@trailer_trash_galswrote:
FYI - As U.S. Postage Rates Continue To Rise, The USPS Gives The Chinese A 'Free Ride'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-usps-epacket-gives-postal-subsidies-to-c...
That's a nice piece that explains to folks - outside the immediate ecommerce "community" - what is going on. Members of Congress and the White House are finally starting to take notice.
About the only point it missed is the why:
The reason why it exists isn’t because the USPS wants to give a helping hand to the hardworking merchants of China, but due to what the Washington Post dubbed a “quirk in an international treaty.”
The pieces are blaming the Universal Postal Union treaty. But nothing in the UPU required the U.S. to deliver ePackets as First Class Mail in the U.S., with tracking. The super low rates and the tracking are the result of the ePacket deals themselves. The USPS agreed to those, not to "increase its presence in Asia" as the WaPo piece suggests... they did it to keep overall mail volume in the U.S. from contracting, which would cause the USPS to have to downsize (employees and facilities). They basically agreed to it to preserve their empire, knowing full well it would lose money, and knowing full well they'd make up some of the losses by raising rates on U.S. USPS customers.
As the Forbes piece points out, it would cost a U.S. shipper $50 to send something to China and get tracking on it. There's no reason we can't do the same, other than the USPS wants to keep all that Chinese mail going through the USPS.
The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.
