No More Cheap Shipping for Chinese Sellers
sellercentral.amazon.com
sellercentral.amazon.com
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.
if this is fallout from the trade issues it honestly is the only good outcome of them
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Eg: chitchats express.
Sometimes Canadians do this for shipments to Canada because it can be a lot cheaper.
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.
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.
I doubt US is letting them bring truckloads in if what I said about tariffs/taxes/duties is untrue.
https://support.chitchats.com/en/articles/1733099-what-items...
No minimum away-from-country time. That's for Canadians, not USians.
3 weeks container shipping on a super container ship vs. even cheapest truck shipping ?
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 :)
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.
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.
Presumably they make a profit on the journey to N. Europe, and take a loss on the return.
USPS fares better under ePacket packages than the UPU tarifed packages.
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
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.
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?
China exports plenty to Africa, no need for such circuitous shipping patterns.
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.
Container manufacturing is very automated, so it can be very cheap to do so.
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.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
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).
(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)
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.
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?
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.
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.
This is how most fresh produce gets shipped.
With paid for expedited customs clearance it may actually end up faster than ePacket.
I guess they don’t realize how old my letter carrier is. Or some dolt figured they could save $0.00000001 on ink costs per package this way.
"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."
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/04/trump_...
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.
Are we going to pretend the UN and UPU have zero power to dictate global shipping rates? Because that's exactly what they do.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjdpz05u2DY
omg...
Guys in the video seem to be showing the pile into sorting machines.
But intl shipping is based strictly on weight, so senders have every incentive to cut weight wherever possible.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.kut.org/post/one-reason-apples-computers-are-mos...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-...
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.
Edit: no affiliation, I just use them for my business and they’ve been great.
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.
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€.
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.)
$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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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 did a larger one (maybe 30" x 20") at Michael's with a nicer frame a few years ago and it ended up being almost $300.
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.
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.
I wouldn't expect shipping charges in the US to magically be lower after this change.
The root cause is that quite a few years ago the consortium of national postal providers which setup agreements on who pays for which parts of international shipping decided that China was classed as a developing country and given subsidized rates by other countries. This wasn't a big deal when the agreement was made because it was before the days of pervasive online commerce, and there just wasn't that much sent from China to other countries via the postal service.
I encourage everyone interested in this to checkout this podcast episode from NPR's Planet Money: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
> The reason for this price gap, Jayme claims, is a secretive group of postal policymakers that meets every four years to fix international shipping rates. A kind of postal illuminati.
> Today's episode: A conspiracy theory that's actually real. How the decisions made behind closed doors make it cheap to buy things from across the world, but are also distorting the global economy.
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.
The problem is when there's a continuous structural trade imbalance, and more packages flow one direction than in the other. Then you have a de facto subsidy scheme, and it makes sense to terminate or renegotiate the agreement and switch to something more along the lines of sender-pays.
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.
The USPS will certainly make more revenue, and in turn they should be able to pass that on by reducing shipping costs for people shipping from within the US.
For companies drop-shipping from China, regardless of whether the person running the business is in the US or in China, the impact is the same. But for US based businesses that inventory items and ship out of the US, this change would be a big advantage.
Maybe. The main benefactor may be Amazon people switch to them. They have the lowest domestic shipping costs (presumably, since they’ve implemented their own in-house couriers).
The actual cost of USPS of delivering a package is kinda complicated. If USPS is going by your house every day, how much do their costs go down if they have 1 less package to drop off?
Dividing total costs by packages delivered doesn’t tell that story.
If prices are raised as significantly as suggested, you think they'll only maybe make more revenue? If the sales completely stopped, or there was a mass exodus (eventually) to Amazon there may not be an increase, but this seems fairly unlikely in the short term.
> If USPS is going by your house every day, how much do their costs go down if they have 1 less package to drop off? Dividing total costs by packages delivered doesn’t tell that story.
Of course, but we're discussing revenue.
What myself and I think most find problematic is that the USPS is actually subsidizing Chinese packages inbound to the US, to the point where its somehow cheaper to send from China than domestically.
That may have made sense at some point when China was still in its embryonic phase of development, but they are well past the point where this is necessary or desirable.
With globalization increasing as it has in the past few decades a lot of the old shipping and carriage agreements become counter productive.
