I always wondered how Chinese sellers on Ebay could sell small toys and trinkets for less than a dollar with free shipping that took several weeks to arrive. It would cost more than that to send a small empty box between two addresses in the US.
US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
81–90 of 380 posts
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I heavily dislike that america just leaves treaties it does not like instead of improving them. Most smaller countries cannot use the same method. If my country for instance were to do thay nobody would ship there any more because the billing system would be too complex and expensive and the market is just too small.
> Most smaller countries cannot use the same method. Sure, but America can, so why shouldn’t it?
The more it does things like that, the more the rest of the world moves on without it.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#83This is absolutely a good idea. Whoever thought it would be advantageous for packages from China to cost less to ship than equivalent packages within the USA, is beyond me. I hope there are positive economic and environmental results from this move. What will be the unintended consequences I wonder?
> What will be the unintended consequences I wonder? I don't know how unintended, but I would imagine that cost of imported goods will go up, since the costs are usually passed onto the consumer
Most imported goods are not shipped as parcels, they come as ocean or air freight.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#84This is absolutely a good idea. Whoever thought it would be advantageous for packages from China to cost less to ship than equivalent packages within the USA, is beyond me. I hope there are positive economic and environmental results from this move. What will be the unintended consequences I wonder?
>Whoever thought it would be advantageous [...]
Well its a 144 year old treaty so probably Ulysses S. Grant and the 43rd Congress.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#85Canada did the same last year, by the looks of it: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canada-po...
No, Canada negotiated changes within the treaty framework.
The US could do that (and some of the coverage have indicated that the withdrawal is a negotiating tactic to provide more leverage for that, with the plan being to leverage the time it takes to go into effect to negotiate changes and then cancel the withdrawal before it is effective; Canada didn't have to do that to negotiate changes, though.)
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#86This is absolutely a good idea. Whoever thought it would be advantageous for packages from China to cost less to ship than equivalent packages within the USA, is beyond me. I hope there are positive economic and environmental results from this move. What will be the unintended consequences I wonder?
It made sense when they were truly a developing country. But the issue is that entire businesses have been built on top of exploiting these rates. For example, a few years back I bought several specialized antenna cables for $2-3 online (total price, including shipping) and assumed they must be surplus some warehouse was trying to unload here in the U.S. and they'd just drop them in domestic First Class mail. I couldn't believe it when they arrived several weeks later from China and when I asked the post office what it would cost me to ship that exact package back to the sender they quoted me ~$30 (which of course didn't include the cost of the actual contents.) Good luck competing with that.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#87Finally!!! Moves like this will help small and medium businesses compete...finally we won’t have to pay 25.00 to mail a small book to China.
You'll still have to pay that price, but now a Chinese company will have to pay 25.00 to mail a small book to the US as well. This is just going to limit the sale of small goods internationally.
Also small volumes of the type small businesses deal in.
In every way this benefits mostly large stateside enterprises who source their products in bulk.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#88Finally!!! Moves like this will help small and medium businesses compete...finally we won’t have to pay 25.00 to mail a small book to China.
Withdrawing from the UPU will allow the US raise the rates Chinese mailers pay to mail into the US, but won't lower (and, depending on how China responds, may raise) the rates US mailers have to pay to mail into China. It's potentially an extension of the existing trade war in that respect.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incorrect, I live in Australia. This kinda reminds me of the conversation I had with my brother in law regarding the likes of SingAir, Emirates, and Qatar and just how much better they are when compared to US carriers that charge more on the same route despite providing an inferior product comparatively. He started on about how those air carriers are government subsidised, it's not fair, and I shouldn't be flying wit…
Those airlines don't provide a better product for a lower cost, they are selling you a higher-end product and billing part of it to their own citizens. That's what government subsidy means.
Does the tree that falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, still make a sound?
For the person you’re replying to, it seems clear that the most important thing about the word “cost” is how much they personally pay — third parties are irrelevant.
“Sound”. “Cost”. The meanings of words are not as precisely identical as our subjective feelings tell us.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#90Why does the US have to withdraw instead of negotiating? The US are not the only country that is unhappy about the shipping rates with China. The postal treaty however is hugely important for smaller countries. I don’t want a world where the US destroy the entire postal system for the rest of us.
The threat of withdrawal is part of the negotiation as far as I can tell.
It's not a threat of withdrawal, it's an actual withdrawal, which takes time to take effect (like Brexit), with the idea that if negotiation is satisfactory, the withdrawal might be cancelled.