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Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

post.japanpost.jp

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

#81

Post by msgodel »

cheema33 wrote: post #34

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

They're not nearly as bad as income tax which would have to be raised if we didn't do tariffs.

At least tariffs tax consumption rather than production. Taxing production/income is horribly evil and in better times (such as when the country was founded) people who insisted on it would have been shot.

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

#82

Post by metalman »

dcchambers wrote: post #35

Semi-related: I make orders from Amazon Japan a couple times a year - shipping to the US isn't cheap but it's nice that Amazon has always handled import taxes/customs/everything else involved in international shipping. Other than taking longer, it's basically the same experience as ordering from Amazon domestically. It's a shame that the ending of the De Minimis Exemption and other tariff-related stuff from the curre…

here in Canada, ordering from the states was already a royal pain, as the dutys were applied more or less arbitrarily at the border, but getting some camera part or other little doohicky from china, is cheap and reliable, if wierd and of completely unknown delivery date. I cant imagine ordering from the states now, selling to maybe, but it would be a pay up front no returns, buy some insurance and pray kinda offer.

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

#83

Post by Kye »

timr wrote: post #45

Title is not accurate. They're allowing personal shipments under $100, and the rest can be shipped via their UGX service. It sounds like JP doesn't want to deal with the customs paperwork at scale (edit: also the deposits).

I couldn't find a way to fit all that in the title, so I got 99% there and clarified in the first post. The title still has more resolution toward the full detail than the original title.

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

#84

Post by zymhan »

hippo22 wrote: post #64
cheema33 wrote: post #34

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

Do you think that cigarette taxes should be repealed then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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

#85

Post by timr »

someotherperson wrote: post #32
philwelch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

De minimis allows people to evade tariffs by simply drop shipping each individual product all the way from China or wherever, so long as the retail price is below the threshold. I’m skeptical of tariffs in general but if you’re going to have them, it makes sense to close the loopholes.

So execute it for China alone. The issue is that these blanket actions are lazy at best and exclusively populist.

> So execute it for China alone. The issue is that these blanket actions are lazy at best and exclusively populist.

Same argument. If there's a country that doesn't get tariffs, that country will very quickly become the leading global exporter to the US. It's the same thing for the "penguin island" that everyone mocked: if you put high tariffs on every place but penguin island, it will soon be Penguin Island Logistics Center.

Setting aside judgment of the tariff policy and the chaotic implementation, it does make sense to make them blanket actions. Much of the byzantine nature of our existing supply chains is due to gaming of international tariff policy.

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

#86

Post by colechristensen »

cheema33 wrote: post #34

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

I think it's quite the opposite. Tariffs are flat taxes on corporations AND can't be avoided with the tax shenanigans all big corporations use and many small ones can't. Implementation and motivation details aside I'm in favor of small tariffs for all but the most equal trade partners.

Corporate taxes have the problem of small business paying much more proportionally than large ones and a flat tax on businesses that rely on cheap foreign labor and goods is deserved.

Trump doesn't get to define all of my opinions by me needing to oppose exactly everything he's done.

The problem with the current political situation is the establishment in both parties w were too cowardly or useless to address real problems which are now actually being addressed by objectively stupid fascists.

And that is the lesson to everyone, get stuff done or get replaced by awful people doing awful things.

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

#87

Post by airstrike »

msgodel wrote: post #81
cheema33 wrote: post #34

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

They're not nearly as bad as income tax which would have to be raised if we didn't do tariffs. At least tariffs tax consumption rather than production. Taxing production/income is horribly evil and in better times (such as when the country was founded) people who insisted on it would have been shot.

[flagged]

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

#88

Post by favflam »

modeless wrote: post #18

> "we will continue to accept letters, postcards, printed matter, EMS (documents), and postal items (small packets, parcels, and EMS (goods)) containing gifts between individuals with a value of less than US$100." So no, "mail" is not suspended. More accurate headline please.

Ecommerce of millions of people are facing a huge disruption.

Think of Brexit. Commerce still happens between the UK and Europe, but there is a massive show-stopping level of friction now because people need to do Customs. That is a lot of paperwork. Millions of people are not used to this and many small businesses will get wiped out.

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

#89

Post by ArchOversight »

timr wrote: post #58
dcchambers wrote: post #35

Semi-related: I make orders from Amazon Japan a couple times a year - shipping to the US isn't cheap but it's nice that Amazon has always handled import taxes/customs/everything else involved in international shipping. Other than taking longer, it's basically the same experience as ordering from Amazon domestically. It's a shame that the ending of the De Minimis Exemption and other tariff-related stuff from the curre…

I don't know what Amazon specifically will do (didn't know they allowed international shipments to begin with!), but the customs process via any normal carrier is that you get a bill when your items arrive at the port of entry. You pay the bill, the item is released, and you get it a few days later. FedEx, for example, does the whole thing online.

FedEx in my case paid the bill to customs, shipped me my item, and then secondary sent me a bill to pay for the customs fees after I had already received the item.

They don't want shipments stuck in port because storage there is expensive.

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

#90

Post by cinntaile »

mmaunder wrote: post #9

Sounds like the Japanese commercial carriers are going to get a bump in business since they're not interrupted.

Japan Post is a commercial carrier, the biggest one.

It's only temporary, due to the uncertainty. What a waste of resources this whole thing has been.

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