Ami Horowitz is an excellent journalist who has published a report on the U.S. taxpayer subsidizing ALL Chinese packages coming into the U.S. This is costing the U.S taxpayer BILLIONS and putting U.S. companies out of business!
PRESIDENT TRUMP ACTS! HE WANTS A SOLUTION TO THIS UNFAIR POSTAL SYSTEM:
In an order issued Thursday to the U.S. Postmaster General and the secretaries of State, Treasury and Homeland Security, Trump called for modernizing the monetary reimbursement model for the delivery of goods through the international postal system.
“President Trump is standing up for American workers and companies who are being hurt by this outdated, unfair international agreement on shipping rates.” – Republican Senator Bill Cassidy
HOROWITZ EXPLAINS IN A VIDEO BELOW:
“Under the UPU agreement, Chinese senders can mail any package to the U.S. and the Post Office will deliver it for less than $1.50. Meanwhile, U.S. competitors must pay the Postal Service a multiple of that in order to have the same package delivered to the same place.”
WE JUST HAVE TO ASK WHY CONGRESS HASN’T DONE SOMETHING ON THIS LOSS OF BILLIONS…
This decades old agreement needs to be slashed. The global agreement created by a UN agency, sets postal rates for the world…who knew the UN is in control of this! All the more reason to end this global agreement STAT!
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS: If a person or company sends a letter or package from Norway to the United States, the Norwegian Postal service will handle the leg from Norway to the United States, with the U.S. postal service taking responsibility for shipping it to its final destination. The UPU sets the rates for both legs of the shipment.
THE PROBLEM: Underpricing of the rates set by the UN agency means millions in losses to the U.S. Postal Service. It’s no secret that the Postal Service is financially stretched as it is but this puts more of a financial burden on them. With the emergence of E-commerce, the losses have exploded.
OUTDATED CLASSIFICATION:
China has taken advantage of the shipping agreement to the detriment of the U.S. One particular aspect of the agreement desperately needs updating. China is still in the same group as they were decades ago! This means the outdated system causes the U.S. to subsidize every package China sends to us!
The countries participating in this UN agreement are rated by how developed they are. China’s rating hasn’t been updated in decades so they’re still in the same tier as they were long ago!
This postal agreement is particularly devastating for small businesses.
EXECUTIVE ORDER FROM TRUMP?
Ami Horowitz writes:
In addition to the massive shipping encumbrance we have placed on U.S. businesses, this has turbocharged the losses of the USPS, since the prices under the UPU agreement are well below the real cost of shipping. These losses, absorbed by the USPS and consequently the American taxpayer, currently stand at hundreds of millions annually and are projected to grow to billions over the coming years as e-commerce continues its extraordinary growth.
And Chinese counterfeit products take advantage of the same U.S. shipping subsidy. This victimizes American businesses twice, who pay to ship products that violate their intellectual property rights. The counterfeit goods industry, as a $1.7 trillion market, is costing millions of jobs and is devastating to the U.S. retail market.
A new e-commerce phenomenon called dropshipping is behaving as an accelerant for these negative trends, allowing growing numbers of middlemen to take advantage of the UPU rates. Without ever touching the product, dropshipping middlemen list and resell products from an e-commerce site, at which point the e-commerce site simply ships that product directly to the buyer from China, using the built-in shipping subsidy. This has occurred most notably with the Chinese e-commerce behemoth Ali Baba’s Ali Express. The number of middlemen now exploiting the UPU system is exponentially aggravating America’s postal and e-commerce problems.
The bottom line is that we are subsidizing the demise of our e-commerce industry at a time when this industry is an increasingly important global economic force. Luckily, this agreement could be renegotiated by executive order, bypassing cumbersome and special-interest laden congressional approval. In one fell swoop, President Trump could change this outdated and faulty agreement, putting our U.S. retail businesses on an even footing with our Chinese competitors.
