
- mixologic 6y ago
  Even a stopped clock, gets the right time twice a day.
  - abc-xyz 6y ago
    He seems to get it right a lot when it comes to China. - He refer to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus - He started a trade war with China (resulting in companies moving out of China, Huawei not being allowed to use Android, etc) - He was the first US president to talk directly to Taiwan's president since 1979 - He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past 20 years - Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was signed under his administration - TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration - Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration - China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks .. and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I was personally against his presidency during the first election, but his actions towards China is enough for him to garner my support even if I disagree with him on practically everything else.
    - tathougies 6y ago
      Same. Tough on china, no regime change... sounds good to me.
    - addicted 6y ago
      Misnaming a virus for racist reasons is an achievement? How about focusing more on testing and not allowing hundreds of thousands of Americans to die instead. Or maybe just wearing a freakin mask and not making that a political issue and leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary American deaths. The trade war has led to very few, if any, companies move to China. The only major change is that China buys a lot less agricultural products from the US requiring the administration to straight up pay tens of billions to Midwest farmers so Trump wouldn’t lose their vote entirely. Not sure what talking to the Taiwanese President has to do with anything when Taiwan is more afraid of China right now than it has ever been because he won’t publicly agree to protect it. Yeah, the largest arms sale is still minuscule and is gonna do nothing to stop China from taking over Taiwan militarily if they wanted. And China has taken over Hong Kong almost entirely and there hasn’t been a peep from the US govt. Instead, the Trump administrations response was to punish Hong Kong and start treating it as if it is already a part of China and the 2 systems 1 nation rule doesn’t apply anymore. Nice. He had 1 person arrested by the Canadians. That’s brilliant. China Mobile would have been blocked by any administration. Because the US government used to be run by competents, who didn’t crow about every minuscule move they made, because they were focusing on massive changes that would actually have teeth (such as the TPP) you are likely not even aware of the fact that Obama’s administration blocked a bunch of Chinese private actions. And they were actually successful and did not require breaking international law therefore making US allies also suspicious of the US. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aixtron-m-a-fujian-idUSKBN13X16H https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aixtron-m-a-fujian-idUSKB... https://www.law360.com/articles/410956/chinese-co-wants-wind-farm-deal-voided-after-obama-block https://www.law360.com/articles/410956/chinese-co-wants-wind...
guug 6y ago
Hasn't this already been addressed by US's new deal with the UN?
half-kh-hacker 6y ago
I'm not American so I'm probably just used to other systems, but does a public service need to be profitable? Think of it like a "cost centre" in a business, does the utility outweigh the price?
- ipython 6y ago
  The trouble is that we are subsidizing the shipment of items from China. It’s sickening when I have to pay $5 to send something within the US, yet the same item would cost $.50 from China. You could buy something for $1 from dx.com- shipping included! Crazy. So while I agree with you that we don’t necessarily need a profit motive at the usps, at the same time the taxpayers don’t need to subsidize cheap crap from China.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I guess the taxpayers are also the people who buy stuff from China so by and large they're just subsidizing themselves? Given how ubiquitous ordering stuff from China is these days I'm not really sure the first impression of this being some good deal is accurate. In fact subsidizing transport to a degree might probably have a progressive effect because low wage earners are more likely to order cheaper foreign goods.
    - lenkite 6y ago
      There were a truckload of articles on this published over the last several years, even during the Obama administration, on how this "international China shipping" being cheaper than "domestic shipping" destroyed small businesses and was also responsible for hundreds (likely thousands) of American deaths thanks to cheap fentayl shipments. This was the most nonsensical self-destructive American policy that strangely never caught much mainstream media attention.
      - xzel 6y ago
        With the potency to weight ratio Fentanyl has, do you really think the shipping being slightly more expensive will make it cost prohibitive? "A kilogram of heroin is purchased for approximately $6,000 and sold for appropriately $80,000." [1] Paying a few more dollars for shipping, which would be the case, doesn't make a dent in profitability. 1. https://www.affirmhealth.com/blog/word-on-the-street-fentanyl https://www.affirmhealth.com/blog/word-on-the-street-fentany...
kevindong 6y ago
As a gag gift, I've bought a phone case from Aliexpress for a friend. The total, including shipping, was $0.46. The case itself did fit the phone and was technically usable. I've bought a bunch of small trinkets from Aliexpress. For the most part, they're the same exact things you can buy off of Amazon for ~$5-15, except they take 2ish months to be delivered. For some things, it actually does make sense to just wait that long (e.g. a Google Home Mini wall mount) in exchange for the savings (>= 50% is normal).
- dis-sys 6y ago
  just checked taobao.com, the cheapest phone case was 5 RMB or $0.7 USD including shipping. so it is actually cheaper to buy the same stuff from the US and get it shipped half of the world.
  - kevindong 6y ago
    If you want it, you can buy a $0.50 iPhone 5 case with free shipping from Aliexpress right now: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001089727974.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001089727974.html Alternatively, you could buy a $0.06 phone stand with free shipping: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001172525823.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001172525823.html
  - rahimnathwani 6y ago
    Cheapest I saw on taobao just now was 3 RMB including shipping: https://m.tb.cn/h.VpeyELi?sm=ddc20e https://m.tb.cn/h.VpeyELi?sm=ddc20e Opened the taobao android app, searched for 手机套, filtered by 包邮 (shipping included) and sorted by price.
  - balola 6y ago
    In the case of phone cases, you can get Chinese domestic shipping costs as low as $0.2 if your daily volume is high enough. It's a special offer tho, since it's light weight and compact. And yes, shipping companies can still make normal profit on these. From this standpoint, your example isn't nearly the cheapest it can get. Sellers regularly offer entirely free ones in exchange for reviews.
lazylizard 6y ago
If the usps is losing money every package..why don't it stop delivering those packages? Or deliver less of those packages? Like. Do some QOS?
- jariel 6y ago
  It's a very reasonable question, and the answer is the USPS should not do this. The Postal Union predates the UN by at least 50 years, the notion that each nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce as we understand it and doesn't make sense. This program should have been abolished decades ago.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > the notion that each nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce as we understand it and doesn't make sense Is this that much different from net neutrality, phone call routing, email routing, etc? Should an ISP have to carry data belonging to other services? Should a mobile operator just refuse to route calls coming from another operator or country? Should Google refuse emails from another email provider or country? I pay to get my mail delivered to a foreign country and both source and destination postal systems get a cut. Honoring the deliveries works in the favor of all sides. If the implementation is bad fix that, don't drop the system.