I'm sure most would expect "Globalization" as an idea that was generally in the air would have influenced those who took the actions here as well as the people allowed those actions to happen (which had to include quite a number of US officials).
The thing is that definitely involved a huge amount of money flowing in various directions and so I tend to believe a portion of people making this and allowing this to happen were considering the interests involved also. Especially, some people (small US operations) were screaming about this from the start, why it was hard for them to be heard is worth considering.
And before that? Well, it wasn't a big problem in 2006.
It also gives them a local business address so they can advertise local shipping but a lot of the time you have to wait for the next cargo shipment to come in so something that should take a few days now takes a week or two. This can be helped with reviews but we all know how those get gamed now with sellers flooding reviews or shutting down and starting as a new account.
These are both differences that arise from a business not having a real local presence, but just the bare minimum presence 'for show'. Luckily, most of them are fairly inept and make themselves obvious on eBay by pasting Australian flags and Koalas all over their store pages :)
I'm all for having a level playing field; the UPU rates were anything but.
They will pay higher USPS rates, but that’s about it.
Source is https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library..., and emphasis is mine:
> The implementation of new products that support customers and improve its bottom line is of paramount concern for the Postal Service. In fact, profitable new volume benefits all mailers and consumers in the long run by helping the Postal Service fulfill its fundamental obligation of affordable universal service. Volume is significant because the Postal Service is a network industry and the vast majority of the costs for its delivery network are fixed. Greater volume spread across this network would lower the average unit cost of every mail piece delivered. A service such as simplified address mail, which has the potential to significantly increase delivered volume could dramatically help the Postal Service and all users of the network.
In other words, they are going to visit everybody's mailbox 6 days a week no matter what. Stuffing more mail into it while they're already there costs them very little.
It may not be the stated position of adults today, but it's their revealed preference.
"Zero tax dollars used. The Postal Service receives NO tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations."
Various products will have different tipping points where it just doesn't make sense to ship and/or they aren't getting enough sales to justify it.
Personally, I like it and it seems like everyone wins.. except people who undercut the real product with cheap, inferior knockoffs.
Please cite some examples of geniune products. China is known for making existing products cheaper. The techology area is mostly copy-paste.
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 advantage.
For years the United States has protested the cheap UPU rates that China gets. But the UPU still classifies it as a "developing" nation.
China is the world's second-largest economy. It doesn't need or deserve the artificially cheap rates anymore. China shouldn't pay less to send packages overseas than countries in Africa.
By leaving the UPU, the United States can set correct prices.
It's one of those situations where China claims to be a developing nation when it suits its needs, and then claims to be a developed nation when it suits its needs.
If you're going to play in the big leagues, you have to play by big league rules.
Also, is there any reasonable metric by which China is not a developing economy?
Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Here's another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
That's not what I'd call "reasonable." You have to normalize by population.
You can’t even compare cities to cities, since even an entity like Beijing is structured and defined so differently from how we define a city like NYC or Chicago.
This is why I stressed the ethnocentrism of it all. It’s a country that has developed tremendously but not at all in the same way that we have traditionally defined development in the western sense, and a lot of that comes from its size, its historic dynastic cultures and their political structures, and its population (count and local densities).
I haven't ever heard of the Chinese government claiming China to be a developed country - that was one of the original contentions above. I also think that by any reasonable metric, China is a developing country. There are pockets that are much more developed than others, but the country as a whole is still very far behind developed countries.
China is a undeveloped nation. There are still parts of China where people live on under $40 a day.
Developed nations have a moral obligation to help undeveloped nations
The UPU has been around for decades, but it's only been since 2010 that the USPS has formalized the process with the "ePacket" shipping.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...
If the USPS loses money, which it has been every year recently, who pays the difference?
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...
However here in Norway VAT is being introduced on all packages now, which is going to cut Aliexpress down quite a bit. Previously it was duty free below €35 combined value & postage.
CR2032 batteries are a common item with an order of magnitude markup (20c each vs multiple dollars here).
If you order electronic components from China, you're never quite sure what you get. You might get the stuff that failed QA testing at the factory, or second-hand stuff that's soldered off some old PCB. Or sometimes you get something else entirely... I ordered some LM35 temperature sensors in the TO-92 package, and got some cheap transistors instead. Case was TO-92, markings where as expected for LM35, but a quick test betrayed what was really inside.
