The Briefing Room
General Category => Economy/Business => Topic started by: corbe on November 24, 2018, 11:01:04 pm
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USPS is done subsidizing Chinese package shipping
By Michael Czinkota, opinion contributor — 11/24/18 04:00 PM EST
Running a small business that ships low-weight merchandise, say 10 T-shirts or small hardware from China to the United States, made logistics costs easy. The U.S. provided for a large shipping discount of 40 percent to 70 percent.
Such generosity came from U.S. membership in the Universal Postal Union (UPU). Founded in 1874, the UPU is the international postal organization in Switzerland, committed to a smoothly running the international postal system.
In 1969, the UPU’s developed country members implemented discounts for poor nations when shipping small parcels. China then was isolated with few outward shipments.
As a result, the shipping cost of a face cream was more affordable from China for American consumers than it was from Los Angeles. Today, however, China delivers more than 1 billion small packages a year to the U.S., but the special discount treatment continued.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subsidizing-chinese-package-shipping (https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-subsidizing-chinese-package-shipping)
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That was a good thing to do.
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Trump administration moves to stop subsidizing Chinese mail....
CNN)The Trump administration is moving to raise postage rates for foreign companies that ship packages to the United States.
Some countries, including China, currently benefit from subsidized postal rates set by the Universal Postal Union, a United Nations agency.
On Wednesday, US officials will initiate a withdrawal process from the UPU, which was established in 1874 and has 192 member countries. The process to withdraw will take at least a year, and the administration intends to negotiate new rates with the group during that time.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/17/business/postal-treaty-withdrawal/index.html (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/17/business/postal-treaty-withdrawal/index.html)
Winning!
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That was a good thing to do.
It does appear that way.
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It was an antiquated policy that needed to be discontinued, and had to be contributing to the mountain of red ink absorbed by the post office.