    - jariel 6y ago
      I see what you're saying but it's not quite the analogy you're looking for in Net Neutrality. In shipping, they have to charge you a different rate for packages than they do mail (i.e weight) or else it won't work. With data, it'd be nary impossible to clear prices for such services. With mail, it's entirely possible. There is basically no reason that China Post can't charge their customers a rate to get something to the US, and then another rate by the US Post to get to final destination. Because shipping involves real labour and money, it's like any other service, it should be priced normally. If the postal union was not borne 150 years ago with this odd kind of arrangement, nobody would suggest it today. It needs to go.
afwaller 6y ago
Wow imagine if you could exploit mail rates between various countries with some kind of international mail pricing arbitrage ~~ Charles Ponzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi
nooneknowswhy 6y ago
FYI, The deal was made (2010) during Obama(2008-2016) time.
fyfy18 6y ago
A bit off topic, but does the US have import tariffs or customs duties for items purchased abroad? In the EU for most items over €20 purchased outside the EU, you will need to pay customs duty and VAT, and possibly a processing fee. The rates depend on what exactly the item is, but can be quite substantial. I bought an action camera from a site like GearBest (I can't remember exactly which one) a few years ago for ~€60, and when it arrived I needed to pay another €50 in fees. If it wasn't for this I would buy a lot more swag - as most companies will ship from the US, it means a $25 t-shirt would end up costing me closer to $50.
- gerbler 6y ago
  The article does describe import rates towards the end - they mention that there are none for items < $800.
- ascorbic 6y ago
  The important things is that the US doesn't have VAT, which makes up the majority of the cost. The de minimis value for import duty is much higher, and the rate is much lower.
  - AnssiH 6y ago
    Do you have some source for the lower import duty rates? They heavily depend on the specific item category - in my experience usually 0% or ~5% for the tech items I've imported (but that is not really enough to draw any conclusions from). The de minimis for import duty in EU is 150€ (compared to $800 in US). Edit: here is the Finnish Customs duty calculator: https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-calculator?current=goods&currency-id=1 https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-calculator?current=goods&cu... (VAT is Finland-specific, duties are the same EU-wide). A quick look shows that e.g. phones, computer components, and DVDs are 0%, which probably accounts for most of my €150+ imports and thus explains my experience above...
    - ascorbic 6y ago
      That's the kind of level I was thinking. Compared with VAT levels of around 20% in most EU countries, with a de minimis level of around €15, I'd call that a low rate and high de minimis level. Edit: it seems there's no de minimis threshold for VAT anymore, so that's even more of a contrast
techntoke 6y ago
Guess that means they should start selling more mass spam mailers with no way to opt out.
exabrial 6y ago
Besides losing money, the biggest thing that bothers me about USPS is the sheer volume of waste they deliver to my mailbox every month. That is a lot of diesel and gasoline burnt, not to mention raw materials to create the paper that it's printed on. We could make a massive dent in greenhouse emissions by charging actual prices.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  The postal service makes a large fraction of its revenue from those advertisements. They are absolutely charged actual prices.
  - briandear 6y ago
    No they aren’t. There is highly discounted “bulk mail rates” that are far cheaper than what sending a single letter costs.
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago
      That's because they are presorted.
    - kn0where 6y ago
      Those discounted rates are still profitable. The margin is small, and they make it up in volume. There’s an economy of scale to be had when every single person on the route gets the same bundle of local grocery ads, whereas if I send a first class letter, that has to actually be sorted and delivered to a specific address, potentially across the country.
    - blck 6y ago
      I always thought bulk mail made more money than first class just by sheer volume of how much bulk mail is sent but color me surprised that in FY2019 marketing mail made up a significantly smaller dollar amount than first class mail. First class mail just barely edges out shipping packages here. For anyone who wants to check it out: https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019.pdf#:~:text=FY2019%20Annual%20Report%20to%20Congress%20%E2%80%94%20United%20States,of%20Governors%20Chairman%20on%20our.%202.%20operations%201 https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019...
cm2012 6y ago
Random aside. It's hilarious to me how people are worried about data Facebook has on them, or freaking out about address data being leaked in a hack. Direct mail marketers, since the 1980s, buy lists of huge swathes of Americans. These lists include full name, address, estimated income, political affiliation, companies you've worked for - and the records are pennies each.
- aembleton 6y ago
  Direct mail marketers don't know how long you've spent on each Web page that you've visited.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  It doesn't contain the list of people I am friend with on Facebook, and people I'm very likely to be friend with, while I'm not friend on Facebook. It doesn't contain my GPS coordinates over years. It doesn't contain the list of my interests, based on my likes and the tracking of my web browsing. It doesn't contain an analysis of the conversations with my friends and family. It doesn't contain the pictures of my weekends and holidays, uploaded by other people. It doesn't contain my face. However it's still quite bad and such dataset shouldn't be available like this.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Well, it probably does _now_. Cambridge Analytica was nowhere near alone in their cross-aggregation of data.
    - makomk 6y ago
      Quite possibly. For example, the Obama campaign in 2012 used friendship and interaction data from Facebook in order to figure out which of his supporters could most effectively convince specific undecided voters they were friends with to vote for him and instructed them to do so, effectively turning your own friends into instruments of the advertising algorithm. The New York Times ran a glowing article about how clever this was and the new commercial advertising organisation they were using their techniques in: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campai...
classics2 6y ago
Want a real shock? Look up what it costs to send a 4lb package from the us to China, the exact same package they pay $18 to send.
- bluesign 6y ago
  Because China subsidize the cost of shipping from China to US. But US is charging you for that part. Also for big mailers, they are even subsidize in US shipping. This is kind of political theatre, US sellers will never match up with chinese sellers even after this change, even not in 5 years. US is trying to close this 75M usd gap in 5 years with this agreement, what china will do? They will just subsidize 75M more. This 75M will not make any difference in US pricing of mail. Chinese will continue with free shipping, US prices at best will get little lower.
Fragoel2 6y ago
It's yet another of the unfair advantages that China had over other countries, stemming from treaties signed decades ago that no longer make sense. Glad to see it gone (and I'm not even an American).
