Admin note: Thread closed and posts hidden due to major political discussion and offensive comments.
It’s worth it. Think of it this way, somebody has to pay for those cheap shipping options, and chances are, if it’s based on a postal treaty with the U.S. then we’re either paying for it indirectly with our taxes, or directly through higher postal charges on our side of the system to balance out that deficit. In short, I’ll be glad to pay a more reasonable price for shipping in all cases, rather than China getting to ship to us for almost nothing. Competition is ultimately good for consumers. Whoever says otherwise either doesn’t understand Economics or is flat out lying.
Do you really believe our taxes will go down and postal charges on our side will go down as a result of this?
Taxes probably won’t go down significantly by just this change alone. But, this might be part of the bigger plan to reduce our tax load and/or balance our budget. I don’t know on that one. But, the change very well COULD affect positively our international shipping rates if those are being negatively affected right now by the treaty. That’s just logical. If I have a contract with you that loses me money every day, and I get out of that contract, I have saved money. If I was directly passing that cost on to my customers, I have a motivation to pass that savings to them as well, in order to be more competitive. Remember that USPS has competition these days from Fed-Ex, DHL, UPS, and others, that it didn’t have 144 years ago.
If having to pay more for shipping, hopefully shipping times will get better, but probably not, lol.
Poor American buyers… spread and put some Vaseline.
Yeah, I forgot about that aspect. Since Chinese postal services will have to actually compete fairly now, they may have to become better at shipping, like USPS did (sorta) when we gained other competing shipping services years ago in the U.S. I just recently watched a video that said we didn’t have 2-3 day shipping, nor tracking numbers, nor other such things, when USPS was all we had. Since others introduced those features, USPS had to copy them in order to stay relevant.
HaHa! :laughing:
Bezos will feel the pain in the same go, I tell ya
Of course not. Instead of paying taxes for something which benefits common people, we’ll pay taxes to make rich people richer. That has been the basis of US economic policy for most of the past four decades.
But that’s pretty off-topic for BLF. For flashlight purposes, we’ll mostly just have to keep an eye on this topic to see how it affects things. Maybe people in the US will have to pay import fees like most of the world already does.
Very true.
Further, logic that claims shipping charges go down doesn’t work. The opposite is the case, they will go up.
Well…
Let’s just not get too political…
I’d hate to see this thread have to be shut down by sb…
How about we just say “we’ll see” and leave it at that? :innocent:
Shipping is going to cost more than the FL. Say goodbye to the Chinese market for US.
Import fees, maybe even VAT…plus more expensive shipping
Further, that could be efforts to curb Amazon’s de facto monopoly in the US. Otherwise, latest moves toward China dumping make no sense in the big picture. And I think it will come in teh form of increased postal charges within US, which Trump admin claims are also subsidized
It could end up helping Amazon. Instead of getting $3 items from China, since the shipping might cost another $5, it might make more sense to ship an entire load of items to Amazon’s warehouse and then get it as a $6 item with free shipping on orders over $25. Maybe $6 is more than the original $3, but it’s still less than the new $8 price.
Or perhaps there will be more offshore warehouses which aren’t in China, but are located in places which still have subsidies.
It’s hard to say exactly how this will play out… so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Umm… you guys DO realize that our taxes have already recently gone down, right? Also, best Economy in how long? And recently, U.S. now ranks again as #1 most competitive country in the world. And unemployment at lowest in a very long time. Et Cetera, Et Cetera.
I know “the government” doesn’t have a good track record of shrinking its own footprint in Americans’ lives, but can’t you see we’re at least moving in a net positive direction now? In which case, it would be logical to assume this postal treaty was a net negative for the U.S. and canceling it will probably turn out good for us. Whether that means lower taxes, or better postal rates or something else entirely, chances are good that making things objectively more fair will help us somehow.
Exactly, it will without a slightest doubt. That’s why I said there could be efforts to curb that monopoly which is getting even scarier.
Brick & mortar retail is under much more pressure that it would naturally be (without all these existing out-of-balance and out-of-date postal charging arrangements)
Not only that it is positive for US (without getting into why it is postive), but it is also last minute to do that. Otherwise US may irreversibly de-industrialize
Depends on who you ask, and what data they’re looking at. People thought the roaring 20s were pretty great too.
Sometimes it’s useful to spend in ways which increase debt, like to reduce the impact of a crash. But doing it during less dire times is almost always a bad idea, and tends to cause crashes instead of reducing damage.
I miss the days when they actually tried to balance the budget instead of just spending on credit and expecting the next person to deal with the problems that causes. Eventually that bill is going to come due.
