Just about anything I would get that originated in China would get here on a container ship. I can't think of anything that would get sent from China through the mail.
TECHNOLOGY
The End of Cheap Shipping From China
The White House wants to put an end to low-cost shipping from overseas, a move widely supported among U.S. e-commerce sellers.
ALANA SEMUELS
OCT 17, 2018
Every day, Americans buy tens of thousands of cheap products from China—jeans, electronics, things made of plastic. Two months ago, I even bought a wedding dress.
We buy stuff from China mostly because the low cost of living and lax labor regulations allow manufacturers to make products cheaply there. But there’s another reason, too. It’s really cheap to
send stuff from China to the United States, which means sellers there can charge barely anything to ship an already-cheap item 6,000 miles across an ocean. Want an eyebrow razor? On Wish.com, a site that sells products directly from China, you can buy one for 95 cents, plus a $2 shipping fee. A similar
eyebrow razor on Walmart.com, by contrast, costs $2.62 for a three-pack, but there is a shipping fee of $5.99. According to congressional
testimony, at current rates, shipping a parcel to Fairfax, Virginia from North Carolina would cost $1.94. From Shanghai, it’d be $1.12.
President Trump has vowed to alter this equation,
announcing on Wednesday that he is instructing the U.S. Postal Service to levy higher fees on packages from international destinations, including China. The announcement was not very controversial: A variety of parties involved in e-commerce, from Amazon to U.S.
small businesses, to sellers on
eBay, have been calling on the United States for a long time to charge more for delivery on behalf of foreign postal carriers. The changes could help U.S. small businesses better compete against Chinese merchants, while also slowing the flow of counterfeit goods shipped cheaply from overseas.
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[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
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FAIR COMPETITION IN INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING
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Tuesday, June 16, 2015,
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Government Operations,
{C}ommittee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:23 p.m. in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Mark Meadows [chairman of the subcommittee], presiding.
Present: Representatives Meadows, Walberg, Massie, Buck, Carter, Grothman, Connolly, Maloney, Norton, Clay and Plaskett.
Mr. Meadows. The Subcommittee on Government Operations will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time.
The Ranking Member, Mr. Connolly, will be coming shortly. When he comes, we will allow him to give his opening statement.
Today, through the United States Postal Service, it is often cheaper to ship a small package from China than to ship that same package within the United States. Intuitively, this does not make a lot of sense as the nearest coast of China is more than 5,000 miles away from the United States across a very large body of water.
A simple search of any one of a dozen or more websites helps to illustrate the issue. In searching this topic, the Committee staff found numerous examples where small, lightweight goods from China could be purchased, delivered, shipped and with shipping included, at unbelievable prices such as 99 cents for a stylus pen or $1.58 for lipstick.
Prices like these cause the Postal Service to lose money on at least some of this international mail. In fact, the Postal Service lost some $75 million on inbound international mail last year alone.
However, this loss is not necessarily the Postal Service's fault. International mail rates are largely governed by a treaty drafted through the Universal Postal Union, a United Nations organization with over 192 member countries.
This treaty covers the establishment of what they call terminal dues or the amount of money that one post gives to another post for the final delivery of that international mail. Every four years, the UPU negotiates a new treaty, the most recent of which will run through 2018. The stated goal of these negotiations is to eventually create a system that accurately reflects the cost of final delivery in each country.
{snip, as it goes on}
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