- ketzu 6y ago
  The "unfair advantage" is not one sided and otherwise considered developmental aid for developing countries (as developing countries, rising them out of poverty, seems to be the best overall strategy for humans). The classification of china as developmental country is complicated, but you can't just look a Beijing skyscrapers and go "yeah we're done here." (Or you can, but that's not very helpful, one option would be GDP/c https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP..., although, thanks to the huge population, the gdp overall is quite high) also it depends on the time of evaluation. Until recently the US was on the winning side of the deal, too (according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shifting_balances_and_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin... ) they even blocked an increase of dues in 2010. Until they started to lose money in 2015. Now it's unfair and a decades old treaty (even though it is adapted all the time and serves valuable reasons).
mcv 6y ago
This is probably the one meaningful, positive thing that Trump accomplished[0]. It's ridiculous that shipping from the other side of the world is cheaper than shipping locally. The one thing I disagree about, is that it currently only fixes the problem for the US, and the EU has to wait (another half year, I think?) before they can fix their prices. [0] Blocking TPP is another candidate, although I think I'd rather see it fixed than blocked completely. I suspect Trump might actually have agreed with the original TPP, had he known what it was about.
- addicted 6y ago
  Blocking TPP was a disaster. TPP would have achieved everything the Trump administration has failed to achieve with China and has spent tens of billions of dollars doing so in direct costs (the indirect costs are even higher and will last for decades). The major complaint about TPP was the IP protections. But the hypocrisy is that the lack of the IP protections is exactly the same people complain about China. There was absolutely no reason to block TPP, which in a nutshell, gave Chinese neighbors the opportunity to do business that the US was doing in China currently, and in return agree to implement an IP protection environment that everyone agrees China should have but doesn’t. Besides providing American (and non American) companies with multiple alternatives to China where their IP would not be stolen, it would have built massive American soft power with Chinese neighbors at absolutely no cost to Americans, since the business going to those countries was business being done in China anyways.
  - mcv 6y ago
    TPP also included corporate courts that could force a country to reimburse foreign companies for losses due to changes in democratic laws. That is the big part that many people on HN and elsewhere objected to. But yes, TPP also had its upsides, which is why I prefer a fixed version rather than blocking it completely. The US, by the way, was the biggest proponent of those corporate courts. Sadly the Trump administration lacks the know-how or desire to negotiate that sort of nuance. So while I agree with blocking it in the form it had at the time, I disagree with blocking it completely, which is of course what Trump did.
netcan 6y ago
This whole saga shows us a lot about the institutional shitshow at the base, mechanical level of the economy. FYI, this is not an anomaly. In Israel, amazon did a deal with the national postal service that gives amazon packages priority. Before that, Aliexpress' free delivery ruled. It's easier in Israel, because there isn't a local amazon to compete with faster shipping. Long story short, local businesses pay much more, for slower local delivery than global companies shipping internationally. This is on top of de facto exemptions from duties & product regulations. Israel is a tiny country. Geographically, it's a city state. Local ecommerce is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has extra advantages.
- curation 6y ago
  Nationstates have no meaning beyond mechanism to obscure borderization of humans and boderlessness velocity of capital. It would be more correct for me to say I am a Bezosian or I am a Zuckerbergian than I am Canadian.
  - netcan 6y ago
    This is pretty abstract. Nation States do exist in the context of package delivery.
- Avamander 6y ago
  > Local ecommerce is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has extra advantages. I disagree, some companies in my own country try to claim the same, but when I look at the market, there are a lot of players, a lot of profit being made, it can be done. In a sense I have a suspicion that this is just some companies gotten lazy and not realising multitude of thing e-commerce provides. People want warranty, a nice fast mobile app in their native language, fast shipping, to support local companies - there's quite a lot a local company could offer. But a customer doesn't want to pay 10x as much and get quarter of that, that should be very clear.
  - netcan 6y ago
    These things aren't absolute. But, at least in that country, you cannot use the postal service or major delivery services to deliver packages locally for a similar cost and delivery price as internationals... With amazon being the recent, and blatant culprit. They deal they did with the postal service are not a secret. Neither are delivery times. Monopolies, and the effect they have on the economy are not newtonian physics. It's not deterministic. Economic structures create prevailing winds, not airtight control over outcomes. Postal services are a structure. The structure creates a prevailing wind that heavily biases an outcome.
econcon 6y ago
And government makes boatload of cash by changing tariffs, port clearance, and tons of other fees etc... If you remove all of them, we can get wayy cheaper price than what we get.
tehjoker 6y ago
"For many years, sellers in China have been able to ship for less from China to America than local American sellers can domestically, thanks to something called ePacket." This system was undoubtedly maintained so that US business could get cheap labor rates in China. Sending mail from China should be more expensive than domestically if the cost is based on distance. However, that would be a barrier to trade. US business spent the 90s trying to outsource manufacturing to China and a barrier to trade would foil that plan to exploit cheap labor overseas and avoid unionization domestically. Clearly the US national business community must feel threatened by China's changing policies or by a change in their negotiating position or this wouldn't be going through.
stevespang 6y ago
Dave Bryant, with regard to having contracts with your Chinese Supplier - - - actually, I do know American buyers who insist their Chinese counterpart obtain bonding through a "Western" bonding service, not a Chinese hoax bonding service. In case the Chinese supplier has a quality problem or warrantee problem with the goods you buy, you are protected by the bonding company contract. It even pays for all the costs needed to buy and reship proper functioning product to your customers. ALL companies buying from the Chinese should insist on this and it would then become commonplace. If a Chinese supplier objects to bonding - - then you should be suspicious of their quality and move on.
DeonPenny 6y ago
This actually needed to be fixed. It allowed for dumping of cheap products and made american companies uncompetitive. This fix was long time coming.
- pnathan 6y ago
  Back when I first heard about this, I read up on it: it seemed to me that it was quite time to move China off the list of "extra cheap shippers". I know it'll have a number of knock on effects over the next few years, and I'm not sure what those will be for the average American. It'll be nice , in theory, to be able to set up a widget shop in the US and sell to China at the same parcel rates that my counterpart in China could, to the US.
batoure 6y ago
Start shorting eBay a massive part of their business has been based on taking advantage of this