In this case I expected them to be fake, based on the price, I just wanted to see what I got. But even if the part is appropriately priced you can't be sure.
China sells a lot of older stock via AliX, so newer chips are hard to find and might be near the same price, but older clonable classics like a 2n7k are dirt cheap and just as good.
The Universal Postal Union rules for how international mail is paid for were established at a time when most mail was letters, and most letters would need a reply by letter.
So on average, every international letter delivered in Country X behalf of the Country Y postal service would be balanced by one letter delivered in Country Y on behalf of the Country X postal service.
No exchange of money between countries needed, and if a country had daily/weekly mail delivery or dense/sparse population or expensive/cheap postal employees or rich/poor citizens or tax/subsidy on post or efficient/inefficient processing that was no other country's business, so long as the number of letters balanced.
In the modern age, the number of letters doesn't balance, because no-one places their AliExpress order by mail.
The UPU agreement on terminal dues sets a sliding scale based on the sending country's level of economic development - less developed economies pay less, while more developed economies pay more. The logic behind this is fairly obvious, in helping less-developed economies to fully participate in the international mail system.
The problem for the USPS is that they are obliged to handle large volumes of mail originating in China, but the terminal dues for lightweight items are substantially below their cost of delivery. The handling of these items is effectively cross-subsidised by USPS customers.
The US is demanding that terminal dues should be set at a flat rate based on domestic postal costs, with the possibility of direct subsidies for less developed postal systems. This would partly (though not completely) reduce the competitive advantage for Chinese e-commerce sellers.
why?
In fact, if global shipping were a country, it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. Only the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan emit more carbon dioxide than the world’s shipping fleet. Nevertheless, carbon dioxide emissions from ocean-going vessels are currently unregulated.
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.
My impression was that this was the argument being made. Shipping emissions could be cut dramatically if more things were made close to their end destination.
According to wikipedia, ships account for 2.2%[1] of co2 emissions. However, the transportation sector as a whole accounts for 29% of co2 emissions. Considering how much ships move, that's pretty good.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Road freight is 1.3 to 2.4 and air freight is 6.9 to 10.5 waaaay worse than any of these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
Still, shorter is better.
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...
In terms of environmental damage, not at all. Container ships burn some of the nastiest, most sulphrous and damaging forms of crude oil in existence, with little to no emissions controls.
I think rail transport is best, but I could be wrong.
This report, for instance (I have not read it completely) says "Rail is generally the cleanest mode of transport for most pollutants" and "Maritime shipping is one of the cleanest mode of freight transport, except for PM and specific sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions". While there is lots of emphasis currently on CO2 emissions, other pollutants are also worth considering.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/specific-...
http://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/sulphur-20...
Athens Greece has a pall of smog over it mostly coming from the ships in the harbor as they sit there spewing columns of thick black smoke into the sky. I don't doubt some of the pollution is from vehicles, but it's pretty noticeable how the particulate smog starts in the harbor and moves inland.
http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-mo...
http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local...
Do courts just do the reasonable thing when contracts stipulate deadlines on dates that don't exist?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
A major benefit of drop shipping from China was the pretty much $1 shipping for almost any item via ePacket.
Obviously the products are still cheaper, but with a 25% tariff on most goods, and what I can only assume will be a close to DHL price for shipping, a t-shirt drop shipped from China will probably cost more than one made and shipped domestically.
To continue to be competitive, drop shippers are going to have to think about bulk imports and warehousing, thus no longer being drop shippers.
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.
This will slow the pace of innovation in a lot of areas, especially among electronics hobbyists. Cheap chinese circuit boards from Shenzen are a major driver for electronics related businesses, robotics, drones, and lots of other areas.
This is going to hurt a lot of people in the US, and put more money in the hands of big business like most other initiatives coming out of the government lately.
All this isn't talking about the elephant in the room, which is the fact that this agreement is changing because our delusional President doesn't like non whites.
It won't hurt robotics or drones companies, that's pure fearmongering. No business is having circuit boards shipped via ePacket.
