• bjorney
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    96 days ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      5 days ago

      You’re ignoring the fact that the person who ordered the thing is in America, and are acting like this is a subsidy for China.

      Not everything is zero-sum.

      • bjorney
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        25 days ago

        Yeah, and the person who ordered the thing from China is getting their shipping cost subsidized by the American taxpayer, while someone who orders something domestically has to pay for 100% of their own shipping. It literally is a subsidy for China

        • @[email protected]
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          5 days ago

          for fucks sake this entire conversation is bullshit. the whining about pittance of tax dollars spent on packages from china is entirely designed to make you stop paying attention to the absolutely obscene mountains of tax moneys going directly to american billionaires in the form of tax cuts, bailouts, and yes–fucking subsidies
          honestly gtfo with this bitching about the USPS

          • bjorney
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            35 days ago

            You should try scrolling up and looking at what the context of the discussion is. Someone asked what was being subsidized, I answered, you swooped in with a bunch of self righteous off-topic remarks.