413 points by rjzzleep 6y ago

gremlinsinc 6y ago

Easy solution: Raise postage, make china pay for it, or stop delivering to China.

arcticbull 6y ago
Rates are determined by the United Nations Universal Postal Union. The US was threatening to withdraw over this last year, but settled on the ability to raise rates on China starting next month. [1] This is covered in the article, too. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-postal-union-withdraw.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-postal...
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  It’s amazing how we had to threaten the UN to get them to end this OBVIOUSLY uncompetitive practice. Why should US company tax dollars go to subsidize the cost of a foreign competitor? And we’re not talking about helping our a 3rd world country here, we’re taking about our largest rival for world power. The UN being unwilling to separate China from the rest of the lot until being threatened says enough.
  - nelaboras 6y ago
    No, this was by design. The US and Europe wanted to encourage trade by developing countries, so built in cheaper rates for them. This also still makes sense for Rwanda or Nepal, less so for China which simply developed at an unexpected speed and scale. Obviously a mistake not to build any kind of automatic adjustment in...
    - jariel 6y ago
      "No, this was by design" No, it was not 'designed' to fund Chinese competition and outsource massive numbers of manufacturing jobs over there. This was a side-effect of the program gone obviously and terribly awry. The original program is ancient and really was a matter of national courtesy in delivering other nation's international mail. EDIT, FYI: "The Treaty of Bern was signed on October 9, 1874, establishing what was then known as the General Postal Union. The treaty provided that: There should be a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world Postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail Each country should retain all money it has collected for international postage." The current practice of giving China free postage was established 150 years ago, not in some modern trade strategy, and it was a means of simplifying postage and not having to worry about balancing accounts (i.e. host nation keeps the fee). This kind of economic reciprocity is basically unheard of in anything else, but it makes sense for a strategic industry that's not necessarily very expensive. For shipping goods, obviously, it makes no sense. I challenge anyone to explain how an agreement made in 1874 for critical international communications, that has unexpectedly given China a massive trade advantage in developing industries, was part of any plan. The argument that the terms may have been advanced due to helping places like Africa with trade just don't hold in the current context. The US government subsidisation of Chinese e-commerce doesn't really make any sense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
      - ketzu 6y ago
        You are ignoring that the Union was established 150 years ago, but the agreement is changing over time. And like every other country, the US is trying to modify it in a way it sees profitable for themselves at the time. According to your wikipedia article in 2010 the US blocked increases because they were on the winning end of the treaty. But as unforseen changes actually made them lose money on the deal, it was suddenly unfair and out of date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shifting_balances_and_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin...
        6y ago
bsder 6y ago
Postal service is much like internet transit, normally you are happy to deliver other people's stuff as long as they deliver yours. This breaks down when one of the parties starts sending a lot more than they receive.
- Animats 6y ago
  Exactly. First-class letter mail used to dominate the postal system, and it tends to have about equal traffic in each direction. So the UPU wasn't that concerned about settlements. Until 1969, there weren't any settlements; countries "peered" at no charge, like the Internet. Then came "terminal dues", the charges the delivering postal system charges the originating postal system.[1] Also, there's a price break for "underdeveloped countries", and 20 years ago, at the last round of rate setting, China qualified. Despite all the noise from the Trump administration back in 2018, 2020 was the next scheduled year for updating terminal dues. Here we are in 2020, and there's a new terminal dues agreement, as scheduled. [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...

