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.
> 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 $5/kg.
I think what’s really happening is that USPS (and Canada Post!) are using international shipping as a profit centre because there’s little competition and they need to subsidize legislated activities (6x/week door-to-door service for 53c or whatever it is).
Canada is truly awful in this respect. In Canada, it might cost around $50 to send a small package to another country (excluding the US, which is a little cheaper). In the US, the same package might cost a little over $10.
I'm in the US and I occasionally have to ship small light packages to Canada and was always frustrated when it cost me $10, 3x as much to ship a few hundred miles to Canada compared to 2,000 miles within this country. Then I learned that shipping that same package within Canada would cost almost $20.
Originally they didn’t collect much data and used manifests on the individual packages, but for the past 5-6 years they’ve a computer system to enter package info, it’s basically a Google Sheet, and they show the manifest like any other shipping company. They’ll occasionally get a thorough stop but it’s up to chance as anything when at a trusted, high-volume border crossing. If you’ve a Nexus card and nothing to declare, you don’t actually have to stop at the border between the US and Canada if Nexus lanes are open... and if you do have something to declare you can drop off a form. Also they probably stick to the same land border crossings and the same schedule to make it easier long-term. They can close many borders but there a lot of commerce and cross-border travel between Canada and the US and parts of Canada can be more populated/central than parts of the US and vice versa. Besides, as long as the carrier follows directions from CBP or CBSA, the responsibility of the shipment belongs with the shipper and you have to leave your complete ”from” details and they even check IDs, in order to ship with them. They send the list in advance so anything suspicious can be flagged or recorded, that’s how customs works in this digital era...
Sounds like the next thing for big VCs to fund. It used to be that going somewhere with strangers you met online was feared, then came Uber. Couch surfing? AirBnB. Next, getting packages around customs, tariffs, and expensive shipping by crowd sourcing? Bam! VC Unicorn.
And yet I've never had a reliability problem with USPS-shipped packages, whereas I've had so many problems with UPS that it's a joke among my friends that someone at UPS has a personal grudge against me. Lost packages, dented packages, me being home all day long and the doorbell never rings but there's a post-it on the door saying they couldn't deliver because nobody was home.
In theory USPS takes longer, but for me personally it's about the same time and a lot less of me getting upset at people. If USPS says Friday, I'm getting it on Friday. If UPS says Friday I'm getting it on Monday evening.
I miss when Amazon used to let you chose the shipper. That's been forever ago.
USPS has been great for my tiny side-business. They are cheaper than anybody else for packages under a pound, and you can create a first class shipping label from within PayPal. This is cheaper than priority mail, and seldom if ever takes longer. I've simply never had a lost package, despite shipping a couple hundred units per year for almost a decade.
On the receiving end, I like USPS because I can have my mail held when I'm on a trip -- the process is totally painless.
Now, who knows if my shipping is being subsidized. Probably, when one considers subsidies to transportation infrastructure. But I suspect that if we lose USPS, whatever money the government saves will be more than made up by having to bail out one or more of the private shipping services every few years, like other "too big to fail" industries.
In addition, if you're shipping smaller heavy items, you can get free shipping supplies like padded envelope and boxes for flat rate shipping which can be a better rate in some cases.
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 person is buying up the empty space in containers that are already going and filling them - I assume that Air-Mail FROM the US could be equally cheap if someone was entrepreneurial enough to do the same there
Planet money did a pod cast on it. Some guy selling some product could buy a Chinese knockoff of his product (including shipping) for cheaper than it costs him to ship his product from his local post office to his house in the same town. (excluding the cost of the product) Think about that. The product plus shipping across the world is cheaper than shipping across town.
I think it's because they are buying space that otherwise would be empty, and maintain an elastic buffer of packages to fill those spaces as they become available - the outgoing mail containers on planes are likely booked and paid for months in advance so the people paying for them will happily take 20% of their normal rate to fill the rest of them at the last minute
Here is the problem. I make a widget. It costs me $10 US to manufacture. I go to the post office, and ship it to an address directly across the street. They charge $7.
