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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

The biggest unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequence I expect is that companies that ship from China will pass the extra shipping fees along to the customer, either through higher prices in general, or higher add-on shipping fees. So in other words, many goods will just get more expensive. Having a USPS a bit more flush with cash might have other positive effects, though.

I also wonder how the private couriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc.) will react to this. Do they currently under-price a bit for shipments from some countries to the US in order to compete better with USPS? If so, they might consider raising prices if this goes through.

At the end of the day, though, shipping costs should accurately reflect the effort it takes to ship, and not be artificially depressed unless there's a good reason. It seems like (at least in the case of China) that good reason (under the assumption it was good in the first place) expired decades ago.

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> I expect is that companies that ship from China will pass the extra shipping fees along to the customer

Right, which means that if other companies are selling similar products they can more fairly compete, since the cost of the Chinese product was literally being subsidized.

I see a lot of conversation about how "terrible" it is that tariff or shipping costs will be passed on to the US consumer, but I don't think that's an accurate picture. On one hand, sure if you can only buy a product only from China, then perhaps the company importing it and the company exporting it may raise prices to compensate. They may also not, because you might decide to find a substitute product or because a competitor's product becomes more attractive. They may raise the price, and then Chinese products become less competitive in the U.S. market anyway (assuming there are ready alternatives, which generally there is). Alternatively a higher price means that there may be more participants in the market since there is profit to be made. If prices are artificially low and you can compete on cost with exploitive labor, that's a market inefficiency that should be corrected.

For some reason people have this expectation or entitlement mentality that all of this stuff should be cheap, built on the backs of people who work incredibly hard for not a lot of money. Products naturally should be expensive unless labor is being exploited - people need to be paid a living wage, have good work conditions, and a great life. If that means buying a new set of wine glasses costs $25 instead of $4.99, then you need to spend money more wisely, or not buy the wine glasses, or make sure that you really want the wine glasses. Cheap products based on cheap fossil fuel energy and cheap, exploitive labor fuel consumerist consumption patterns.

Most of my more expensive Chinese made products are sent in with DHL, rarely FedEx. I expect they [DHL/FedEx] will see more volume in smaller packages as the artificially low USPS rates go away. Currently with USPS it costs more for me to send my next door neighbor the same package I can get from China, and I'm on the US East coast.

Yes, prices will normalize to reflect actual cost and not a subsidized rate. This is the fair outcome.

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