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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

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Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#261

Post by malvosenior »

forapurpose wrote: post #247
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.

It will hurt everyone, as a basic fact of economics: 1. American innovators buying components from overseas, which include many on HN and in SV, will now have to pay more, reducing their ability to innovate. 2. American consumers will have to pay more. 3. American consumers will have less innovative products, as their ability to get innovative products from other countries will be reduced, and as innovators in both t…

This is the removal of market manipulation (subsidies on shipping). We should see more innovation because the market can act freely now. For instance, now that China will have to pay for their full shipping, some product may increase in cost to the point where they could be manufactured and sold in the US, spurring innovation. The fewer artificial market constraints the better.

> Finally, the greatest American innovation is democracy, the belief that all men are created equal and that's what leads to prosperity. That innovation has resulted in an explosion of peace and liberty unlikely anything the world has ever seen, and it has, as a secondary side effect, brought an explosion of prosperity unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Yeah, I don't know about that. Maybe in the US we've had a decent run of peace (with 50 years of nuclear holocaust hanging over our heads), but we've definitely dropped a lot of bombs on people. Enough that I think we can say that US democracy has not "resulted in an explosion of peace and liberty unlikely anything the world has ever seen".

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#262

Post by cdiddy2 »

crysin wrote: post #215
neltnerb wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ship…

The only thing I do want to bring up about shopping locally, for electronic components specifically, is that stores like Radioshack are essentially extinct, at least where I am in the Midwest. There are no local electronic stores of any variation except for Best Buy.

maybe it would be possible for some of those stores to prosper again with a change in the market conditions

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#263

Post by kbenson »

nkurz wrote: post #168
baldfat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it has no bearing on China. It is the same policy with Switzerland. You get the international package to America we pay for the final delivery. Pay for a package to Switzerland and Switzerland pays for the final delivery. It was suppose to be a wash for both parties. China just got a much better deal. Cost me more to mail a package the next state away then for me to get a package delivered from China. Now you have…

EBay from China is now bye bye. Why would this change the be end of direct shipping from China? Currently (rounded off numbers) the cost of shipping a 2 lb (1 kg) package within the US is about $7, and the cost of shipping such a package from China to a US address is about $2. The obvious solution would be that the Chinese shipment ends up costing $9 (current Chinese rate of $2 to the US border, plus $7 standard US s…

Where are you getting those numbers from?

My understanding is that there's a nominal fee for last-mile delivery the USPS charges mail from other countries, which is all (or the vast majority) that's being charged for Chinese shipments, as the Chinese side is subsidized completely (or almost so) for outgoing mail. I think the $2 you are quoting might be the treaty fee for delivering mail from other countries, which is not the true cost of delivery, but mostly works out as long as there's a fairly even flow of mail between two countries. What we have here is that China is subsidizing their side of the outgoing mail, so all that's being paid is the treaty set delivery fee for external mail (which again, isn't the true cost of last-mile delivery).

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#264

Post by mistermann »

dragonwriter wrote: post #200
nemo846 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade war or not. This particular move makes sense though. There is no reason to continue giving China - an economic superpower - a discount on mail.

> There is no reason to continue giving China - an economic superpower - a discount on mail. Yes, working to negotiate a change to that particular element of the UPU price structure makes sense (which is why Canada already did it for China-Canada mail.) Whether rage-quitting the UPU makes a lot of sense (even as a negotiating tactic), is a different question; the UPU is more than a Chinese discount.

I'm in Canada and I can still order all the $.99 items with free shipping from China I want - either there's some sort of magic happening, or the renegotiated terms still allow substantial subsidies.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#265

Post by toomuchtodo »

datavirtue wrote: post #166
raquo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the issue here is not the differential in efficiencies. It's China receiving subsidies from the US because it was considered a developing country in 1969. It's not anymore, it's a global superpower now, it can pay its own postage.

Also of note, American tax payers were dropping $300MM a year to help Chinese small business.

While it's unlikely that money saved would be directed to more useful endeavors internally, as a US citizen I'd prefer that money not subsidize Chinese commerce (or rather, subsidize US consumers purchasing directly from China).

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#266

Post by cdiddy2 »

Tsubasachan wrote: post #126
hef19898 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer volume China, and other Asian countries, are producing in the electric industry pales any impact this treaty could have. I seems to me that this treaty gained significance due to e-commerce. Thus it impacts consumer orders, not industrial ones. So the only parties to be impacted are online retailers (and every private sender). Not sure how that would impact the current global work-share in any measurable wa…

Amazon will be pleased I guess? AliExpress is coming for them. I for one welcome our new AliBaba overlords. Competition is good for consumers.

competition is good, but not when one has an unfair shipping cost advantage subsidized by taxpayers from another country and the other doesn't

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#267

Post by malvosenior »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #222
onion2k wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will be the unintended consequences I wonder? Small businesses who use dropshipping direct from Chinese companies will stop being able to compete with big businesses who buy in bulk and ship from US warehouses. This will benefit the likes of Amazon more than anyone else. Not sure if that's an unintended consequence though.

I'm low income for where I live and buy a lot of basic $1-$5 clothes from China that would be $20-$30 equivalent in USA. This is going to hurt me directly. It's not like I'm buying food, housing, electricity from China, but having good quality fashionable clothes for very cheap when I can't afford anything except Goodwill here is beneficial for professionalism at my job, and overall satisfaction about myself. Trump s…

Please don't take offense, but these subsidies are paid for by our taxes and I have no interest in paying to help you dress nice.

Also, if you're really buying clothes from China for $1-$5 you're almost certainly supporting child labor.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#268

Post by djrogers »

sschueller wrote: post #11

We have the same issue in Switzerland with cheap packages from China which are received as mail but do not fit through the automated sorting system. This requires a lot of manual labor which increases the costs for the postal service. This is why sometime this year people who receive such mail will be billed additional fees increasing slowly over the next few years. The treaty allows under developed nations to ship a…

Relevant quote from the article:

“The process of withdrawing from the treaty takes at least a year and the White House said it would be willing to remain in the UPU if negotiations were successful.”

The UPU has not reclassified China despite years of pressure to do so, and this is the only leverage left to a country in the treaty to force that to happen.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#269

Post by icebraining »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #183
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…

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.

Agreed; though that must be actually a choice. There have been cases where governments have made the alternatives worse to push people into "progress".

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#270

Post by eiaoa »

wbl wrote: post #95
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…

The biggest reduction in global poverty we've seen is due to outsourcing to China. Don't you care about starving Chinese peasants?

> The biggest reduction in global poverty we've seen is due to outsourcing to China. Don't you care about starving Chinese peasants?

Chinese peasants were starving because of bad Chinese domestic policies, not because of a lack of globalization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine.

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