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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?
Blind squirrel, acorn.. you all know the retort.
Joking aside, this system has been abused extensively and is really in need of an overhaul.
I used to live in China and used the postal service to ship a lot of my personal stuff back home when we moved back to the US. It was ridiculously cheap to move that way. I couldn't believe how cheap it was. Each box was just shy of the 25kg limit and right on the maximum allowed dimensions. Each one shipped from South China to Alabama for about $20. I couldn't even mail them to another city in Alabama for that price, but here they were circling half the globe.
The Planet Money podcast did a good story relating to this topic on August 1st, 2018. The episode was titled "The Postal Illuminati".
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.
My great-grandmother was born insensitive, you person of generic attributes!
Came here to post this :) Here's the link:
https://www.npr.org/sections/m...
TL;DR version - Yes there is a postal "illuminati." The treaty states that, when sending things via international mail, the sending country handles the cost to get the package to the country being delivered to, and the country being delivered to covers the cost of delivery from the point of entry to the final destination. As you can imagine, sending something from China on an enormous container ship to a port in Los Angeles is relatively cheap, especially when most of the manufacturing and shipping is done near sea ports. Shipping that thing from Los Angeles to Miami is pretty expensive. The cost of the last part is covered by the US post office.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
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.
Good! China has too many "poor developing nation" breaks. Level the playing field for a change. Yeah, the UN (useless nations) will probably flood the airwaves with videos of the poor parts of China, but won't show you the ghost cities. Cities the corrupt communist government wasted money on building, then, abandoned them. Monuments to the stupidity of the communist regime. If China were forced to play on a level playing field, other than their self imposed slave labor of around 1.5 billion people, you'd see more manufacturers leaving China.
I expect there are many things that hamstring the Post Office that the public doesn't know about.
One of my best friends has worked for the Post Office since he was 18 as a letter carrier. I can assure you that you are exactly correct.
The economics of the Post Office operations is hamstrung by arcane ancient regulations at all levels. The 6 days a week delivery schedule is among the most stupid and costly ones I can thing of. Then, when you cannot control what you charge without a literal act of congress, it's ridiculous to expect the Post Office to run as a zero cost entity.
In the face of rising employment rates, the Post Office simply cannot hire and train enough carriers to deliver to every address everyday but Sunday so my friend has been working 6 day weeks for almost two years now, getting paid overtime for every hour over 40, which turns out to be about 20 hours a week. He's a senior carrier with 20+ years of seniority so he's maxed out what he gets paid and the ONLY thing that keeps him walking the streets is the generous retirement that keeps accruing. Once he maxes out the retirement payments, in about 18 months, he's going to retire, collect his government pension and take an easier job. I fully understand why the younger carriers are leaving in droves, I'd give a job like that the heave ho too and go work for Amazon or UPS where at least the hours would be better.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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!
This is being blown out of proportions. There is only an advantage for small packages under 1lb. Over 1lb international rates are much higher than domestic. Under 1lb there is about a $1 advantage to foreign shippers. But the USPS is not losing money on delivering these packages, the foreign rates cover the cost of delivery. The argument is over pension contributions and that extra dollar from a price increase for foreign packages will go into postal worker's pensions.
I've been working to set up a small business. Some of the components I need would have been coming from China as we don't manufacture them here in the US of A. This increase in shipping costs will put me out of business before I can get started.
No, I cannot increase the price of my product to compensate to the increased shipping costs.
His punishment of China killed me.
This situation in the media is being distorted by comparing Priority Mail rates to international EMS. My Priority Mail packages arrive in 2-3 days. My EMS packages take at a minimum of 9 days and many take closer to 21 days to arrive. These services are not comparable. If I want three day service from China it costs over $50.
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.
It seems like a reasonable thing to do.
A while ago, I decided to clean up some clutter by selling all my extra chargers, cables, and whatnot. But I had to cancel that, since it turned out that I had to pay more for postage than what they sell the same thing for from China. Yes, even if I were to sell the used stuff at $0, a new one from China was cheaper than the USPS package price.
This is not sustainable, and US might bet a fair deal if one year period is used correctly.
1st/2nd world gets nothing out of it.
Those aren't economic tiers.
"First World" is a relic from the cold war. It refers to the non-communist developed nations that were allied with the US. "Second World" is the communist developed nations that were allied with the USSR. "Third World" is everyone else.
Third World nations were poor due to not being developed. They aren't all poor now. And they don't move into "second world" unless they become communist.
>I was confused, because we didn't have 28 million
>people out of work (unless the unemployment figures
>are rigged)
Speaking as a displaced economist . . .
"rigged" is an overstatement, but they sure don't measure what normal people think of as unemployment.
The most commonly reported figure is U-3, which just takes those with no work at all in the "labor force", and divides by the size of that force. The labor force is defined (roughly) as those actively looking for work.
U-3 can, in an economy that isn't changing much, tell you about employment trends.
One problem is that in long poor economies, people give up and stop looking. These are called "discouraged workers" and are not counted as part of the labor force.
Another is that the guy that got two hours of work but needs 40 still counts as unemployed.
U-4 to U-6 take that into account. By the time you get to U-6, the folks that have given up and those that can't get enough work count towards unemployed.
In "normal" times, U-3 and U-6 kind of move together. But as we went about eight years after the last recession (which was really a run of the mill recession, it's just that we hadn't had a "real" one since the early 80s) without a normal expansion, U-3 and U-6 diverged more and more widely.
So once we got back to "normal" economic growth, some discouraged workers resumed working, and some of the underemployed got more hours. This is reflected by U-6 moving *far* more than U-3, with large numbers of people becoming employed with only small changes in the labor rate.
So there are always more people out of work than the common U-3 shows--they've just been redefined as out o the labor force. In normal times, there aren't as many.
Frankly, I'd phase out U-1 to U-5 entirely . . .
hawk, economist at large