I have very little sympathy for people who were depending on what was essentially taxpayer-subsidized shipping from China. If you can't do what you're trying to do without that subsidy, you probably shouldn't be doing it. I'm certainly not interested in having the USPS lose money so someone can save a few bucks on a servo or flight controller vs. buying it from a legitimate retailer like Adafruit or Hobbyking (which has US warehouses in addition to its HK ones; I expect they'll need to expand the domestic ones now).
The end-user cost of a good needs to encompass the price of manufacturing it and transporting it, inclusive of as many externalities as we can. Too many problems in the world are caused by artificially cheap goods that don't capture their full cost.
Keeping stuff cheap for the purpose of having cheap stuff is not a noble goal.
So, despite all the people complaining here about "muh dollars subsidizing", that isn't correct. See the USPS FAQ for more info.
The UPU situation was not great, but it has a limited impact on taxpayers.
But hey, look on the bright side... at least there is someone you can sue when your widget blows up.
A different OEM sourced elsewhere was the correct kit out of the box :/
The only other option is to look for the company who builds the OEM parts and find their suppliers. For example, you'll find Exedy builds clutches for companies like Honda. So if you can get an Exedy clutch from your local parts store, it's usually the same as the OEM part.
If you do research too, you'll find that there are a lot of high-quality aftermarket parts suppliers too. If you are looking for bearings, you can usually look for places that sell SKF bearings (or whatever you prefer), and measure and cross reference the sizes to find what fits your application.
So what it comes down to is, it depends on the part, and it depends on what is available from where. It's basically a giant research project for every part.
I think I'll take my chances with the "Mexican" parts you've described as I have seen them installed in countless cars and road deaths have only been dropping year over year.
There is no need for me to crucify myself financially because German plastic is supposedly better than Mexican.
For example, an after-market engine mount isn't going to kill you when it goes bad, but your wallet is going to be a lot emptier compared to just buying the factory part after you replace the damn thing every year. (I've had the experience, I tried a few aftermarket brands, I've since gone exclusively to factory and haven't replaced an engine mount in years)
So is Walmart and Dollar General. It's always been the customer's responsibility to buy the product they want, not the store's. Don't want counterfeit crap? Don't buy IFONE FROM APPEL in the listings. I don't know when the last time I got counterfeit crap from amazon is because I look at what I buy before I buy it.
White labelling is just rebranding; I go to Home Depot and buy some screws, print out a label that says "jrockway's miracle fasteners", slap it on top of Home Depot's label, and sell them to you, that's white labeling.
Counterfeiting is when you inject seemingly-identical goods into the supply chain. You mix up some soap and blue dye in your bathtub, pour it into some recycled Tide bottles, and ship them off to Amazon's warehouse as "Tide brand laundry detergent". Now you are selling them to customers seeking a genuine product, but they're not getting the real thing.
White-labelling is a perfectly legitimate thing. Counterfeiting is a crime.
To be extra clear, your "I look at things on Amazon before I buy them" technique is exactly the sort of procedure that won't protect you from counterfeiting. The counterfeiters already fooled Amazon. Amazon thinks they're selling you genuine merchandise. But they're not. That's what upsets people.
I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't believe this anymore either.
2. I doubt Amazon purposefully sells counterfeit goods.
I'm all for free markets but merchants have proven time and again, and long before China for that matter, that they can't be fucking trusted with anything. Sure, some are good, but the vast majority especially online will do any damn thing they can to increase bottom line.
I've been told this will self-regulate in a truly free market.
This is already a cottage industry, drop shipping. You make a shopify store, put up some marketing of people in sunglasses in front of brick walls, and sell cheap crap like fashion watches. Then when someone buys one, you go on Aliexpress and order it directly to your customers' address.
If you're a real expert in arbitrage, you don't settle for making a couple dollars at a time. You charge people thousands of dollars to "teach" them how to make their own drop shipping stores.
Have you been to Thailand? I estimate these "digital nomad" drop-shippers and drop-shipping-shippers comprise about half the GDP of Chiang Mai
All that is happening is that subsidy is being removed.
I expect going forward Alibaba will open warehouses all over the US which their sellers can stock with goods which can then be shipped domestically for about the same cost. I doubt Alibaba will just go away.
