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Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

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Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#211

Post by schmookeeg »

bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

Ignoring the massive political elephant that exists in all of this stuff -- isn't this a good trigger, as demand for the "updated standards" products will force these companies (or resellers of these products) to either validate their products for sale in the US or force the US to recognize these EU standards?

I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality products. :/

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#212

Post by [deleted] »

bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

[deleted]

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#213

Post by mlyle »

tsunamifury wrote: post #115
mlyle wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the long run, tariffs basically all fall on the consumer because producer and distributor behavior is near infinitely elastic. Econ 101 predicts that the party who is less able to adjust behavior in reaction to the tax pays most of the tax. In the short run, this isn't true: firms have goods they need to move.

We are in a world economy which actually needs demand more than supply. This is your missing analysis.

"We need demand more than supply" is a macro diagnosis.

But tariff incidence is a micro question. Elasticity analysis doesn’t care whether the world has a demand shortfall or a supply glut. It asks: when a tax raises transaction costs, which side is less able to change behavior? In the long run, suppliers usually have more flexibility than consumers.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#214

Post by pbreit »

4ndrewl wrote: post #27

It's the price of uncertainty. Business can plan for low tax or high tax regimes. Not so much when it's just "unknown". Similar across Europe https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/25/postal-serv...

This was always a completely insane loophole that the item on Amazon was much more expensive than the exact same item on Temu.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#216

Post by Retric »

cuuupid wrote: post #177
Retric wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation consistently outcompetes sweatshops. What’s missing from these discussions is the idea of competitive advantage. It is inherently more efficient to grow crops in climates where they thrive, tacking a tariff to protect domestic production means intentionally lowering the standard of living of everyone both domestically and abroad to favor some tiny group doing something wasteful.

Automation is not replacing sweatshops, they've just made the sweatshop workers more productive (economically) while requiring them to be less productive (in activity). So all that's happened is an exponential increase in the output volume of sweatshops :/

There’s many industries that have moved beyond sweatshops due to automation.

Pepsi can’t get glass bottles from 3rd world sweatshops at anything competitive with a highly automated factory. In the vast majority of industries it’s just a question of levels of automation and climate control inherently makes automation easier by reducing variability in temperature and humidity. Of course the original distinction around climate control that created the term sweatshops is dying as such operations are largely dying out, but that only reinforces the notion of automation killing off the inherent advantages of unskilled cheap labor.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#217

Post by tsunamifury »

mlyle wrote: post #213
tsunamifury wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are in a world economy which actually needs demand more than supply. This is your missing analysis.

"We need demand more than supply" is a macro diagnosis. But tariff incidence is a micro question. Elasticity analysis doesn’t care whether the world has a demand shortfall or a supply glut. It asks: when a tax raises transaction costs, which side is less able to change behavior? In the long run, suppliers usually have more flexibility than consumers.

I can't believe I'm going to look like I'm defending this but here it goes:

The market 'offering' the most demand to the global economy right now is America, by far and away, with a distant second of Europe and Middle East. America has chosen to use tariffs in an attempt to 'tax the demand offered' to the global economy in order to stop the localize debt accumulation of that demand, along with other justifications (rightly or wrongly) of stabilizing global trade and currency.

This is at least the THEORY on Tariffs. Its makes a bit more sense than the 'grrr 1950's trade imbalance' story media keeps spinning, but whatever I'm not going to defend it any more than that.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#218

Post by throwawa5 »

bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

> Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are.

Stylevana, where I go for my Japanese/Korean sunscreen and skincare, is still shipping to the US as far as I can tell.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#219

Post by apricot »

westernmostcoy wrote: post #20
jleyank wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, he’s ending mail-in ballots…

That's not within his power to do.

> That's not within his power to do.

What rock have you been living under for the past eight months?

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