I go on AliExpress. I buy a similar widget, and ship it to the same address. The total cost, the item plus shipping, is $6.
Let's break that down. Their cost of manufacturing is lower. Let's say it's free. Ok fine. Trans Pacific shipping is cheap. Let's say it's free. Ok fine. They still have to ship it via the post office from the port in Long Beach to the post office in New Jersey; again, let's say that's free. The post office then has to deliver out across the street.
The post office charges me $7 to walk it it across the street. Why should the Chinese shipper only pay $6 for the same service?
That, and air freight only costs around $5/kg at regular rates.
The low-rate consolidators are kinda shameful by only bringing goods to the closest port to the origin, not the destination.
E.g. in Canada, they only bring it to the Vancouver port, while wealthier countries will pre-sort and air it to the closest intl mail port (Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver).
this is a trade off between cost and speed of delivery - shipping out of China I have the choice of many different carriers - for example I can use cheap (and slowish) China Post, or faster and $6 more PostNL who will also give me tracking - I give my customers the cheap China Post for free and charge $6 for PostNL
(in the near future if US mail prices go up I may be forced to charge US customers more, I may also have to raise prices to US customers if I find that Trump's sanctions start to apply to small packages and I'm stuck paying from my end)
I think you're confusing "terminal dues" (which is what countries charge each other for delivering a package in the destination country) and the actual cost of shipping between countries (which is what I'm talking about here)
Since you are responding to someone comparing US domestic (in town) shipping prices to international shipping price, I don't see how you are not talking about "terminal dues".
International freight costs could explain why international shipping is more expensive than domestic shipping, but even if international freight prices are 0, they can't explain why domestic shipping is more expensive than international shipping.
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.
>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.
Where can I verify this? Thats looking at only the direct transport? Or also indirect transport?
Consider a hypothetical container from the US/EU going to Africa (bringing products, second hand goods, "recyclables", ...), then the container could pick up raw minerals and resources going to China, now theres an empty container in China and it has to go back to US/EU?
It's because the shipping containers belong to the shipping company, and are rented out for the trip.
So the shipping company will have a bunch of empty containers at the port of landing (destination), and needs to send them back to the port of departure to be filled again.
If trade between the two ports is balanced, then the containers will always be full regardless of the port of departure.
But since trade is not balanced, they wind up having to send empty containers on the "return" voyage. Which is pure loss for the shipping company, so they are willing to heavily discount routes that have empty containers transiting.
Which are these routes does change of course, but they are often those originating in the EU / US and arriving in Asia.
It’s pretty much the result of our trade deficit. Not only does China export more than is, they export much lower value products on a volume/weight basis. Heck, a big USA export to China are airplanes that can simply be flown there.
China exports plenty to Africa, no need for such circuitous shipping patterns.
China has a huge population, so material consumption (raw materials or finished products) for internal use in china, can bayesian catapult reasoning on value per volume/weight basis.
A long time ago, USPS signed an insane sweetheart deal for free shipping from China, thinking that it would help US companies ship to China. But for many reasons (labor laws, environmental laws, go subsidies) outsidee of shipping costs, US-China post package shipping (not heavy industry whatever), is absolutely massively imbalanced. Chinese shippers massive privilege over US domestic shippers (shipping to ISo customers) was the main side effect. US shipping costs more than Chinese manufacturer + shipping, despite shipping from China being obviously more expensive in real world resources.
The USPS signed an agreement for ePacket, but most of the packages are being shipped under UPU rules that most countries in the world are signatories to.
USPS fares better under ePacket packages than the UPU tarifed packages.
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 used trucks, often quite old (and grandfathered into emissions rules). And as we all know from personal experience, there's a lot of soot that comes from a heavy diesel when it accelerates from a dead stop.
And there are no large necks to wring so now you're in the awkward situation of having to go after little guys.
1. around half of US population (and even bigger share purchasing/consuming capacity wise) live on a coast not far from a major port.
