> Cost to ship widget A from China, which includes the cost to get it to their port, on to the boat, across the ocean, off the boat, inspected by customs, resor

> Cost to ship widget A from China, which includes the cost to get it to their port, on to the boat, across the ocean, off the boat, inspected by customs, resorted, put on a truck, and sent to your home is probably several times cheaper than from that warehouse, sorted, put on a truck, and delivered to your house. Delivered by the same truck, sorted at the same parcel sorting facility. What's "several times cheaper" in terms of dollars? How does it change if both packages get sent to Chicago instead? While I agree shipping from China shouldn't be cheaper, boats don't add much. Getting a 40 foot container to the port, across the ocean, and away from the port is several thousand dollars of costs. For small packages averaging 1 liter and .4kg, you can split that bill across 50 thousand of them. That leaves customs, but how many man-hours does it take to inspect a container of mail? Half the point of de minimis is that there's no detailed inspection per package. As far as the price to ship cross-country versus cross-town, that's a whole different can of worms I don't want to open very far. Let's focus on "shipped from China" versus "shipped from a warehouse next to the US port".