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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

bbc.com

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Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#301

Post by nil_pointer »

collyw wrote: post #203
jrnichols wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That place is ferociously biased, consistently

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#302

Post by gmiller123456 »

nil_pointer wrote: post #293

This video does a good job explaining the bad position we were in prior to leaving the treaty: https://youtu.be/DkckYLBCNfI

Even if we assume the information in that video is correct, just charging the extra $1 or so for delivery would not cause any significant number of jobs to the US. Firstly, the movement of jobs from the US to China pre-dates consumers wide availability of ordering packages straight from China. Secondly, factories in China shipping a lot of products aren't going to be sending their entire inventory in the small $2-$3 packages mentioned in the video, they'll be making larger freight shipments not involving the USPS at all. Thirdly, the cost of shipping is just one thing that's cheaper for China, their labor costs are also so much lower, that just charging an extra $1 per package won't make it cost more than it would to make in the US.

Lastly, the assumption the video makes is that the USPS loses $1 per shipment, without backing it up with any evidence. The exact amount it costs the USPS to deliver a package is competitive information and likely very closely guarded against public disclosure. If you pause the video where they show the US vs China price chart, you see the China cost is about $1 less for each. So it seems they assumed the US cost was the exact cost with no margin. The other way of assuming, is that the China cost is the exact cost, and the US cost is just extra profit to the USPS because the market will bear it. And the $1 the USPS "loses" is just extra profit they didn't make. Additionally, other countries also benefit from the same price China does, but it has not benefited them as much as China.

So there's a lot more to the economics than just $1 per package that the video seems to lead to.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#303

Post by bootlooped »

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?

I've ordered a lot of things from Ali Express, most shipping from China to the US. For a few, the price of the product + shipping was less than the price of a single US stamp! It's hard to justify that ridiculous level of subsidy. I have to pay more now? Too bad.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#304

Post by simplify »

djrogers wrote: post #273
kmlx wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are a multitude of other ways, ways which are completely oblivious to the current administration as well as its supporters.

There have been efforts and negotiations to get the UPU to reclassify China from developing nation status for quite a while now, to no avail. This is the final gambit in those negotiations. It’s best if you don’t let your hatred of an administration color your perceptions such that you choose not to look at facts.

Can you cite those efforts and negotiations? I want to read more.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#305

Post by JCSato »

forapurpose wrote: post #236

Imagine your CTO said this: 'I found a bug, therefore we should discard the entire system'; imagine it's a mature, complex, functioning system. If your CTO did it, you'd seriously doubt their leadership. The real question is, what are the outcomes we are choosing from? What is the outcome if we keep the system, and what is the outcome if we discard it? What would we replace it with - are we going to try to build a co…

Eh. . .I'm not against your points, but I think your analogy is off. It seems more like your CTO is saying "There's this bug in a library we use to improve this part of the system - if no one comes up with fix in the next year or so, I'm just gonna remove that lib and we can handle it's functions ourselves."

I might still disagree with that, but it wouldn't make me "seriously doubt their leadership".

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#306

Post by CodeWriter23 »

tmaly wrote: post #299
paulsutter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I kept hearing the claim that the US Post Office was losing money on items shipped by Amazon. So I asked the Postman delivering my Amazon package on a Sunday, and he confirmed that indeed the Post Office was being paid far less on a per package basis for Amazon deliveries than the regular rate. In the case of this Postal Treaty, it seems like the Post Office is losing money on delivering these The US Post Office is s…

There’s a little more nuance to it. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 [1] is the major contributor to USPS’ ongoing financial issues. That act requires USPS to maintain a 75 year reserve for retirement and medical benefits. Other agencies including the Armed Forces max out at 20 years by comparison.

1. https://www.congress.gov/bill/109th-congress/house-bill/6407

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#307

Post by CodeWriter23 »

krona wrote: post #186
adwhit wrote: post #79

Earlier 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.

Please illustrate one example of how someone (not the Fed firing up the presses) can make money without someone else giving them money.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#308

Post by kbenson »

michaelt wrote: post #283
kbenson wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Isn't the core problem here that there _isn't_ an even flow of mail between China and the US? Because there's far more ebay/aliexpress traffic coming out of China than going in.

I think it's not just that, which would be problematic on it's own, it's that China is also subsidizing local delivery, so the only (or almost only) delivery fee for Chinese shippers is the portion they pay to USPS for local delivery, which is artificially very low. So not only are they taking advantage of the difference in trade flows, they are also encouraging it even more.

I think this was covered in an Planet money podcast from NPR.[1] It's also possible I'm not remembering portions of it correctly, but I think they did an interesting treatment of the subject.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#309

Post by Spooky23 »

ikeboy wrote: post #221
Spooky23 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. Chinese companies aren’t sending wholesale stock vis epacket. Losing consumer ability to by tiny quantities of fake LEGO or whatever in quantity 1 volume isn’t putting anyone out of business. I would rather subsidize domestic shipping to lower barriers to e-commerce entrants if we feel a burning desire to subsidize something in this area.

Note this news has nothing to do with epacket

Huh?

epacketEMS is a class of mail with tracking. How is it unrelated?

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#310

Post by swamp40 »

Although this is a good move, small US Postal shipments from China to US households are a drop in the bucket compared to DHL deliveries from China to US companies.

And that cost is being massively subsidized by the Chinese government. I think the money goes directly from the Chinese government to the Chinese companies, who then pay DHL - so I doubt there is much the US can do to stop that.

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