91–100 of 508 posts
I think it's good for the US economy as well as the environment. It makes no sense for something to ship further to bring shipping costs down.
Can someone shed light on the subsidy structure behing the current model, are shipments from China being subsidized by shipments from other countries or is there government money involved ? In any case this kind of subsidy is not necessarily bad for developing countries, and it was probably instrumental in China's phenomenal economic growth, but it is now in the conquering superpower category, it's time it loses this…
Basically, the UPU assumes that a country will send about the same amount of international mail that it receives. There may be an imbalance between any two countries, but in aggregate, it assumes that these imbalances will net out. Furthermore, the UPU sets rates based on the sending country's costs. Since China was classified as a developing country, it was very cheap for Chinese to send mail into the international mail stream. This was justified because China's last mile delivery for mail received from other countries is also very cheap.
However, with the huge US-China trade imbalance, these assumptions no longer hold. U.S. shippers were at a major disadvantage because of this.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
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>So is drop shipping from China now dead? Probably. This is going to drop a lot of sellers off of Amazon and eBay, and likely have major effects on independent small business dollar/99c stores.
Oh great, now I get to buy the same item from Walmart at 20x the price. If I can even find the one I need.
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Does this mean lower government spending? Kind of blows my mind the government gets tax money and private people get the benefits.
Huh? I'm not sure what this has to do with taxes or government spending. The USPS doesn't get tax money; it's financed by its customers, like any other business, it just happens to be wholly owned by the federal government. Postal rates are high because they're forced by the UPU agreement to deliver Chinese mail for almost nothing, so they pass the costs on to US customers.
Fortune wrote about it back in 2015[1] and you can read the 2018 financial results[2].
Some tax money goes to the USPS.
[1] https://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/ [2] https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2018/pr18_093....
> This is great news for U.S. sellers, especially eBay sellers. Exactly the intended consequence. Why should US taxpayers subsidize shipping costs for products to come from China? It made no sense at all in today's economy unless the only thing you care about is paying less for your goods regardless of the consequences, which I don't think is a majority position of adults today.
Others send over a container with each ordered good and slap a local post’s label on it.
Possibly that local post’s label is attached in China and the container just gets dropped off at a USPS DC by the private freight forwarder.
It’s already fairly common.
Overall, a few more US jobs, and maybe more USPS revenue for what are now domestic shipments.
Edit: OR these buyers Shift to Amazon, which can deliver for less than USPS can via private courier, and pool every more items per delivery.
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Does this mean lower government spending? Kind of blows my mind the government gets tax money and private people get the benefits.
Huh? I'm not sure what this has to do with taxes or government spending. The USPS doesn't get tax money; it's financed by its customers, like any other business, it just happens to be wholly owned by the federal government. Postal rates are high because they're forced by the UPU agreement to deliver Chinese mail for almost nothing, so they pass the costs on to US customers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?
The shipping industry is responsible for a significant proportion of the global climate change problem. More than three percent of global carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to ocean-going ships. This is an amount comparable to major carbon-emitting countries -- and the industry continues to grow rapidly. In fact, if global shipping were a country, it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas emiss…
It might be easier for the shipping industry to reduce it's emissions, or it might be easier for India. The benefit(s) of India polluting is spread across 1.3 billion people. The beneficiaries of polluting by the shipping industry is presumably the whole world, though the benefits are unevenly spread. It might be easier or more impactful for one to reduce while the other doesn't, but again, we can't know without more data.
A better comparison would be between shipping and air freight. Or make the case that we don't need to ship if we can produce locally instead. Maybe it could be supplemented by saying that if the cost of the externality (pollution) was borne by the producer of the products, then it would incentivize local production.
Great planet money episode on the topic: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
>FOUNTAIN: Anna sent us a chart that estimates how much less. And it says, if you or I wanted to send a three-quarter-pound package somewhere in the U.S., the U.S. Postal Service would charge around $4.76 for the last leg of the journey. >MALONE: Yeah, the so-called final mile. However, if that same package came in from China, the USPS would only charge China Post $1.39. That means the USPS charges you and me roughly…
So what does that mean for US companies sending packages into countries that are part of the UPU (Edit: virtually all countries on Earth)? Can each country now refuseand set their own rates for transporting US parcels the last mile?
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I support this, and I'm a rabid leftist. Things should cost what they cost. The only time government should interfere with pricing is to force companies to price in externalities.
"I'm a rabid leftist" . I appreciate your candor, but if you think "things should cost what they cost" , then you're not nearly as rabid as many of the rabid leftists that I've encountered.