US Announces Withdraw from Postal Treaty; International Shipping Prices to Rise | Hacker News Reader

US Announces Withdraw from Postal Treaty; International Shipping Prices to Rise

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27 pointsYoms7 comments

> The treaty in question is the Universal Postal Union, which established that each country should retain all money it has collected for international postage.

Without the Universal Postal Union, how will fees be calculated when shipping from the US or to the US? Does every country have to sign a new agreement that could include yearly collection or payment of taxes?

Yes, I would assume that if the US isn't part of the postal union then foreign post services have no way to send letters and parcels to the US anymore unless and until they negotiate service deals with US operators.

The same should apply for sending letters from the US to anywhere else in the world.

The Wikipedia page on the Universal Postal Union states:

"Prior to the establishment of the UPU, each country had to prepare a separate postal treaty with other nations if it wished to carry international mail to or from them."

The referenced articles seem to only focus on the US-China relationship. What about the impact it will have between the US and the rest of the world? Will other countries be less apt to purchase US goods from abroad?

I don’t think it is very fair the Chinese can ship very cheaply to the rest of the world but this seems like a heavy handed approach.

It used to go in the other direction. This treaty was beneficial for the US in the past.

Well you would be surprised that you can buy a sub-dollar item (eg: [1]) on AliExpress and have it shipped all the way from China to your home in US. Just the shipping within US using USPS costs at-least $3.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/SHUANGR-fashion-1-pair-5-sty...

Lest we forget that the USPS seems to have been quite OK with how things worked:

http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2010/pr10_058.h...

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