2. container ship is 10g/tonne-km of CO2, ground truck 60g/tonne-km of CO2
3. Shanghai to LA - 10000km, Shanghai to New York - 17000km
So, it is simple math that container delivery from Shanghai plus 100-200km or even more of truck delivery from the port beats any cross-US truck delivery (for the US West it beats even half-cross-US truck delivery). Of course when it comes to the math vs. ideological politics - last season of Veep was brilliant about it :)
> 3 weeks container shipping on a super container ship vs. even cheapest truck shipping ?
Container shipping is ridiculously cheap. See e.g. https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/capacity-cuts-keeping-asia.... Seems around 640 USD from Shanghai to North Europe as per above article/source. This for a 20 foot container. A lot of containers are 40 foot. US has loads of 45 foot containers.
If you'd go very far inland you wouldn't use a truck though; either a barge (inland vessel) or a train.
container ship shipping from US to Middle East was cheaper for me than shipping my stuff from NYC to California (and similar shipment from east coast to middle east was less tha half the price of shipping from California). Boat is much cheaper than truck overall.
I bought a A1 sized picture frame from a french seller for around $50 on Amazon. It was a total pain getting an affordable frame in A1 size, because the best we can get easily in America is a 24x36" which is just far enough off to be unusable.
When it arrived, it had some damage to the acrylic and I wanted to return it. Amazon Support said they would reimburse me up to $20 for shipping it back, but when I took it to UPS they wanted $370 just to ship it back.
I have no idea how shipping costs are determined. I'm sure the seller didn't pay $370 to send it to me.
Did you contact Amazon or the seller, and what was the outcome? You received a defective item and your out of pocket costs should be nothing. You should dispute the return costs with both Amazon and the seller, and the seller may tell you to dispose of the damaged item and refund you the purchase price.
You are better off finding a local framing shop to custom make something for you. They don't charge too much unless you opt for fancy frame material and matting.
> You are better off finding a local framing shop to custom make something for you.
Yes, local framing shops can make things in any size you want, it's what they do. And usually fairly reasonable, certainly less than the cost of international shipping.
I bought a A1 sized picture frame from a french seller for around $50 on Amazon. It was a total pain getting an affordable frame in A1 size, because the best we can get easily in America is a 24x36" which is just far enough off to be unusable.
I'd talk to some of the mail order frame places. I've used Frame Destination, and while they don't list metric sizes they'll let you spec custom imperial sizes with no premium at 1/16" precision (e.g. 23 5/16" x 33 1/16" is a bit closer). If you call they may be able to properly do metric sizes.
In my experience shipping prices from the US to EU are ludicrous. So much so that I'm surprised they have any business. This doesn't sound outside of the realm of possibility to me.
We send small A4 sized parcels to Germany quite a bit and often it never arrives, the same goes for France, if anything it gets lost more often in France. (shipping from New Zealand)
Bought some books in France and shipping to US was ~$10. It never arrived and contacted seller who sent another. A month later the 1st shipment arrives. So I contact the seller to let them know. They want it back and will cover the return shipping. So I go to USPS who informed me shipping to France was $90. At that rate it would be cheaper for me to fly with it, 2x25kg checked bags are a hell of a lot cheaper.
While I was living abroad my mom would send me care packages and I had no idea what it was costing her to ship it. I would send her aboriginal carvings or SE Asian cooking utensils all the time and it didn't cost nearly as much.
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 to customers with accounts, but one-off quotes to the US/Europe are typically very expensive.
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 sized is (ISO A1 paper? Amazon A1?) but at 5 lbs USPS quotes between $60 and $130 to go from San Francisco to Paris. For international shipping from the US, the private companies will almost always be significantly more expensive and potentially leave you on the hook for expensive customs brokerage fees.
So ISO A1 then. I plugged in something like 24x33x5 as well as the Amazon A1 size (which is smaller) and got the same price range but with additional options for the smaller (Amazon A1) sized package. At that size, the weight is the determining factor at USPS (at least based on the rates I've seen) even though 24x33 is still considered an oversized package.
