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US Announces Plans To Withdraw From 144-Year-Old Postal Treaty (thehill.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the times-they-are-a-changin' dept.

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.

13 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. There goes Aliexpress... by Bradmont · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Then how will we get our cheap junk?

  2. He found an Acorn by nhtshot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:He found an Acorn by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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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    2. Re:He found an Acorn by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I had the same experience when I left Japan: shipped 2 big boxes of stuff home (from Tokyo to Europe) for about $25 each. Even crazier: they arrived the next day. Same for small mail-order packages from Japan: the postage was low and they generally arrive super-fast. But Japan hardly qualifies as a developing nation I should think...

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    3. Re:He found an Acorn by atrex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:He found an Acorn by rsborg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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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  3. And? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:And? by Xylantiel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Trying to get China reclassified out of developing nation status sounds fine. Trying to get to unilaterally set rates sounds tantamount to pulling out of the agreement, and so makes no sense. This seems like typical Trump administration strategy. Complain about one part of something then try to pull out of the whole thing. Maybe that works in underhanded real estate negotiations, but in international agreements it tends to just piss off the people who are trying to agree with you.

      The deeper issue is that the Trump administration doesn't understand the importance of economics in national security. It is in our interest that truly developing nations do have things a bit easier, since they are less likely to become unstable and/or terrorist breeding grounds threatening global shipping lanes. This lack of understanding of the role of economics in world stability is, in fact, the source of Tillerson's comment that Trump is an idiot. Trump is willing to risk putting a major trading partner in a large-scale armed conflict if it saves the US a modest sum in international aid. It is tough to call that anything but stupid from a policy perspective.

    2. Re:And? by hierofalcon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree that just as in the US, not every Chinese citizen has benefited from the changes in China. However, once a country starts its own export import bank and starts trying to buy influence in other poorer countries (African operations come to mind), it is arguable that the developing category is no longer appropriate.

      China can't have it both ways. It can't make a case for moving the world reserve currency away from the dollar and make massive investments in the rest of the world buying a presence in many countries and then whine that they are still developing. That time is long past.

      The fact that much of the country hasn't benefited isn't really the world's problem. It is China's.

  4. Stating the obvious. by thunderclees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you have nuclear weapons and space program you are no longer a developing nation.

  5. Re:Nice slur against the disabled you leftist jerk by Tristao · · Score: 5, Funny

    My great-grandmother was born insensitive, you person of generic attributes!

  6. Link by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  7. Re:if that's the case... by jonsmirl · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.