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No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

sellercentral.amazon.com

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Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#381

Post by erichocean »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #307
dev_dull wrote: post #75

> 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.

A better question might be to ask why US taxpayers should continue to subsidize direct marketers. Thats all I get anymore. Everything else is electronic.

They are used by politicians during elections. You can expect the subsidy to last "forever".

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#382

Post by MrMorden »

Zigurd wrote: post #119
MrMorden wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US withdrawing from TPP directly resulted in a vastly-improved treaty. The problem is that the US didn't sign up to the new version.

That's not what I have seen in any description of TPP. It appears that withdrawing from it is pure vandalism of US interests that we now see in the trade war with China, happening outside the framework of TPP.

TPP instantly lost the bulk of the intellectual property chapter and a good amount of ISDS-related commitments when the US withdrew. Is there anything in the CPTPP signed version that's worse than the version the US wanted?

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#383

Post by trhway »

hinkley wrote: post #374
lonelappde wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese shippment also has to use a truck to get from Port.

Do you remember that article a couple years ago about pollution at the Port in LA? They've done a bunch to reduce ship emissions in dock but the truckers are popping up on the radar. The short-haul truckers at the Port in LA are all independent owner-operators, which sounds like a cool libertarian/capitalist ideal until you figure out that new trucks are super expensive so the operators are almost exclusively buying…

The short haul trucks is primary use case for going electric.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#384

Post by Scoundreller »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #316
magduf wrote: post #5

This actually sounds like a good thing. It costs Chinese shippers almost nothing to send stuff directly from China, while it costs me quite a lot to send stuff within the US, largely because I'm subsidizing all the Chinese shippers. Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers.

You don't really think any prices are going to go down right?

It’ll prop up some of the USPS’ inefficiencies that much longer.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#385

Post by nickserv »

Taniwha wrote: post #334
Scoundreller wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers. International shipping was expensive before China flooded the market b2c. If you sent a pkg to China, the US would only have to drop it off in China, the last mile delivery cost is mostly up to China. The actual air freight cost to USPS is about…

As I understand it (and even though I live in NZ I manufacture in China and ship all over the world from there) much of the airmail shipping from China is essentially founded on arbitrage of the empty space in air-mail shipping containers from Asia to the West - it's while it takes a while and sometimes your package goes out of Hong Kong, sometimes Singapore etc In essence those packets are cheap because some smart p…

Don't know about air mail, but for maritime and rail transport, there is much more going from China to the EU or US than in the other direction by volume.

This means cargo carriers have to send back empty containers to China.

As a result, it's cheaper to book a container, from, say, Antwerp to Shanghai than the reverse. The difference can be quite substantial, potentially hundreds of USD per container.

For the other parts of the trip I don't have any hard info but I would think rail and truck is cheaper in China per km when converted to USD.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#386

Post by jotm »

jotm wrote: post #54
iNate2000 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?

Most efficient price/volume wise, and dirtiest, environment wise

https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1762

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_tran...

I am trying really hard to not post a bunch of expletives here, too many people on HN downvote facts, even with sources (my fault for thinking everyone has a brain and can use Google or something). Wtf happened to this site...

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#387

Post by Defenestresque »

ikeboy wrote: post #217
lgats wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library... estimates $74 million profit for 2016 using internal data. https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library... says they were profitable in 2015. See page 8 and footnote 17. As far as I can tell, there's been no other public info released since then.

Excellent sources!

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#388

Post by arcticbull »

Scoundreller wrote: post #377
rtkwe wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that deal with customs and inspections?

Show the manifest, they go through it. Dunno how much they inspect. My guess is that the company just hires dual citizens to avoid visa issues. US lets you do personal imports up to US$800 per import without taxes/duties, so they limit it to that.

> My guess is that the company just hires dual citizens to avoid visa issues.

This isn't related, the company can hire anyone they want to man the trucks. Do it often, and you register with FAST.

> US lets you do personal imports up to US$800 per import without taxes/duties, so they limit it to that.

That only applies to personal good, not things you're bringing for commercial purposes, and there's a minimum away-from-the-country time.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#389

Post by tverbeure »

ikeboy wrote: post #166
tverbeure wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular, they take a retail price for fast shipping with tracking and compare to a wholesale price for slow shipping without tracking. While I agree about the fast shipping part, many of my slow shipping AliExpress packages from China had tracking included.

Then they're most likely using ePacket, which is more expensive than UPU rates and is profitable for the USPS, and is not subsidized.

You're right that not all of them have tracking. The ones with full tracking are AliExpress Standard Shipping and ePacket.

Not that there's a noticeable difference in shipping cost: in some ePacket cases, the shipping cost was $0, even when the product itself was a $2.50 microcontroller board.

Re: No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers

#390

Post by lancesells »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #350
ddeck wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently returned a 13 inch laptop to Amazon from Hong Kong after they sent 2 and it was around $120 (reimbursed by Amazon - the original Amazon delivery charge was ~$18). $370 did sound particularly egregious, but I just checked UPS' online quote site[1] and got a quote of $311-394 for a 5 pound, A1 sized package from California to Paris. In my experience in Asia, Fedex, UPS, DHL etc. provide substantial discounts…

I recently returned a 13 inch laptop to Amazon from Hong Kong after they sent 2 and it was around USD120 (reimbursed by Amazon). HK Post wants about H$350 to get a 3kg parcel from HK to France. That works out to about $45. $370 did sound particularly egregious, but I just checked UPS' online quote site[1] and got a quote of $311-394 for a 5 pound, A1 sized package from California to Paris. I'm not quite sure what A1…

Around 24.5 x 33 inches. It might be the size kicking it up. I work in fairly large art sizes and prices go up really fast based on dimensions.
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