OTOH if you want to ship it express (Global Express Guaranteed — GXG in USPS speak) that comes out to around $265 (less if you pay online) and not all post offices will take GXG packages. $60 to $265 is the difference between a 1-3 business day expected delivery time and 6-10 business days.
I have. I left my Kindle on a plane in Germany while on vacation a few years ago and didn't realize until I was already on a different plane back to the US. I got a hold of at lost and found at the airport who said they had it and if I sent them a shipping label, they could mail it back to me.
When I started looking at different shipping options, UPS wanted about $107 to ship it back and FedEx was a similar price. I think I ended up using DHL which was the cheapest I could find at about $80, which still felt crazy to me.
I participate in reddit gift exchanges, and frequently get recipients in the EU. What would cost me ~$10-15 to ship in the states or somewhere in asia routinely costs north of $50 for European destinations. And these are small things, nothing like the size of a picture frame. The $300+ cost for the frame doesn't surprise me at all.
Depending on the destination, if you have a “______town” for that ethnicity (or a nearby one that they’re not at war with), they’ll have some shops that can do far cheaper rates by consolidating.
A polish shop near me can send things to most of W. Europe for far less than the post office can.
The Ukrainian credit union near me can send cash to anyone in Ukraine pretty cheaply.
With USPS it will depend largely on how you send it. Priority Mail will be expensive (and fairly quick). A first class package (if you're within the limits) can be much cheaper if you don't mind the lack of tracking.
I mailed some 8x10s overseas in a rigid envelope and my friend swore up and down it would be too expensive ($30+). I think in the end it cost under $10 per envelope. Meanwhile international postcards from Germany were like 2€.
>Meanwhile international postcards from Germany were like 2€.
What are you talking about? I was just in Germany last year, and sent a bunch of international postcards for €0.90 each. That's the standard postcard rate for sending a postcard anywhere in the world. (It's €0.45 within Germany.)
Prices went up this year, and from my POV the German post was indecipherable. An international post card required two stamps. Deutsche Post is showing domestic postcards at 0.60€, but their postage calculator is showing international postcards at 0.95€. Fuck if I remember what I paid.
being a buyer off ebay what always surprised me is the next to nothing if not free shipping from China. It is good to see it changing as an article from 2014 [1] indicated how the USPS is getting soaked for the shipping on our side of the ocean.
if this is fallout from the trade issues it honestly is the only good outcome of them
Note that the program described there, ePacket, is now profitable for the USPS. It took them a few years to scale up but it's been profitable for years now.
Noticed this direct shipping years ago, the first time it took weeks for a small part to be delivered. I think the absurdly low cost reveals just how much you can jam into a shipping container for the current flat rate.
Weirder when you think about it from a fuel efficiency perspective; it probably takes a few drops of diesel to move a t-shirt 5000 miles.
Edit: NOTE- if you still buy stuff on ebay, be sure to check the feedback page on bulk "US based" sellers. Currently some of them actually ship from china even though their location is set to the US/canada.
>Weirder when you think about it from a fuel efficiency perspective; it probably takes a few drops of diesel to move a t-shirt 5000 miles.
Yep, try looking up the fuel efficiency number for shipping freight by boat, train, or airplane. It's really amazing just how efficient boats are. There's a good reason our distant ancestors had worldwide trade routes centuries or even millennia ago using boats.
It also only allows it for small shipments, so it encourages the Chinese to sell directly. The per-item shipping cost wasn't close to UPU rates unless you shipped a whole container, and sometimes not even then.
I don’t have the background on this - help me understand why or how it’s cheaper for goods to ship cheaper from China than shipping within the US? The US taxpayer is subsidizing this? I’m shocked and confused.
It's a UN-based forced rate subsidy for developing nations that China still benefits from.
"According to the U.S. Postal Service, it costs around $20 to mail a small parcel weighing 4.4 pounds from one U.S. state to another, yet mailing the same package from China only costs about $5."