If cheap crap x from China has a moderately expensive source alternative from the USA and stopping subsidising the transportation costs from China makes the moderately expensive option price viable then that's good for the USA supplier without any middlemen being involved.
Pretty sure that's been going on at Amazon for at least 5 years now. There is no shortage of 3rd party sellers importing garbage in bulk (try to buy a Li-Ion battery on Amazon), marking it up to account for their shipping, marketing and the 15% Amazon fee and then selling it to the end consumer in the US.
No electrical engineers involved at any point there either.
I see this as a good thing. It should cull a lot of garbage listings from E-commerce platforms.
https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping
There are thousands of small drop-shipping businesses based in North America that depend on cheap postal service from China. Excuse me while I go short Shopify stock.
I am certain that it is the legitimate businesses that are behind Shopify's success, and this will help with their reputation and give them a chance to focus their marketing on the right customers.
Look, Shopify is a great product and long-term I only see it growing. That being said, I would think the loss of Chinese dropshipping would hurt it's short term outlook.
[0]https://exchangemarketplace.com/shops?businessTypes=21&page=...
I would guess based on the acquisition price that there’s likely a significant enough number of accounts that depend on this whole drop shipping at minimal shipping expense model.
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/shopify-acquires-ober...
Non-Americans: AMERICANS ARE ONLY GOOD AT COLLECTING RENT, AMIRITE?
Oof owie I forgot Silicon Valley was in Europe.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've had to ask you this a bunch of times before. If you continue ignoring these requests we will ban you. Also, I'm pretty sure jrockway is super American—not that it's relevant here, because you can't attack another user based on where they're from or where you imagine they're from.
"This is all related to the Universal Postal Union agreement that allows Chinese sellers to ship products to the U.S. for less than it costs us to ship to the same state."
The USPS has been losing money on this arrangement for a long time, it's one of these things that has stuck around despite being a total embarrassment due to industry pressuring. There is no reason taxpayers should be subsidizing this -- in fact, THAT is the most American of tales, everyday Americans paying for the privilege of bad downstream consequences.
edit: I believe there has been some change recently, the 'ePacket' ? Which is not delivered to your door, but you have to fetch it at a postal point.
So they've been fighting tooth and nail to get that limit removed, which means that every single item gets slapped with additional brokerage fees and what-not, essentially rendering the purchases economically unsound (i.e a $1 item will cost close to $20).
They did the same in Sweden, and IIRC, the post offices ended up with storing hundreds of thousands of shipments that people refused to pick up, when they discovered the new fees.
Our unions have argued that it's good because
1) consumers get better consumer rights when purchasing from domestic retailers
2) shipping times are much lower
3) supports domestic economy - both e-commerce and postal services.
4) Better for climate, as less parcels = less transportation
But yeah, in the end, it's just one more link in the value-chain.
Which is pretty good, IMHO.
Don't you think these two facts are somehow related? They have to go by your house every day anyway, carrying paid junk mail, and the marginal cost of delivering an actual letter is quite low. Maybe a bit analogous to newspapers/magazines, where the price you pay may not even cover the printing costs, but the difference is subsidized by the advertisers.
All dirt cheap, often in individual parcels, shipping cost close to zero.
I always found that funny...
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.
Last I ordered in the US (to Denmark) I paid 30USD flat fee for custom processing... On top of shipping and customs. (On an item worth 20 USD)
OTOH mail from USA is damn expensive. I don't buy more things from USA because of this. And local customs tend to target USA packages more so the chance of paying import tax is way higher, too. Even packages from Europe and Japan are cheaper, and one can see they are more distant places.
"On October 17, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Universal Postal Union (UPU), an intergovernmental organization that sets the rules and rates for international mail delivery. The decision to withdraw has been widely seen as another salvo in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it deems as unfair trade practices benefitting China. This post explains what the UPU is, why the Trump administration is withdrawing from it, the legality of withdrawal, how this decision is related to the trade war with China, and what could happen next."
https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio...
(Emphasis mine)
why "for China mail" ?
why not "no exceptions: all over the planet everybody pays the same local rates, or else we leave the UPU" ?
This smells like hidden import taxation, but I hope I am wrong. But then why insist on phrasing the ultimatum with referene to "for China mail" specifically ?
