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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

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Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#181

Post by matt4077 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #112
godzillabrennus wrote: post #2

A friend helped the Wall Street Journal expose the damage this treaty was doing to his small business in the United States as it tried to fend off counterfeiters. https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-subsidy-for-china-is-dumb-... Seems like a win for American innovation if you care about that thing. Seems like China is going to get hurt by this change which is bad for globalization if you are into that thing.

Would the outcome of these negotiations at-least end up creating a path to coin a universally accepted definitions of 'Developing Country' & 'Developed Country'? Is it HDI, industry or by Military Strength Index? If MSI is taken into account, then India & China are among the most developed nations!

No, they won't. These terms just aren't used any more. That's partly because of the euphemism treadmill, and on the colonial history of these terms.

More importantly: the real world does not conform to any such arbitrary differentiation into a single binary variable.

There just isn't any need for such a classification anyway. If you want to index something to a country's wealth, just use any per-capita economic measure and be done with it. GNP is fine, I'm sure it wouldn't make much of a difference if you used iPhones/per million or the Big Mac Index, instead.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#182

Post by cascom »

yostrovs wrote: post #172
plugger wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I understand what government subsidies are and how they work. But if I'm not the one subsidising the product then I don't understand how me benefiting from that is a bad thing for me personally. The US subsidises gasoline quite aggressively when compared to other countries around the world. You can see this in fuel costs; routinely US gasoline used to be cheaper by the gallon than Australian gasoline was by the…

What subsidies for gasoline? Here we constantly fight over taxes on gasoline.

I think he just means that in relative terms gas taxes are lower in the US - but you’re right, there is no subsidy.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#183

Post by anonuser123456 »

colechristensen wrote: post #27
paulsutter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization is about an even playing field, not one-sided concessions and subsidies

The idea of free trade/globalization is everyone benefiting from the efficiency of each place doing the work it can do most efficiently. Iowa corn and Swiss fine machinery and Arab oil and all sorts of things where one place can do something better and cheaper because of the nature of the place. Poverty (cheap labor) and treaties (cheap postage) shouldn't be the drivers of this efficiency because they aren't caused b…

Cheap labor/poverty should absolutely drive free trade, at least if you are interested in improving the human condition. People in impoverished nations choose to work in sweatshops because the alternative is so much worse; prostitution, indentured servitude, being completely destitute etc.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#184

Post by GlobalFrog »

paulsutter wrote: post #7
godzillabrennus wrote: post #2

A friend helped the Wall Street Journal expose the damage this treaty was doing to his small business in the United States as it tried to fend off counterfeiters. https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-subsidy-for-china-is-dumb-... Seems like a win for American innovation if you care about that thing. Seems like China is going to get hurt by this change which is bad for globalization if you are into that thing.

Globalization is about an even playing field, not one-sided concessions and subsidies

That is the theory. I might be pessimistic, but it looks to me that everyone claims that one want that even playing field and at the same time, hides as much subsidies as possible to be able to protect ones own industries. Europe is heavily subsidizing its agriculture. The US are heavily subsidizing anything that has a link to anything military and oil. And others are doing the same. True, a few markets have been freed and commerce has increased, but an enormous amount of industries are helped by governments who like to criticize the subsidies of the others. By the way, there was a nice article last year about how the US are subsidizing the oil and fossil fuel industries in two ways: first by direct subsidies (about $20 billions each year and the "hidden" one about the cost of carbon emissions which can be estimated at $200 billions per year (which is real money on the carbon trading market : the government pays for the carbon emitted by its industries). (https://www.forbes.com/sites/ucenergy/2017/02/01/the-200-bil...) It is interesting to see that the "Clean Power Plan" of the previous administration was made to allow for levelling the playing field more or less by removing those hidden subsidies, and that the current administration destroys it. And that is not even including the costs of global warming that will impact the future for todays actions. So to sum up, the supposed efficiency of the markets seems to me like an illusion, or at least, an ideal that will be never reached because it allways allows for cheating. Same for the postal union of this topic : for years, the US had a net gain financially from it and it didn't seem to bother them. Now, it is China that has this net gain and they are not behaving differently than the US did for many years by trying to preserve this advantage.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#185

Post by cascom »

jayd16 wrote: post #77

Do people in this thread realize the USPS is almost entirely self funded? I see a lot of talk about tax dollars etc. The USPS doesn't work that way.

If you call losing ~$1B+/qtr self funded, yeah they’re “self funded”

https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/financial-condi...

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#186

Post by krona »

adwhit wrote: post #79
paulsutter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization is about an even playing field, not one-sided concessions and subsidies

Globalization is a hegemonic project of the West, best understood as a means to transfer capital from the economic peripheries to the imperial core, and has tended to wreak havoc on developing countries that have exposed themselves to it. China has been very sensible to ignore the dogma about free trade and to exploit weaknesses and loopholes in trade treaties when they find them.

Hmm. It might be possible for one person to create wealth without another person losing it. Almost as though it wasn't a zero-sum game. Just a theory.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#188

Post by atomi »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #2

A friend helped the Wall Street Journal expose the damage this treaty was doing to his small business in the United States as it tried to fend off counterfeiters. https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-subsidy-for-china-is-dumb-... Seems like a win for American innovation if you care about that thing. Seems like China is going to get hurt by this change which is bad for globalization if you are into that thing.

This is a nice anecdote. But what about the mass of consumers who will now have to pay a markup for the exact same product from an importer?

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#189

Post by anonuser123456 »

dTal wrote: post #120
colechristensen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of free trade/globalization is everyone benefiting from the efficiency of each place doing the work it can do most efficiently. Iowa corn and Swiss fine machinery and Arab oil and all sorts of things where one place can do something better and cheaper because of the nature of the place. Poverty (cheap labor) and treaties (cheap postage) shouldn't be the drivers of this efficiency because they aren't caused b…

And yet, if the profits can be prevented from all floating to the top, globalisation would appear on the surface to be an excellent way of redressing global inequality. Massive international wage gaps will be perceived by the market as an exploitable inefficiency, which over time will be ironed out. Or, to put it another way, if two people wish to trade, it must be in both of their interests. If I, as a westerner, go…

'Labor laws' is a bad argument, particularly in poor developing nations.

If you enforce labor laws in developing countries, the cost of production will be high enough that industry doesn't develop. At that point, the people there have no industry and are much worse off (e.g. a sweatshop is better than subsistence farming).

A better argument is 'labor choice'. Individuals need to have the ability to choose their circumstance. If they can choose, and choose freely, over time the whole society can ratchet up their standard of living by making these choices at the margin.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#190

Post by neltnerb »

GlobalFrog wrote: post #184
paulsutter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization is about an even playing field, not one-sided concessions and subsidies

That is the theory. I might be pessimistic, but it looks to me that everyone claims that one want that even playing field and at the same time, hides as much subsidies as possible to be able to protect ones own industries. Europe is heavily subsidizing its agriculture. The US are heavily subsidizing anything that has a link to anything military and oil. And others are doing the same. True, a few markets have been fre…

I don't think anyone sensible would fault China for taking advantage of something that is advantageous for their businesses, nor for them to advocate for it. It would be irrational for them not to, the subsidies exist so obviously any reasonable business would use them.

Nonetheless, it's clearly not in the interest of US businesses. The US is not obligated to provide subsidies that, due to the scale of trade using this tool, demonstrably favor Chinese small businesses over those in the US and distort the market.

I'd much rather see the market made more balanced by charging the same prices for shipping than by tariffs. At least that's a real cost. Though I have the ulterior motive of thinking charging full price for air freight will reduce carbon emissions and inefficient supply chains.

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