"The Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency that sets postal rates among its 192-member countries, dictates USPS's artificially low rates. It bizarrely groups China – the world’s second-largest economy – with developing nations like Gabon and Fiji into its third tier of shipping rates, which are just a fraction of what the developed world must pay."
"USPS loses about $300 million per year on Chinese imports - losing about $1 per small package it delivers."
Parent is correct, despite being grayed currently by downvoting. UPU is an international postal treaty organization that was subsumed into the UN. Every country used to have conclude treaties with every other country (read Anthony Trollope's autobiography for a fine account of his negotiation of one such treaty between the the US and Britain). China has gamed the system on this rule, so the US is forced to threaten withdrawal to fix it.
The rules were probably set when China was a poor country like Fiji. They seem to have overtaken only in 2009. In 1980 GDP (nominal) per capita of Fiji was 6x China, now China is about 60% ahead. They've come up fast. (data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_...)
The article says that Trump is moving to pull out of or renegotiate the UPU agreement, which at worst is a Presidential choice, and it's not even clear to me why USPS can't do it unilaterally.
The UN can "force" rules upon us if we sign an agreement allowing them to do so. If we sign a treaty agreeing to abide by the rules set by a UN agency, then they can impose such rules, and under the US Constitution, such rules have the force of law within the US.
The rules might not be fair. Our recourse is to try to change the rules, and failing that, threaten to withdraw from the agreement. That's what we're doing.
They have zero power. The US can destroy the UN in a flash.
But in that instance, humanity would pay much more than extra bucks for shipping crap we don't need.
A strong AND fair UN is a good deterrent for world wars.
Of course, it's better to renegotiate any precieved unfairness than to just blow all violence avoidance safeguards like a world congress.
China got away with their economic trickery because of US corporate greed and short sightedness combined with the US public insatiable consumerism.
But we humans have a short memory and we like being empowered by bully leaders.
Let's just hope we'll survive this age without too much bloodshed.
Planet Money did a great breakdown on this. Essentially it comes down to international agreements on the cost of doing the past mile of shipping for other countries.
It's cheaper to ship 10,000 items in a single container, than to ship each one separately, which is why mail carriers bundle items together (in bags, vans, containers, etc) instead of handling them separately all the way.
Domestic mail is like sending separate items, which get bundled together, then un-bundled again to deliver them to their final destination. All these steps happen at domestic wages, and at best with medium volumes. If there are not enough items to fill a container, it's still getting sent some other (more expensive) way.
Items from China get bundled by lower wage workers, the bundles are sent by lowest priority freight (usually a 7-45 day delay), bundles are only sent when fully filled in order to minimize costs per item, and sorted to minimize un-bundling costs.
This won't change no matter what, it's just economy of scale.
There are other factors like the reduced shipping costs for China set by the UN, or the fact that some will ship items at a loss just to convert Yuan to USD through Hong Kong, but ultimately the production vs. consumption imbalance is what decides most of this.
Basically has to be right? Even if the shipping labels were completely standardized, you still have to deal with irregular package dimensions, composition, and label locations. The sort of stuff that robots aren't so good at.
I don't see how poly bags offer any weight advantage over an envelope. The advantage they have is durability: paper envelopes get easily ripped open, whereas poly bags are nearly indestructible for about the same weight and size. I've also noticed that many shippers now print their mailing/customs label directly onto the poly bags, so that probably makes the shipping process faster and more automated.
This ignores the actual reason, which is that USPS charges less for China->US movement than domestic movement even after bundling like Amazon does at the warehouse.
Exactly this. It has nothing to do with the boat cost or economies of scale because once it arrives it has to still go that last mile - or last hundred miles within the U.S. the same as any package.
This is great. The tariff agreements were never made with such a huge volume of small parcels in mind, many of them awkwardly shaped and causing problems with automatic sorting machines. And there’s the obvious ecological viewpoint as well.
