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US Announces Plans To Withdraw From 144-Year-Old Postal Treaty (thehill.com)
JoeyRox writes: The Trump Administration announced today that it's intending to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, an international postage rate system overseen by the United Nations. "The decision was borne out of frustration with discounts imposed by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) that allow China and some other nations to ship products into the U.S. at cheaper rates than American companies receive to ship domestically," reports The Hill. "The administration argues the system undercuts U.S. manufacturers and allows China to flood the market with cheap goods." The U.S. is hoping to renegotiate the rates, known as terminal dues, but was frustrated with opposition from other nations in the UPU. According to the report, "The withdrawal would not take effect for one year, allowing the U.S. some time to broker a new deal."
"The 144-year-old UPU sets fees that postal services charge to deliver mail and packages from foreign carriers," reports The Hill. "For decades, developing nations have been allowed to pay lower rates than wealthier nations. China has fallen under the developing nation category, a designation the U.S. says it no longer deserves because of its booming economy." The Trump administration wants to move to a system of "self-declared rates" that would allow the U.S. Postal Service to set its own prices for shipping international packages of all sizes. As it stands, the P.O. is only allowed to use self-declared rates on packages exceeding 4.4 pounds.
"The 144-year-old UPU sets fees that postal services charge to deliver mail and packages from foreign carriers," reports The Hill. "For decades, developing nations have been allowed to pay lower rates than wealthier nations. China has fallen under the developing nation category, a designation the U.S. says it no longer deserves because of its booming economy." The Trump administration wants to move to a system of "self-declared rates" that would allow the U.S. Postal Service to set its own prices for shipping international packages of all sizes. As it stands, the P.O. is only allowed to use self-declared rates on packages exceeding 4.4 pounds.
Then how will we get our cheap junk?
Let's just declare China the winner, and end the race to the bottom once and for all.
Hooray! Chinese are the bottom! The lowest on the planet!
Enjoy your stamped plastic trophy with the misspelled plaque
It's because all the smaller, lighter packages subsidise the heavier ones. Most of the stuff being shipped is small and not really worth the effort to carefully weigh and measure just to charge some precise amount.
Courier companies in Europe are the same, I'm surprised it's not that way in the US. People complained because they would get a huge box full of space filler and one small item at the bottom, because the courier charges a flat rate up to a certain size/weight and it's cheaper for the warehouse to buy one size of box in bulk.
Of course such cheap shipping takes a long time to come from China, which saves more money because they can often buy cheap space on flights/boats that would otherwise be unused by more time sensitive packages. If they have to send an aircraft today to meet the deadline on 3 day packets it's more economical to fill it up with cheap slow ones than to let it go half full.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
China has fallen under the developing nation category, a designation the U.S. says it no longer deserves because of its booming economy.
That seems ... reasonable?
When you have nuclear weapons and space program you are no longer a developing nation.
It's funny how you managed to make the conclusion that is the opposite of reality. In short term, it's a loss, because during the period of conflict, there's suffering.
After there's a better deal in place, it's a long term win. So losses in sprints, win in the marathon. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a really nasty illness.
I think this issue may be a bit more complicated than you might think. On the face, it certainly doesn't make any sense whatsoever for goods from China and other third world countries to ship so cheaply into the US. But, American consumers have benefited significantly from this, though it came at the expense of American factory workers whose jobs are long long gone.
If you up-end the shipping rates from third world countries (because if you mess with just the shipping rate from China then they'll just find some other third world country to funnel products through so you have to mess with all of them) the average American consumer who is already struggling is the one that's going to end up footing the bill for substantially more expensive products. Eventually some manufacturing jobs may move back inside US borders as the higher price of goods makes setting up a heavily automated factory worth the investment, but that'll take years in transition and the number of jobs created will be insignificant to the impact of the increased cost of living.
It's worth noting that many of those third world countries don't have the kinds of regulations and worker protections that the US has (even though many of our protections have been getting eroded, especially under the current administration though it's been slowly happening for decades). So American consumers are benefiting off the back of often horrible labor practices and even child labor in the third world for decades.
If Americans were actually getting paid relative to their productivity then they'd have the wherewithal to afford locally sourced products, even at double or triple the price of imports. Effectively cutting off the US from the global market right now however will have devastating consequences for American consumers in the short term, the same way that the tariffs that have already been implemented have had devastating consequences on mid-western farmers and the auto industry. We need to fix the income inequality in our country first, and I don't see threatening postal rates on imports and setting up tariffs as having any meaningful impact on that problem. Granted, in order to fix the income inequality in our country we need to stop our corporations from buying off most of our politicians and reverse their decimation of organized labor.
Right: the point is to make American manufacturing more competitive with jobs going to China. This is one of a hundred way the government has been subsidizing corporations to offshore jobs. Each one down is a good thing.
The US government is for the benefit of US citizens, not global megacorporations with giant bribery budgets. Any little but we can claw back democracy from the megacorps is a good bit.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
RTFS, maybe even RTFA. There's not a chance of getting the UN to apply pressure to China. The only options are to unilaterally withdraw or to straight up nuke the treaty. Trump made the saner choice.
I'm not sure why this story is on here. It's not like this is a life changing event and the fact it involves Trump doesn't mean it's suddenly more newsworthy. Repulsive is probably the best word I could use to sum up my view of him, but that doesn't mean everything he does needs coverage or criticism. I'm an unashamed globalist and still see valid reasons why one might challenge this rate system. Does it really make sense to discount postage from some nations to others that much? Do we want to encourage delivery of individual small parcels globally over more efficient bulk distribution to more localised centres which then do local postage? Even if your opinion is that this kind of policy is motivated by Trumps worst attributes it doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered on its own merits.
Yes Negotiations are long and complex, they take take a long time. At the end of the day there are often some smaller changes where no one is happy.
The Trump administration goes threw this process as well. However during the process he kills what is going on currently, thus putting everyone in pain until the process which would had happened would complete anyways.
Without that "pain" you typically get no motion - or glacial, at best, motion. There is no sense of urgency or a push to get things done until there is some "pain" in the system. Note how quickly the trade deals with Canada and Mexico came about, once the Administration declared NAFTA dead.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In Belgium I used to get packages all the time that ended up costing me money.
The same thing happens in Canada and elsewhere. This is the reason why only the US is seeing this problem. Most other countries have a value limit on what can be shipped without taxes (import duties, VAT/sales tax etc.) being charged. While the taxes themselves might not be particularly high the agent costs to collect and process that parcel through customs are often significantly higher.
The problem is that for a long time the US used to be the cheapest place to produce goods and so they had no need to worry about charging duties and taxes on imported goods. However, the world has changed and this is no longer the case. If they applied a low-value limit for tax-free retail shipping the problem would solve itself without the need to lose all the political capital that this treaty withdrawal will cause.
I think that's one of the biggest problems with Trump. Even when he is right about a problem he always seems to pick the most damaging and disruptive method to address it.
The stats lie by omission. Most of the 1% make their billions on passive and unreported income, sheltered in corporations or other vehicles so they don't have to say they earned 10-100M that year. We found out in 2012 that Mitt Romney has a $100M 401k. No normal person gets to even 1/10 of that value without a LOT of tax-deferred income (457 plan). That isn't reported as income.
I support a micro-cent financial transaction tax that would could rake in billions and virtually eliminate HFT and front-running. Now that'd be a tax that actually taxes the rich.
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