SecurityMinded 6y ago

Why aren't they asking the recipients pay for the loss ?Obviously people are so gung-ho for buying cheap chinese crap from ali-express or wish, they can pay the additional couple of bucks to hav etheir packages delivered to them or send them back to china.

arcticbull 6y ago
Tariffs are determined by international treaty.
pkaye 6y ago
The seller can charge the extra amount for shipping if they choose to.
Johnny555 6y ago
That sounds like a bigger loss of money - having the postman collect a couple dollars for every package would be labor intensive and result in multiple delivery attempts, and if the recipient didn't pay, then they'd have to return the package to the shipper, so the package would have 2 trips through the system. Collecting more money from the sender sounds like the better solution.

mwnivek 6y ago

The title could probably be improved to reflect that changes to rates begin in three days: > On September 25, 2019, the United States and United Nations reached a deal for America to stay in the UPU in return for being allowed greater flexibility in setting prices. In other words, the U.S. can now set rates for mail from China and other countries. The U.S. will be allowed to set its own postal rates starting on July 2020 and other countries will be allowed to starting in 2021. There will be a five-year period of phasing in new rates. > The maximum annual increases for all countries cumulatively from 2020 to 2025 will be between 119%-164% (with China being on the upper end). This works out to annual increases of 15% in 2021 and 2022, 16% in 2023 and 2024, and 17% in 2025.

dang 6y ago
OK, I've attempted changed the title above to something representative from what you quoted. Submitted title was "USPS loses on average $1.10 for each package it delivers from China"

chaostheory 6y ago

This is old news. I'm not a fan of Trump, but his gambit on withdrawing from the UN Postal Union is one of the few good things that came from his administration.

mixologic 6y ago
Even a stopped clock, gets the right time twice a day.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  He seems to get it right a lot when it comes to China. - He refer to the Wuhan Virus as the China/Chinese Virus - He started a trade war with China (resulting in companies moving out of China, Huawei not being allowed to use Android, etc) - He was the first US president to talk directly to Taiwan's president since 1979 - He made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past 20 years - Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was signed under his administration - TAIPEI Act was signed under his administration - Meng Wanzhou was arrested under his administration - China Mobile was blocked from offering services in the US, citing national security risks .. and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I was personally against his presidency during the first election, but his actions towards China is enough for him to garner my support even if I disagree with him on practically everything else.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    Same. Tough on china, no regime change... sounds good to me.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Misnaming a virus for racist reasons is an achievement? How about focusing more on testing and not allowing hundreds of thousands of Americans to die instead. Or maybe just wearing a freakin mask and not making that a political issue and leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary American deaths. The trade war has led to very few, if any, companies move to China. The only major change is that China buys a lot less agricultural products from the US requiring the administration to straight up pay tens of billions to Midwest farmers so Trump wouldn’t lose their vote entirely. Not sure what talking to the Taiwanese President has to do with anything when Taiwan is more afraid of China right now than it has ever been because he won’t publicly agree to protect it. Yeah, the largest arms sale is still minuscule and is gonna do nothing to stop China from taking over Taiwan militarily if they wanted. And China has taken over Hong Kong almost entirely and there hasn’t been a peep from the US govt. Instead, the Trump administrations response was to punish Hong Kong and start treating it as if it is already a part of China and the 2 systems 1 nation rule doesn’t apply anymore. Nice. He had 1 person arrested by the Canadians. That’s brilliant. China Mobile would have been blocked by any administration. Because the US government used to be run by competents, who didn’t crow about every minuscule move they made, because they were focusing on massive changes that would actually have teeth (such as the TPP) you are likely not even aware of the fact that Obama’s administration blocked a bunch of Chinese private actions. And they were actually successful and did not require breaking international law therefore making US allies also suspicious of the US. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aixtron-m-a-fujian-idUSKBN13X16H https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aixtron-m-a-fujian-idUSKB... https://www.law360.com/articles/410956/chinese-co-wants-wind-farm-deal-voided-after-obama-block https://www.law360.com/articles/410956/chinese-co-wants-wind...

guug 6y ago

Hasn't this already been addressed by US's new deal with the UN?

half-kh-hacker 6y ago

I'm not American so I'm probably just used to other systems, but does a public service need to be profitable? Think of it like a "cost centre" in a business, does the utility outweigh the price?