Maybe it is anecdotal, but whenever I order anything from China on Amazon, it takes exponentially longer to receive my product. Once I got Christmas items that I ordered in November the following March. There was no recourse when it happened either.
I know it's a long distance, but it's substantially longer than orders I've made from other parts of the world. So I avoid purchasing from there.
It's very common to get (large) items via DHL from mainland China to SF in less than a week. The US simply doesn't manufacture the same set of items. Raising the cost to order items from China for political reasons will just hurt existing business. There's no alternative, I have a choice to pay more or not buy.
The US doesn't manufacture those items because it's cheaper to have them shipped from China. Raise the cost of manufacturing them there and importing them, and the balance changes.
The domestic vs. offshore production calculus is actually closer than a lot of people realize, in many instances. Often it's a choice between a highly-automated and capital-intensive production process in the US, vs. a manual process at a contractor in China. The combination of higher shipping and very low cost of capital in the US is a pretty good one.
Whenever someone tells you that it's impossible for the US to rebuild its manufacturing base, go take a look at factories in China: they're not that old (esp. the light industrial stuff). What was built in China in 20 years could be built in the US in the same amount of time or less, if the economic case was there. There's nothing magic about China, it's just a place where labor happened to be cheap at one point in time.
> The US doesn't manufacture those items because it's cheaper to have them shipped from China. Raise the cost of manufacturing them there and importing them, and the balance changes.
The US doesn't manufacture those items because it has no capability to do so.
There are no factories, no supply chain, no expertise and no known how.
There are some things that are cheaper to manufacture in US, (surprise!) if you manufacture for the local market, than in China, but them being simply cheaper still doesn't mean you can actually manufacture them.
I myself tried to setup an electric scooter factory, first in Canada, and than in Washington state. We were simply unable to find even moderately competent manufacturing engineers, nor the line workforce.
Of course, every consumable and every part had to be imported.
And both of the above meant that we decided to close the business in under 6 months.
Even in industries the U.S. does have manufacturing for the cost of manufacturing is insane. I shopped around to literally every apparel production company listed on any list in the U.S. 50% of the companies said they don't have bandwidth to take any more orders, they literally didn't want the business at any price. The other 49% didn't deal in 'small orders' basically anything under 5000. In the last 1% of U.S. companies the very cheapest cost was double the price to manufacture in China - where we got very few quotes because of the language barrier.So Electric scooter or simple piece of clothing, the U.S. just loses out in every single way. This is the smallest of a long road to challenge China, point being if the U.S. companies are more comparable in price they will become more profitable, will be more likely to expand and build, and buyers will be more likely to buy U.S. Not to mention, the U.S. really needs it's own version of Alibaba so businesses can shop easier, it boggles my mind that it doesn't exist.
Basically, the US simply does not have the infrastructure to manufacture complex items in mass quantities. We haven't invested in that infrastructure, whereas China has, so they have the ability to do this stuff, and we don't. So trying to build an iPhone in America is like trying to build an iPhone in Zimbabwe or Sudan or Armenia: the infrastructure simply doesn't exist and it isn't feasible to take on a project like that there.
America stopped being an industrial powerhouse decades ago, by choice, and you can't just bring that back overnight, especially when some other countries never gave that up and will easily out-compete you.
This is completely ignoring the fact that Chinese labor is significantly cheaper than the US as well as the standard of living. No amount of shipping is going to recover those costs unless you jack up the rates astronomically.
Nearly all the supply chains are in Asia. It would cost companies billions to relocate and they would just relocate to other areas where the labor is cheaper and they can get away with working their employees 12 hour shifts. Things like electronics for example would be extremely difficult to switch to a country like the US because there isn't a trained workforce here to deal with manufacturing small components. Plus, they'd be asking to be paid 20 dollars an hour with benefits vs China's probably 12 dollars and no benefits.
Also, leaving the UPU is as drastic as the tariff war because all it will do is cause countries to jack up the rates of incoming mail to compensate. Every time the US leaves without negotiation, there's no reason why countries won't retaliate.
