NPR Money has a good podcast about this couple months ago.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
281–290 of 380 posts
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#282I hate to say it because a Trump is an embarrassing, non-presidential, ignorant buffoon, but some of his policies are very good and are actually helping small businesses. This is an example of it. He is willing, whether he fully understands it or not, to touch the third rail and do things that wiser politicians would never do, but is incredibly frustrating. This is a perfect example of this. I have two friends who are impacted by this and have been complaining about this for years.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
the treaty fee [...] 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.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
The nature of the place in the context of Swiss watches could mean the établissage system.
I had to look up that term [1], thanks for introducing me to it. I'm still not sure how Switzerland the geographic place intrinsically leads to more efficient watch-making, as Shenzen and other Chinese factory cities make copious use of établissage in many different industries. Also, Apple's offshored Chinese manufacturing demonstrates that extremely high quality hardware manufacturing is not ethno-culturally-bound,…
Interesting, saving this to research later.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is true. Nothing to do with what I said, but, it is true.
It isn't what happens at the moment. Every dollar of growth worldwide is subtracted many times over from our environmental commons. At the moment the global economy is a heavily negative-sum game.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#286A 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
I may be cynical but I don't believe this. I think its more about producing goods using more exploitable workers and resources.
If all countries had the same worker and environmental protections and same degree of unionization, aka an actual level playing field, then maybe. But instead its more about exploitation and breaking organized labor unions.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#287While it is very easy to buy stuff directly from China on websites like amazon or even Chinese web sites, it is almost impossible for people in PR.China to buy US products via WWW the same way. The Chinese CCP party intentionally blocks outside products to sell easily in China and keep the profits they got from US to the families of party leaders. Thanks Trump for acting on it!
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
That rosy picture is totally divorced from the actual historical course of Capitalist development.
On the contrary, it's debunking the rosy picture that developing economies can afford developed-economy levels of worker protection.
I don't think you successfully debunked it. You asserted without merit that working in sweatshops is better than subsistence farming, this is both false and a false dichotomy.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#289Earlier 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…
Shop around, you can find much cheaper clothes than you quoted in the US.
Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty
#290Earlier 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.
I disagree. This incentivizes the fostering of an environment where these are the only choices available to people.
It does not help laborers anywhere in the world to exploit labor and further weaken places where labor has already organized and achieved protection.
This is a fundamental failure of capitalism and a particularly harmful neo-liberal belief.