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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
USPS fares better under ePacket packages than the UPU tarifed packages.
3 weeks container shipping on a super container ship vs. even cheapest truck shipping ?
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.
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'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.
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.
$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.
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 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€.
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.
This is how most fresh produce gets shipped.
With paid for expedited customs clearance it may actually end up faster than ePacket.
Edit: no affiliation, I just use them for my business and they’ve been great.
"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.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
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...
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.
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.
I wouldn't expect shipping charges in the US to magically be lower after this change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Also, is there any reasonable metric by which China is not a developing economy?
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?
why?
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.
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.
http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-mo...
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.
Still, shorter is better.
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.
But hey, look on the bright side... at least there is someone you can sue when your widget blows up.
I've been told this will self-regulate in a truly free market.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
"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.
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.
Which is pretty good, IMHO.
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.
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.
While I agree about the fast shipping part, many of my slow shipping AliExpress packages from China had tracking included.
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?
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.
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.
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.
EDIT: whoops, untrue as below. Disregard this.
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.