EDIT: adding another gem:
>Global Supply Chain News: After Three Years of Secrecy, Amazon Starting to Ramp Up Global Logistics Services
>they are actively looking to compete in the shipping industry
...
>The project’s name: Dragon Boat.
>As part of that strategy, Bloomberg reported Amazon had plans to take on freight forwarding and brokerage services directly, eliminating a set of middlemen.
>...
>Among the most important ramifications from Amazon’s vision: small Chinese manufacturer will be able sell to American consumers with no one else than Amazon between them.
So if an American company (in this case Amazon), will perform transport within China, does that mean that reciprocally, Chinese companies can also become a mail service in the US? They could be paid a low wage, and eat cheap food that is shipped internally. Is this really about balancing trade or about big corporations doing to mail, what they did with manufacture: export jobs to China for increased profit?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
>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 3 1/2 times more than what they charge China Post.
Comparisons like this are very misleading. They aren't comparing apples to apples. In particular, they take a retail price for fast shipping with tracking and compare to a wholesale price for slow shipping without tracking.
It's true in general that UPU rates are cheaper than the comparable US rates but by 10-20%, not a factor of 3.5.
Now, back to my question: Do US sellers have access to this slow shipping option?
You described the "if you or I wanted to send a three-quarter-pound package..." scenario as "very misleading", because "They aren't comparing apples to apples. In particular, they take a retail price for fast shipping with tracking and compare to a wholesale price for slow shipping without tracking."
I asked: "Do US sellers have access to this slow shipping option?"
You have not yet answered that question. The "you or I" in this context is not large shippers, and "similarly priced" is not the same as having access to the same shipping options (and prices) that individuals in China have.
You can try to set up a comparison that's closer. That would involve sorting discounts on the US side.
Chinese shippers sending packages through UPU are going through UPU wholesale rates, because they're all processed in bulk before it gets to the US. USPS doesn't pay for getting it from someone's local post office into the US, they pay only once it's already in the US. You can't compare that to retail prices someone pays at a US post office, because that pays for "first-mile" processing.
In which case the Planet Money episode isn't misleading.
While I agree about the fast shipping part, many of my slow shipping AliExpress packages from China had tracking included.
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.
I'm not sure exactly what program AliExpress Standard Shipping is sent through. It seems like it's slower but it's hard to get information. How does the shipping label look?
No clue. It's been a while.
This email is tells me to call congress to NOT withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, under the logic that it will make it harder to ship stuff from the US to other countries.
Honestly this is disastrous for etsy, but maybe it'll help them get back to their roots and be useful again.
1) What are the possible unintended consequences? This is fairly drastic. Certainly, something(s) unforeseen are going to happen.
2) What are the new opportunities? For example, importing in bulk and shipping from here (as opposed to individual orders shipped from China).
I foresee that withing 6 months China will have 100M square feet of dropshipping warehouse space in Vietnam. This is another in a line of Trump "look busy, change nothing" initiatives, the only difference this time (vs the border do nothing initiatives) is that this time the problem is real, unlike the non crisis at the border where immigration is near a multi decade low!
Why would China create more warehouse space in Vietnam, or so many people spend time writing about this topic, if nothing is changing?
Have I taken your comment literally when it was intended to be metaphorical? If so, could you more clearly clarify the specific idea you are intending to transmit?
These agreements (eg INF ABM) are extremely difficult to create, but easily trashed by a single recalcitrant.
It seems like the whole international order is breaking down.
This seems to be more about propping up the USPS’ inefficiencies at the cost of higher prices for consumers.
I had a neighbor for while who worked full-time for USPS. Postal workers provide reliable service, and are able to earn a livable wage without driving themselves into the ground like the contractor delivery services. I like that USPS is a piece of the American infrastructure fabric, and I like that it employs local people in a sustainable way.
I do not consume nearly enough things that require international shipping to value cheap shipping more. And even if I did, the ethical implications involved with destroying decent jobs for Americans and losing a piece of our national delivery network would stil not make it worthwhile sacrifice in my book.
The real question is why are others allowed to do any differently.
Buyers voting with their feet will only go so far.
I realize that you were not actually suggesting that anybody should get killed, just pointing out how it sounded from my perspective, a little off-putting.