ipython 6y ago
The trouble is that we are subsidizing the shipment of items from China. It’s sickening when I have to pay $5 to send something within the US, yet the same item would cost $.50 from China. You could buy something for $1 from dx.com- shipping included! Crazy. So while I agree with you that we don’t necessarily need a profit motive at the usps, at the same time the taxpayers don’t need to subsidize cheap crap from China.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I guess the taxpayers are also the people who buy stuff from China so by and large they're just subsidizing themselves? Given how ubiquitous ordering stuff from China is these days I'm not really sure the first impression of this being some good deal is accurate. In fact subsidizing transport to a degree might probably have a progressive effect because low wage earners are more likely to order cheaper foreign goods.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    There were a truckload of articles on this published over the last several years, even during the Obama administration, on how this "international China shipping" being cheaper than "domestic shipping" destroyed small businesses and was also responsible for hundreds (likely thousands) of American deaths thanks to cheap fentayl shipments. This was the most nonsensical self-destructive American policy that strangely never caught much mainstream media attention.
    - xzel 6y ago
      With the potency to weight ratio Fentanyl has, do you really think the shipping being slightly more expensive will make it cost prohibitive? "A kilogram of heroin is purchased for approximately $6,000 and sold for appropriately $80,000." [1] Paying a few more dollars for shipping, which would be the case, doesn't make a dent in profitability. 1. https://www.affirmhealth.com/blog/word-on-the-street-fentanyl https://www.affirmhealth.com/blog/word-on-the-street-fentany...

kevindong 6y ago

As a gag gift, I've bought a phone case from Aliexpress for a friend. The total, including shipping, was $0.46. The case itself did fit the phone and was technically usable. I've bought a bunch of small trinkets from Aliexpress. For the most part, they're the same exact things you can buy off of Amazon for ~$5-15, except they take 2ish months to be delivered. For some things, it actually does make sense to just wait that long (e.g. a Google Home Mini wall mount) in exchange for the savings (>= 50% is normal).

dis-sys 6y ago
just checked taobao.com, the cheapest phone case was 5 RMB or $0.7 USD including shipping. so it is actually cheaper to buy the same stuff from the US and get it shipped half of the world.
- kevindong 6y ago
  If you want it, you can buy a $0.50 iPhone 5 case with free shipping from Aliexpress right now: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001089727974.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001089727974.html Alternatively, you could buy a $0.06 phone stand with free shipping: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001172525823.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001172525823.html
- rahimnathwani 6y ago
  Cheapest I saw on taobao just now was 3 RMB including shipping: https://m.tb.cn/h.VpeyELi?sm=ddc20e https://m.tb.cn/h.VpeyELi?sm=ddc20e Opened the taobao android app, searched for 手机套, filtered by 包邮 (shipping included) and sorted by price.
- balola 6y ago
  In the case of phone cases, you can get Chinese domestic shipping costs as low as $0.2 if your daily volume is high enough. It's a special offer tho, since it's light weight and compact. And yes, shipping companies can still make normal profit on these. From this standpoint, your example isn't nearly the cheapest it can get. Sellers regularly offer entirely free ones in exchange for reviews.

lazylizard 6y ago

If the usps is losing money every package..why don't it stop delivering those packages? Or deliver less of those packages? Like. Do some QOS?

jariel 6y ago
It's a very reasonable question, and the answer is the USPS should not do this. The Postal Union predates the UN by at least 50 years, the notion that each nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce as we understand it and doesn't make sense. This program should have been abolished decades ago.
- buran77 6y ago
  > the notion that each nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce as we understand it and doesn't make sense Is this that much different from net neutrality, phone call routing, email routing, etc? Should an ISP have to carry data belonging to other services? Should a mobile operator just refuse to route calls coming from another operator or country? Should Google refuse emails from another email provider or country? I pay to get my mail delivered to a foreign country and both source and destination postal systems get a cut. Honoring the deliveries works in the favor of all sides. If the implementation is bad fix that, don't drop the system.
  - jariel 6y ago
    I see what you're saying but it's not quite the analogy you're looking for in Net Neutrality. In shipping, they have to charge you a different rate for packages than they do mail (i.e weight) or else it won't work. With data, it'd be nary impossible to clear prices for such services. With mail, it's entirely possible. There is basically no reason that China Post can't charge their customers a rate to get something to the US, and then another rate by the US Post to get to final destination. Because shipping involves real labour and money, it's like any other service, it should be priced normally. If the postal union was not borne 150 years ago with this odd kind of arrangement, nobody would suggest it today. It needs to go.

afwaller 6y ago

Wow imagine if you could exploit mail rates between various countries with some kind of international mail pricing arbitrage ~~ Charles Ponzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi

nooneknowswhy 6y ago

FYI, The deal was made (2010) during Obama(2008-2016) time.

fyfy18 6y ago

A bit off topic, but does the US have import tariffs or customs duties for items purchased abroad? In the EU for most items over €20 purchased outside the EU, you will need to pay customs duty and VAT, and possibly a processing fee. The rates depend on what exactly the item is, but can be quite substantial. I bought an action camera from a site like GearBest (I can't remember exactly which one) a few years ago for ~€60, and when it arrived I needed to pay another €50 in fees. If it wasn't for this I would buy a lot more swag - as most companies will ship from the US, it means a $25 t-shirt would end up costing me closer to $50.

