Australia Post has long had the same problem with shipments from the US.
They've recently opened a warehouse in Oregon, where they'll receive domestic US shipments, and deliver to you in Australia for a separate fee. https://shopmate.auspost.com.au
They've recently opened a warehouse in Oregon, where they'll receive domestic US shipments, and deliver to you in Australia for a separate fee. https://shopmate.auspost.com.au
I imagine the labour cost is one contributor within Australia. Without volume, no one wants to be doing runs to the post office for a dollar.
With products from the US, I've routinely bought things from Amazon and shipped US-AU and saved money easily - hard drives, memory cards, and even things for which the shipping should make it cost prohibitive like a full-size baby pram.
It's good for consumers, but also means the domestic e-commerce is severely underdeveloped.
It is by no means a fix but the government is not always making it as easy as you would like to skip on duties added to level the playing field. Postage aside, which is skewed by treaties, the main purpose of import tariffs is to offset labor costs which they do pretty well in my opinion.
I do have to say that in my experience buying from both China and local (Europe) the European product are always of higher quality if you buy cheap, even if the country of origin was China in the first place. Since that is not always needed, you buy China, otherwise local.
You can ship a package in 3 days all across the EU for under 4€ with DHL. I know, because I’ve done so several times.
Stuff that’s small enough to fit in a letter even for 80ct across the entire EU in 2 days.
In fact, the domestic shipping market in the EU is actually cheaper than getting international parcels.
So a disclaimer to my original claim: applies only to a subset of European countries.
And so I shipped a bunch of HDDs from Germany to the Netherlands in 3 days for 3.40€
And if you’re a company, you get a ~90% discount even. The cost isn’t in shipping, but in the employees in the store picking up your package. Pre-Sorted packages delivered directly to a hub are really cheap.
so no, it's not Nil.