I have not seen any arguments of the form "but the price of X will go way up."
I will, China makes good stuff depending on if you do your research to what's quality and is just a cheap piece of crap.
What about the same situation for items shipped from Thialand or Vietnam? There's quite a few of those available as well.
Bad thing is that people blame China instead of the United Nation bureaucracy. :(
Know how cheap and easy it is to get a small number PCBs made in China and shipped to the US? That's over.
So is any number of small electronic parts that would've been shipped free or cheaply from China. Cheap ESP8266 boards? Nope. Cheap automotive relays? Nope. Basically any and every kind of piece of electronics components, modules, etc you can think of will jump in price drastically.
Even if it doesn't need to - it will (like I've seen on the tariffs, prices jumped for small amounts of electronic components just because, even if they were being shipped directly to the end-user consumer - when that's not a part of the tariffs - direct to consumer sales shouldn't be affected, but because the vendors could do it, they did it anyhow - just to make some extra cash).
So where are hobbyists and others supposed to get these parts now?
Digikey and Mouser for some of it. Surplus for others. But for boards and modules and such - well, there's just Sparkfun and Adafruit - maybe a couple of others (not sure?).
But they are likely to raise their prices too, because they depend on the components (resistors, diodes, mosfets, chips, aka the "raw materials") to make their boards (Sparkfun makes them in-house - or at least some of them - but I don't know what Adafruit does).
Or we'll have to pay the extra shipping fees and other costs (because the chinese sellers will just add on some extra cost - just to grab it - it's inevitable).
This will have a ripple effect; small entrepreneurs and startups - kickstarter startups especially - won't be able to compete, unless they base themselves in Shenzhen - because where are they going to get the components cheaper than a competitor who is already there? They aren't made in America any longer (and they never will be again - get that fantasy out of your head if you think that's going to happen).
Radio Row is gone. The original "silicon valley" is gone. Heck, there used to be a ton of computer (mini) manufacturers and businesses here in Phoenix - they are virtually gone, too.
And now with this change - however you feel about it - is going to hobble the next up-and-comers, and current suppliers. At least, that's how I am seeing it.
Now I'll admit - it wasn't fair for competition here - but it wasn't as if China was doing something wrong, as far as I understand it. They were playing by the rules set forth by an international body. Maybe it wasn't fair to us. But instead of letting this kind of thing go on for 1-2 decades, it should have been fixed back then. Now it is likely to destroy or severely change at least one or more areas of enthusiast and hobbyist things (think also RC, drones, etc), as well as probably a ton of other non-electronic things. Do we really think there are that many suppliers here in the US that will charge low prices (competitive with Chinese suppliers) and have fair shipping rates to boot?
The fact is, it will likely still be cheaper to ship it from China, even with the extra cost on shipping - since you're going to be paying that anyhow. For instance - my goto - 12V DC gearmotors. I can buy one kind from a supplier of Ametek (maybe Mouser or Digikey); I will pay whatever the high cost of shipping such an item to my door in addition to the price. Have you ever priced those motors in small quantities?
When you can get them...I've seen prices 10-20x over the equivalent motor from a supplier in China. What would cost $15.00 in China for a single motor, can be up to $100.00 or more from a US manufacturer for the same specs. Let's say it cost $10.00 to ship to my door, whether from China or the US, and let's say the Chinese supplier adds on an extra $5.00 "just because fee" - well, which is cheaper? $110.00 dollars for the US motor, or $30.00 for the Chinese motor?
It's all a farce in my opinion - this administration essentially raising prices, which is going to be passed on to the consumer ultimately, trying to gain support from US small businesses (that's the political angle), at the expense of the rest of consumers, and is selling it with some kind of idea or expectation that this is somehow going to lead to the United States becoming a large scale manufacturer of "everything" that we get from China now. Of course what isn't said is that, even if that fantasy somehow did become true - those items manufactured here would still cost a hell of a lot more to make, and they would be virtually unsaleable on the international market because of that (let's ignore the fact that we'll be lucky if other countries ever buy from us again).
I see a very, very bleak future ahead for this country - no matter what happens with this current administration or the next. Maybe that was always going to be the case. The problem is, prior to this admin, that date was likely out a few decades - now those decades have been erased, and that future is happening now (and it is worse than it would have been had it happened "naturally" I think).
