As part of new tariffs on Chinese imports, President Donald Trump eliminated an exemption for small packages, vastly increasing the amount of parcels US Customs and Border Protection needs to inspect.
The USPS was never intended to turn a profit. It’s not a business. Its entire purpose is to deliver mail to every American, regardless of where they’re located. Making that profitable was never realistic nor necessary for a government service.
The UN Postal Union sets guidelines for international mail that dictates developing countries shouldn’t have to pay full price to send mail to developed countries. Basically if it costs $30 to ship something from a developing country, they would charge $20 and the destination country would pay for the shortfall (dollar values not real). China was a much smaller economy when this agreement was drafted.
The US renegotiated this agreement with the United postal union in 2019/2020 but there were still come compromises made - while the amount of subsidization is minimal compared to 10 years ago, USPS still allegedly eats some losses on every package from China.
Basically Trump is mad because the deal he personally negotiated 5 years ago wasn’t good enough. Same thing that happened with his trade agreement with Canada
The USPS was never intended to turn a profit. It’s not a business. Its entire purpose is to deliver mail to every American, regardless of where they’re located. Making that profitable was never realistic nor necessary for a government service.
It doesn’t have to profit, but it also doesn’t have to subsidize incoming packages from China.
How are they subsidizing them?
The UN Postal Union sets guidelines for international mail that dictates developing countries shouldn’t have to pay full price to send mail to developed countries. Basically if it costs $30 to ship something from a developing country, they would charge $20 and the destination country would pay for the shortfall (dollar values not real). China was a much smaller economy when this agreement was drafted.
The US renegotiated this agreement with the United postal union in 2019/2020 but there were still come compromises made - while the amount of subsidization is minimal compared to 10 years ago, USPS still allegedly eats some losses on every package from China.
Basically Trump is mad because the deal he personally negotiated 5 years ago wasn’t good enough. Same thing that happened with his trade agreement with Canada