It's not about manufacturing, it's about shipping to end customers. Anything involving the USPS will have almost nothing to do with business-related shipping (b2b). Businesses don't ship stuff to each other with small packets, they ship large quantities in bulk. If you're worried about hurting existing businesses in the US, then stop worrying: US-based businesses aren't dependent on cheap postage from China on Aliexpress. Companies ordering parts from China are getting them shipped in shipping containers, or by DHL/Fedex, not by the USPS in < 1-lb packages.
Like I said, I'm just talking about anecdotal experiences. I have no stake in the trade war, I've just been wondering why shipping from there has taken months in some instances. I'm talking about a pair of shoes, not a washer & dryer.
They just don't have their act together in China in the cases where it takes so long. They put up 10,000 items for sale, stock none of them, then buy them as needed when something sells. They get weeded out eventually by bad reviews. The Chinese companies that do have their act together can ship to US in 3 days for DHL, or 1-2 weeks via subsidized USPS.
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.
To offset the debt that Congress has forced on them by requiring them to pre-fund pensions and healthcare cost for employees who don't exist yet. And Congress sets postage rates as well, so USPS can't raise rates in order to pay down their congressionally-mandated debt without getting approval from Congress. And the requests to raise rates are often denied.
That first article is severely stretching the definition of "getting money". Virtually all of the alleged $18B is attributed to the law that gives the USPS jurisdiction over your mailbox.
The second just reflects Congress's attempts to deliberately hobble the USPS in 2006 by requiring them to suddenly pre-fund their pension obligations.
> The law requires the Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer subsidies, to prefund its retirees' health benefits up to the year 2056. This is a $5 billion per year cost; it is a requirement that no other entity, private or public, has to make.
> hobble the USPS in 2006 by requiring them to suddenly pre-fund their pension obligations
Maybe it's a flawed methodology (arguable), but being fiscally responsible about pensions is something that should be encouraged. In California pension liabilities are out of control and at impractical levels, causing all sorts of havoc and manipulation (corruption). https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/2018/12/07/governor-jerry-...
Fully funding pensions out to 50 years in the future goes beyond "fiscally responsible". Consider that the nominal working lifetime of an employee is only 47 years (18 - 65) -- they're being required to fund pensions for hypothetical employees who are still in high school.
Oh, ha -- so then change "high school" for "grade school". Either way, it seems ridiculous to require a pension to be fully funded years before its beneficiary is even hired.
Talking about people in high school who will end up in public service is irrelevant.
Having more money in the bank than you take out for a car loan is fiscally responsible. Not exactly. More than. That's WITHOUT your holdings (bank account balance) being subject to market forces, which is a compelling reason.
If fiscal responsibility were the goal, they'd have required the other federal agencies to do the same. That this specifically targets one of the few agencies ripe for potential privatization is... suspicious. Even if it made fiscal sense, the sudden switch is problematic.
> If fiscal responsibility were the goal, they'd have required the other federal agencies to do the same
That's not how the Federal government works. It's a LARGE organization that sometimes have people with philosophies align. There is no chance that the military would prefund pensions. I think that, toward the initiative to make the USPS free of subsidy now and in the future, it made perfect sense. The USPS workers used to talk about everything moving electronic, but that's not happening in our lifetime. 50 years is just "the near future", respectively.
Why didn't the same Congressional Republicans who pushed through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 push for similar changes to how other federal agencies fund their pensions?
Why won't the military pre-fund pensions? Why shouldn't they do the same "fiscally responsible" thing for veterans benefits?
> Why didn't the same Congressional Republicans who pushed through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 push for similar changes to how other federal agencies fund their pensions?
I don't know. Probably something to do with the majority of the US population liking the USPS but not everyone wanting more military spending.
> Why shouldn't they do the same "fiscally responsible" thing for veterans benefits?
Probably because congress would never approve another 20%+ on top of the current military spending and still get all their pork in. These topics are an amalgam of political decisions as well as leadership decisions.
I vote for more accountability, reliability and term limits in government. That's rarely a topic from either major party.