I say if you are an American and are under 30 years of age, and you have any marketable skills at all, you might want to think long and hard about emigrating. Dead serious on this.
The cheapest way I can find to send any package to an address even across the street is $2.66.
Do you just stick a stamp on it and mail it like a letter?
Will you still be able to get your ESP's cheap enough after the shipping change?
I was wondering how Wish.com made money...
As a teenager I ordered a custom mousepad from a website, apparently it was ultimately sourced from China. Never did show up, but it was something like $5 so I never bothered looking into it, chalked it up to a lesson learned.
About four years later I'm visiting home, and in my mail pile sits a random Chinese package. Lo and behold my mousepad finally arrived!
I figure my $5 went towards building the actual factory.
Just hope I can remember ordering it when it arrives 30+ days from now.
This is bad news for Ebay/Wish/some-shopify-dropshippers.
> Shipping is cheap thanks in part to an agreement between China Post and the U.S. Postal Service that allows goods that weigh 4.4 pounds or less to be shipped at low rates. About 15% of Wish’s shipments qualify.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2019/03/13/meet-the-...
[1] http://www.upu.int/en/activities/terminal-dues-and-transit-c...
Let's see how it goes when the price of shipping actually reflects the fact that the $1.50 piece of molded plastic had to take a boat ride half way around the world.
In your example, the drugstore may be selling at cost or at a loss to bring people in the door, or he may actually have a cheaper supplier. But for the Shell Station franchisee, he likely has a contract to buy Shell products from a particular distributor, so even if he could find a lower priced distributor he is unable to use it. That's all part of the franchise business model, where the franchiser double dips by taking licence fees and contractually obliges you to use their services as well. Subway charges high margins for their mandatory dishwashing soap supply for one example.
First, the USPS withdrawal from the UPU was announced in October 2018, which I think predates most of the tariffs: https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio...
Second, China is already paying for the cost of shipping the item to the US shores. The change affects how much the the USPS charges for the final delivery once it arrives here.
This may have a highly desirable side effect of cleaning a lot of junk/fake products on Amazon.
This will also impact Etsy, and perhaps Shopify and eBay.
Or do they up the ante and impose more tariffs on incoming U.S. goods?
Is this something that the Hacker News community actually supports Trump on? More curious than anything - you just don't see a lot of support for any of his initiatives here.
? Why all the downvotes?
- You don't want rent control?
- I guess whatever non-Pigouvian portion of tax/subsidy is also out of bounds?
It does, I agree =]
I don't want rent, period. Housing and means of production are a basic need and should be provided outside of markets.
> I guess whatever non-Pigouvian portion of tax/subsidy is also out of bounds?
Following my system, there would be no money, no taxes, and government would be limited to coordinating between regions for large projects.
What concession? It's a clear market distortion that shipping rates across such distances are so ridiculously low. I'm not sure why anybody is supporting them. This isn't about Trump or not Trump, and always putting these issues in these terms is incredibly distracting from what's actually important. (And I say this as somebody who absolutely despises Trump.)
Come on, everyone supports ridiculously low costs on anything.
You could also say mandate that say breakfast at a hotel should cost no more than $1. You'd get that, but you'd also pay for it via rising hotel prices that would need to subsidize that benefit some enjoy with a higher room fee that everyone would pay for.
In this case lower shipping rates for some are subsidized with higher shipping rates for others, or in some other countries with the same problem corresponding state subsidies for the postal service paid for out of the general state budget.
EDIT: whoops, untrue as below. Disregard this.
Other trade war elements like getting out of TPP and bellicosity in general have cost vastly more than the value of stopping drop-shipping Chinese eBay sellers, which is negligible in US China trade.
A lot of people likely agree the imbalance was hurting us businesses. But fewer agree with how it was done, or want to support Trump.
The reason postage is expensive in the US is because there is a legal monopoly on first class mail, and very little competition for premium services (which is why Amazon decided that launching its own shipping carrier would be highly profitable).
So the blame for high US shipping prices rests with the US government, certainly not with anything China is doing!
I think China is no longer a developing country, should be on equal footing with Western countries now.