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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

bbc.com

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Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#201

Post by awnfuron »

JPKab wrote: post #174
boomboomsubban wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those areas made far more than they invested, and China needed that huge investment because those three areas had already spent a century exploiting it for profit.

[flagged]

Are you saying that China was not a victim? They literally had millions of civilian deaths in WWII. I've seen figures from 14 million to 20 million. Never mind the destructive effects of western imperialism up to that point.

As for Mao holding back China, no doubt there were big problems. But the greatest increases in life expectancy at birth came under Mao [1] and his push to greatly expand access to medical care and education in rural areas. That was itself an investment which set the stage for future growth. (It's a lot easier to get things done when your people aren't dying at age 45.)

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#202

Post by neltnerb »

fzeroracer wrote: post #66
nostromo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to help poor people, subsidizing imports from China is a stupid way of going about it.

Generally speaking, continuing to kick the crutches out from under the lower classes is a bad idea especially when there are no better solutions being implemented. You need to keep in mind that the postal treaty wasn't JUST for China either, almost every single nation was part of the postal treaty. Withdrawing from this treaty would likely result in increased postage for all international shipments.

Luckily there is a very easy way for people to avoid paying for shipping... although maybe things have changed since I was young. Shop at local stores if shipping costs make buying by mail too expensive. Like it was forever prior to Amazon.

Prior to 2005 it was consistently less expensive to shop at the local CVS, book store, or radio shack than to order online.

If my business model requires public subsidies for shipping my goods to turn a profit, my business model is garbage since 100% of my profits are literally taxpayer funded. Maybe small quantity mail order batteries from China isn't actually a reasonable thing to have and it maybe actually costs less to buy batteries in giant crates and have them available in local stores.

I might even say that this is obviously the case (for the battery example). Plus you build the local economy rather than subsidizing it's obliteration.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#203

Post by collyw »

jrnichols wrote: post #156
Tim_Norton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's what I've been gathering too. Trump signed a few bills recently, and while they weren't his administration's bill in the first place, that hasn't stopped the media (and definitely social media) from trash talking Trump constantly. It's almost as if people that hate Trump with the ferocity that they do are incapable of reporting anything positive and just saying "Ok, this was a good thing."

>It's almost as if people that hate Trump with the ferocity that they do are incapable of reporting anything positive and just saying "Ok, this was a good thing."

Have a look at places like r/politics on Reddit. People were seriously arguing with me that his nasty tweets were more serious than the possibility of North Korean nuclear disarmament.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#204

Post by lightbyte »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #198
exabrial wrote: post #191

China still has developing nation status? This seems more than reasonable to renegotiate.

In Shanghai and Beijing the average household income is $7,000 a year. If it isn't a developing economy, what would you call it?

That isn't enough information, what is the cost of living?

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#205

Post by gruez »

keithnoizu wrote: post #32
nostromo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should pay the cost of shipping their parts from China to the US without a subsidy from the US taxpayer.

seems like this will backfire if we ever want to access the emerging Chinese consumer market.

I find it sad how the US will be "punished" for righting a wrong, because Chinese has gotten so used to the status quo of "wrong".

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#206

Post by collyw »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #198
exabrial wrote: post #191

China still has developing nation status? This seems more than reasonable to renegotiate.

In Shanghai and Beijing the average household income is $7,000 a year. If it isn't a developing economy, what would you call it?

I am curious how that translates.

Cost of living will be substantially lower, I am not sure by how much but 5 times wouldn't seem unfeasable. That would translate to $35k per year which sounds similar to plenty of European countries, so might buy a reasonably comfortable lifestyle there. Anyone with any more knowledge care to comment on this?

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#207

Post by _red »

atomi wrote: post #188
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?

That cost is now just properly being paid by those wanting those goods. Previously that cost was being subsidized by all USPS users (and taxpayers via bond underwriting, tax breaks given to USPS, etc).

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#208

Post by deskamess »

YouKnowBetter wrote: post #113
sschueller wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/chinesen-zahlen-me...

Yeah, not a word about "people who receive such mail will be billed additional fees". It mentions that the sender in China will be charged more over time. Quite a difference.

How will the Swiss Post Office charge the sender in China a higher fee? It is much easier to charge a fee to the receiver who is in Switzerland.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#209

Post by robbick »

jarfil wrote: post #108
blihp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 could…

That's not just subsidies, but also how trade routes have been optimized. China, the US and every other country, have non-symmetric mail dispatch systems, optimized for the China->wherever route, with mass dispatch from China branching out to everywhere else. The reverse wherever->China is how much shipments cost over non-optimized routes around the world. Stopping the subsidies won't stop the differences in volume a…

I'm sure I am missing something, but surely every container ship that leaves china with a huge pile of mail has to return again to collect more - can't they just take stuff with them?

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#210

Post by abricot »

dragonwriter wrote: post #85
mcantelon wrote: post #33

Canada 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.)

They could, they did[1], and it didn't work out. [1] "U.S. officials said the administration sought to revise the treaty in September and was rebuffed by other nations, prompting the decision to withdraw."
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