gerbler 6y ago
The article does describe import rates towards the end - they mention that there are none for items < $800.
ascorbic 6y ago
The important things is that the US doesn't have VAT, which makes up the majority of the cost. The de minimis value for import duty is much higher, and the rate is much lower.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  Do you have some source for the lower import duty rates? They heavily depend on the specific item category - in my experience usually 0% or ~5% for the tech items I've imported (but that is not really enough to draw any conclusions from). The de minimis for import duty in EU is 150€ (compared to $800 in US). Edit: here is the Finnish Customs duty calculator: https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-calculator?current=goods&currency-id=1 https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-calculator?current=goods&cu... (VAT is Finland-specific, duties are the same EU-wide). A quick look shows that e.g. phones, computer components, and DVDs are 0%, which probably accounts for most of my €150+ imports and thus explains my experience above...
  - ascorbic 6y ago
    That's the kind of level I was thinking. Compared with VAT levels of around 20% in most EU countries, with a de minimis level of around €15, I'd call that a low rate and high de minimis level. Edit: it seems there's no de minimis threshold for VAT anymore, so that's even more of a contrast

techntoke 6y ago

Guess that means they should start selling more mass spam mailers with no way to opt out.

exabrial 6y ago

Besides losing money, the biggest thing that bothers me about USPS is the sheer volume of waste they deliver to my mailbox every month. That is a lot of diesel and gasoline burnt, not to mention raw materials to create the paper that it's printed on. We could make a massive dent in greenhouse emissions by charging actual prices.

jessriedel 6y ago
The postal service makes a large fraction of its revenue from those advertisements. They are absolutely charged actual prices.
- briandear 6y ago
  No they aren’t. There is highly discounted “bulk mail rates” that are far cheaper than what sending a single letter costs.
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    That's because they are presorted.
  - kn0where 6y ago
    Those discounted rates are still profitable. The margin is small, and they make it up in volume. There’s an economy of scale to be had when every single person on the route gets the same bundle of local grocery ads, whereas if I send a first class letter, that has to actually be sorted and delivered to a specific address, potentially across the country.
  - blck 6y ago
    I always thought bulk mail made more money than first class just by sheer volume of how much bulk mail is sent but color me surprised that in FY2019 marketing mail made up a significantly smaller dollar amount than first class mail. First class mail just barely edges out shipping packages here. For anyone who wants to check it out: https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019.pdf#:~:text=FY2019%20Annual%20Report%20to%20Congress%20%E2%80%94%20United%20States,of%20Governors%20Chairman%20on%20our.%202.%20operations%201 https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-reports/fy2019...

cm2012 6y ago

Random aside. It's hilarious to me how people are worried about data Facebook has on them, or freaking out about address data being leaked in a hack. Direct mail marketers, since the 1980s, buy lists of huge swathes of Americans. These lists include full name, address, estimated income, political affiliation, companies you've worked for - and the records are pennies each.

aembleton 6y ago
Direct mail marketers don't know how long you've spent on each Web page that you've visited.
speedgoose 6y ago
It doesn't contain the list of people I am friend with on Facebook, and people I'm very likely to be friend with, while I'm not friend on Facebook. It doesn't contain my GPS coordinates over years. It doesn't contain the list of my interests, based on my likes and the tracking of my web browsing. It doesn't contain an analysis of the conversations with my friends and family. It doesn't contain the pictures of my weekends and holidays, uploaded by other people. It doesn't contain my face. However it's still quite bad and such dataset shouldn't be available like this.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Well, it probably does _now_. Cambridge Analytica was nowhere near alone in their cross-aggregation of data.
  - makomk 6y ago
    Quite possibly. For example, the Obama campaign in 2012 used friendship and interaction data from Facebook in order to figure out which of his supporters could most effectively convince specific undecided voters they were friends with to vote for him and instructed them to do so, effectively turning your own friends into instruments of the advertising algorithm. The New York Times ran a glowing article about how clever this was and the new commercial advertising organisation they were using their techniques in: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaigns-digital-masterminds-cash-in.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campai...

classics2 6y ago

Want a real shock? Look up what it costs to send a 4lb package from the us to China, the exact same package they pay $18 to send.

bluesign 6y ago
Because China subsidize the cost of shipping from China to US. But US is charging you for that part. Also for big mailers, they are even subsidize in US shipping. This is kind of political theatre, US sellers will never match up with chinese sellers even after this change, even not in 5 years. US is trying to close this 75M usd gap in 5 years with this agreement, what china will do? They will just subsidize 75M more. This 75M will not make any difference in US pricing of mail. Chinese will continue with free shipping, US prices at best will get little lower.

Fragoel2 6y ago

It's yet another of the unfair advantages that China had over other countries, stemming from treaties signed decades ago that no longer make sense. Glad to see it gone (and I'm not even an American).

ketzu 6y ago
The "unfair advantage" is not one sided and otherwise considered developmental aid for developing countries (as developing countries, rising them out of poverty, seems to be the best overall strategy for humans). The classification of china as developmental country is complicated, but you can't just look a Beijing skyscrapers and go "yeah we're done here." (Or you can, but that's not very helpful, one option would be GDP/c https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP..., although, thanks to the huge population, the gdp overall is quite high) also it depends on the time of evaluation. Until recently the US was on the winning side of the deal, too (according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shifting_balances_and_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin... ) they even blocked an increase of dues in 2010. Until they started to lose money in 2015. Now it's unfair and a decades old treaty (even though it is adapted all the time and serves valuable reasons).

