Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Trump to pull US out of postal treaty
The US has announced plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty, which the White House says lets China ship goods at unfairly low prices.
Under the treaty, a UN body sets lower international rates for packages from certain countries, a move originally designed to support poorer nations.
But the US says the discounts put American businesses at a disadvantage.
Officials said they hoped the notice of withdrawal would set the stage to agree a better deal.
"We're looking for a fair system," a senior administration official told reporters. "We do hope that ultimately we achieve a negotiated outcome."
The BBC's Asia business correspondent Karishma Vaswani says the move to pull out of the treaty is aimed at forcing the Chinese to give up the developing nation status they had when they first entered the pact back in 1969.
[...] The process of withdrawing from the treaty takes at least a year and the White House said it would be willing to remain in the UPU if negotiations were successful.
The US Postal Service and companies such as Amazon and FedEx have complained about the discounts for foreign shippers for many years.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 21 2018, @04:36PM (3 children)
Then he should start trying to do that. After his colossal failure with a trade war with China backfiring on him the way EVERY ECONOMIST ON THE PLANET would have told him it would had he listened to them instead of the yes guy he hired thanks to an amazon search, he seems to think he'll have a different result by doing the exact same thing from a different angle. If shipping from China suddenly increases then the american businesses that depend on imports from China to make their products at an affordable rate will STILL END UP GOING OUT OF BUSINESS.
The difference here is instead of 10,000 particular items or more being hit by tariffs, EVERYTHING will effectively be hit by a tariff.
This could end up being an interesting "postal war".
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday October 21 2018, @06:25PM
The US is failing the trade war so bad that the chinese are running propaganda in midwest states because they are hurting so bad
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 21 2018, @09:56PM
You'd prefer to see every last manufacturing job in the US moved to China? Trade wars aren't fun for anyone but there are times they have to be fought. Even a loss would be a better result than a surrender.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday October 22 2018, @02:32PM
It's going to mostly hurt people selling on Wish.com and Ebay and that kind of crap. Larger businesses don't tend to use the post office for shipping materials. This should pretty exclusively hit low-volume shippers, which tend to be mostly direct-to-consumer.