It's not "any other business"; it's a shared resource that improves the lives of all citizens. And we WANT it that way. "Any other business" would not offer or employ any of the features we expect from our Post Office (systemwide flat rate parcel & 1st class letter, 6d/wk delivery (for free!), lack of surge/congestion pricing). If you think UPS and FedEx aren't taking profit away from USPS think again.
It has a legal monopoly, the power to tax competitors under the Private Express statutes (this is why there is no FedEx First Class mail competitor), it is exempt from local taxation, and doesn't pay federal taxes to the same extent a regular business would.
> Back when the US was a major exporter the UPU was great for US merchants.
The US is the world's #2 exporter. $1.57 trillion versus $2.15 trillion for China. China's figure peaked a few years ago, the US is likely to narrow that gap, especially with US energy exports continuing to ramp up. US exports of goods are near an all-time high after adjusting for inflation.
Universal Postal Union is a UN body that manages the relationships between different national post offices. They set standard rates and stuff for all member countries so that each country doesn't have to negotiate a treaty with any other country it wants to send international mail to.
"With its 192 member countries, the UPU is the primary forum for cooperation between postal sector players. It helps to ensure a truly universal network of up-to-date products and services."
The USPS gets a monopoly on its gigantic market from the government. That is an enormous government subsidy. It is very much not like any other business.
The USPS does have a special relationship, but it isn't a one way street. First, it isn't a monopoly -- there are many other shippers competing in the profitable segments of the market. Second, USPS is obligated to service every location in the US, and at government-controlled prices.
USPS will deliver, door to door, a letter from Nowhere, MT to Remote, GA for $0.55, even though they take a loss on it. Try to get Fedex to match that.
Perhaps you should look at USPS Publication 542, https://about.usps.com/publications/pub542/welcome.htm, which describes how they have a monopoly and the power to levy what amounts to a tax on anyone that competes in a prohibited way.
But it is. A simple googling gives many hits confirming this simple fact. This one seemed most informative:
> The USPS actually has two legally enforced monopolies, as per Title 39 of the US Code. One is over the delivery of anything defined as a “letter,” which is within certain size and weight limits. The second is over the use of your mailbox.
That is defining monopoly in a very constrained way. You might as well be complaining that USPS having a monopoly over delivering watch fobs. FedEx isn't trying to capture the $0.55 letter delivery market.
I was commenting on your remark about USPS lacking pricing power. I wasn't really disagreeing with you, just pointing out some of the moat between them and pricing power.
The postal service has beenbadly run for decades, with excess deliveries - once a day. Make delivery once a week and chageextra for daily delivery. As e-mail sucked away letters the USPS staff all stayed employed with fat wages as well as fat pensions.
Now those excess people and unfunded pensions have sucked USPS dry and allowed UPS and Fedex etc to craft specialized services to dan lots of $$ from the system.
Deliver all mail to PO Boxes, once a week.Daily delivery is a special fee delivery.
This aggressively selects against the elderly, the poor, and rural and even many parts of suburban living.
I am not, as a rule, particularly fond of rural or suburban living due to free-rider problems, but as long as we choose to subsidize those lifestyles, a prompt and rigorous postal service is necessary. And as long as we have poor (and old) people kept out of the technological race, it is incumbent upon us to not stick a thumb in their eye.
It would be cheaper as a society for us to just pay one-time to relocate these people to more populated areas and set them up with new jobs (if they can work), and then cut off many of their services. Those who choose not to avail themselves of the relocation offer would then have to pay extra for services.
Why is our society responsible for subsidizing rural dwellers' lifestyles anyway? Note that I'm not talking about people living in small towns. These people choose to live this way because our society subsidizes their lifestyle, and don't actually need to live there. People who do (e.g., farmers) don't need any subsidy as they make enough money to afford living where they do. I grew up in the rural South; these people aren't actually contributing to the economy in any way, they just like living in the middle of nowhere, and are enabled by cheap gas prices and the subsidized provision of many services.
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.