mcv 6y ago

This is probably the one meaningful, positive thing that Trump accomplished[0]. It's ridiculous that shipping from the other side of the world is cheaper than shipping locally. The one thing I disagree about, is that it currently only fixes the problem for the US, and the EU has to wait (another half year, I think?) before they can fix their prices. [0] Blocking TPP is another candidate, although I think I'd rather see it fixed than blocked completely. I suspect Trump might actually have agreed with the original TPP, had he known what it was about.

addicted 6y ago
Blocking TPP was a disaster. TPP would have achieved everything the Trump administration has failed to achieve with China and has spent tens of billions of dollars doing so in direct costs (the indirect costs are even higher and will last for decades). The major complaint about TPP was the IP protections. But the hypocrisy is that the lack of the IP protections is exactly the same people complain about China. There was absolutely no reason to block TPP, which in a nutshell, gave Chinese neighbors the opportunity to do business that the US was doing in China currently, and in return agree to implement an IP protection environment that everyone agrees China should have but doesn’t. Besides providing American (and non American) companies with multiple alternatives to China where their IP would not be stolen, it would have built massive American soft power with Chinese neighbors at absolutely no cost to Americans, since the business going to those countries was business being done in China anyways.
- mcv 6y ago
  TPP also included corporate courts that could force a country to reimburse foreign companies for losses due to changes in democratic laws. That is the big part that many people on HN and elsewhere objected to. But yes, TPP also had its upsides, which is why I prefer a fixed version rather than blocking it completely. The US, by the way, was the biggest proponent of those corporate courts. Sadly the Trump administration lacks the know-how or desire to negotiate that sort of nuance. So while I agree with blocking it in the form it had at the time, I disagree with blocking it completely, which is of course what Trump did.

netcan 6y ago

This whole saga shows us a lot about the institutional shitshow at the base, mechanical level of the economy. FYI, this is not an anomaly. In Israel, amazon did a deal with the national postal service that gives amazon packages priority. Before that, Aliexpress' free delivery ruled. It's easier in Israel, because there isn't a local amazon to compete with faster shipping. Long story short, local businesses pay much more, for slower local delivery than global companies shipping internationally. This is on top of de facto exemptions from duties & product regulations. Israel is a tiny country. Geographically, it's a city state. Local ecommerce is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has extra advantages.

curation 6y ago
Nationstates have no meaning beyond mechanism to obscure borderization of humans and boderlessness velocity of capital. It would be more correct for me to say I am a Bezosian or I am a Zuckerbergian than I am Canadian.
- netcan 6y ago
  This is pretty abstract. Nation States do exist in the context of package delivery.
Avamander 6y ago
> Local ecommerce is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has extra advantages. I disagree, some companies in my own country try to claim the same, but when I look at the market, there are a lot of players, a lot of profit being made, it can be done. In a sense I have a suspicion that this is just some companies gotten lazy and not realising multitude of thing e-commerce provides. People want warranty, a nice fast mobile app in their native language, fast shipping, to support local companies - there's quite a lot a local company could offer. But a customer doesn't want to pay 10x as much and get quarter of that, that should be very clear.
- netcan 6y ago
  These things aren't absolute. But, at least in that country, you cannot use the postal service or major delivery services to deliver packages locally for a similar cost and delivery price as internationals... With amazon being the recent, and blatant culprit. They deal they did with the postal service are not a secret. Neither are delivery times. Monopolies, and the effect they have on the economy are not newtonian physics. It's not deterministic. Economic structures create prevailing winds, not airtight control over outcomes. Postal services are a structure. The structure creates a prevailing wind that heavily biases an outcome.

econcon 6y ago

And government makes boatload of cash by changing tariffs, port clearance, and tons of other fees etc... If you remove all of them, we can get wayy cheaper price than what we get.

tehjoker 6y ago

"For many years, sellers in China have been able to ship for less from China to America than local American sellers can domestically, thanks to something called ePacket." This system was undoubtedly maintained so that US business could get cheap labor rates in China. Sending mail from China should be more expensive than domestically if the cost is based on distance. However, that would be a barrier to trade. US business spent the 90s trying to outsource manufacturing to China and a barrier to trade would foil that plan to exploit cheap labor overseas and avoid unionization domestically. Clearly the US national business community must feel threatened by China's changing policies or by a change in their negotiating position or this wouldn't be going through.

stevespang 6y ago

Dave Bryant, with regard to having contracts with your Chinese Supplier - - - actually, I do know American buyers who insist their Chinese counterpart obtain bonding through a "Western" bonding service, not a Chinese hoax bonding service. In case the Chinese supplier has a quality problem or warrantee problem with the goods you buy, you are protected by the bonding company contract. It even pays for all the costs needed to buy and reship proper functioning product to your customers. ALL companies buying from the Chinese should insist on this and it would then become commonplace. If a Chinese supplier objects to bonding - - then you should be suspicious of their quality and move on.

DeonPenny 6y ago

This actually needed to be fixed. It allowed for dumping of cheap products and made american companies uncompetitive. This fix was long time coming.

pnathan 6y ago
Back when I first heard about this, I read up on it: it seemed to me that it was quite time to move China off the list of "extra cheap shippers". I know it'll have a number of knock on effects over the next few years, and I'm not sure what those will be for the average American. It'll be nice , in theory, to be able to set up a widget shop in the US and sell to China at the same parcel rates that my counterpart in China could, to the US.

batoure 6y ago

Start shorting eBay a massive part of their business has been based on taking advantage of this