Trump Derangement Syndrome!
The Universal Postal Union was established in 1874 to govern the interchange of mail between countries.
When mail is sent from one country to another country the country completing the delivery receives part of the fees paid by the customer in the originating country.
In 1969 a program was created by the UPU to encourage trade from developing countries by allowing them to more easily export items via their mail system. Developing countries would be given discounted international postal rates by developed countries. This was essentially a subsidy of postal rates for these less developed countries - a form of foreign aid. Even with this discount for certain countries USPS always made money on foreign mail.
The problem with this agreement was that China was considered a developing country. China was neither a developing nation in 1969 or in 2010 when eBay decided to abuse the intent of this agreement.
In 2010 eBay was the prime negotiator for a tri-party agreement between eBay, China Post & USPS. This agreement allowed Chinese vendors on eBay to create eBay branded labels to ship their items to the U.S. using these ultra cheap postal rates.
This program allowed packages of up to 4.4 pounds to be sent to the U.S., with these packages being classified as First Class Mail once they reached the U.S. The public was told this program was needed to create income for USPS. The public was told that these Chinese packages would help offset the income USPS had lost due to declining domestic first class volume.
Those were complete lies!
USPS was actually losing money on each package. This program was only running for approximately 1/2 of 2010 yet USPS saw it profits on foreign mail drop dramatically. By 2011, and every year since, USPS lost increasing amounts on foreign mail due to abuse of this program. Other companies such Amazon then copied eBay's abuse of this program. Annual loses increased each year and reached over $300 million. This abuse cost USPS billion sin loses.
Chinese companies were thus allowed to dump goods into the U.S. while bankrupting USPS and destroying American jobs. All this was done so eBay & Amazon could earn commissions off these sales. USPS made up for the loses by raising its rates which in turn earned eBay more money off shipping fees. USPS also made up for loses by cutting services.
In 2006, Congress passed a law that requires USPS to prefund 75 years worth of retiree health benefits in the span of just 10 years at a cost of $110 billion. No other government agency or business is required to do this. The public was told that this money was be collected for future USPS retirees, but the funds are instead being diverted to help pay down the national debt. Like money paid into social security all these years the money is not actually sitting in an account earning interest - its already been spent by Congress with a IOU being given in return.
USPS had lost money for 13 years straight and most of those loses have been due to this retirement funding mandate. In 2019; for instance, 83% of USPS's $8.8 billion loss was due to this bill.
Who has rejected major postal reform for years due to the political contributions from companies such as eBay, Amazon, UPS, FedEx and others? Congress does!
For eight years Obama ignored all calls to put an end to this UPU abuse which has cost USPS billions in loses. For 8 years Obama did nothing about ending the retirement mandate form Congress. Yet Obama has the nerve to suggest that Trump is trying to undermined the post office when Obama is quality of that charge for 8 years.
Within months of being contacted by concerned citizens about the abuse of the UPU program Trump warned other countries that the U.S. would withdrawal from the UPU if these abuses were not ended. When they did not listen Trump began the 1 year withdrawal process as established under treaty. Facing with losing access to the world's largest economy via the mail system the other countries agreed to end the abusive rates. Trump saved USPS from losing further billions from stopping this abuse alone.
