In a statement, the White House revealed that the U.S. State Department will send a letter to the Universal Postal Union informing the U.S. of its decision, and the U.S. will conduct bilateral or multilateral negotiations on the new rules within the Universal Postal Union within the next year. If no agreement can be reached, the United States will withdraw from the Universal Postal Union. Relevant scholars and business people told the Global Times that the U.S. move may have an impact on some Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies that have taken a cheap route for a long time, and will also have a negative impact on U.S. consumers and the postal industry.
He felt that he was being taken advantage of
The Universal Postal Union is the United Nations specialized agency that coordinates postal policies among member states. According to the agency agreement, small mail packages weighing less than 4.4 pounds ( 2kg ) currently sent from developing countries to the United States will enjoy a preferential price, namely " terminal fee". Two senior White House officials said on the 17th that the reason for this US " withdrawal" is that the current " terminal fee" policy is unfair to the US, and China and other countries can mail packages to the US at a lower rate under the framework of the organization, " taking advantage of the US".
U.S. Capitol Hill quoted a U.S. government official as saying on the 17th that the current international freight difference is costing the U.S. 300 million U.S. dollars a year. In addition, the low postage also makes a large number of foreign goods flow into the U.S. cheaply, giving it a better market advantage than U.S. domestic sellers. According to the Wall Street Journal, packages from China now account for 60 % of the total number of US mail packages, most of which are clothing, household appliances and electronic consumer goods.
Reported that the agreement with UPU has long been frequently complained by small U.S. enterprises, retailers such as Amazon, UPS and other logistics companies, because the domestic freight price in the U.S. may be four times higher than the price shipped from China to the U.S .. " Delivery of 4.4 pounds of parcels from China to the United States costs about US $ 5; However, American companies need to pay twice to four times the cost of transporting similar packages from Los Angeles to new york, and if they send them to China, the price will be much more expensive. " Want to since
Want to set your own rates
The Wall Street Journal reported that senior White House officials announced the US State Department's above-mentioned measures, saying that the US will continue to pursue its own rates for packages sent overseas to the US. U.S. President Trump issued a memorandum in August instructing the U.S. State Department to renegotiate the freight discounts enjoyed by developing countries at the Universal Postal Union meeting in Ethiopia in September. He warned at the time that if the negotiations failed to bring about major reforms, the United States might decide to set its own rates. At that meeting, representatives of the Universal Postal Union agreed to draft a plan to update the internal system, but said they would not submit it before the next meeting in 2020.
The new york Times said that in 2016, the Universal Postal Union revised the agreement to increase the freight charges for Chinese exports to the United States. However, the United States did not buy it, believing that these changes were not enough to cope with the impact of China's online postage products. The Washington Post quoted US postal data as showing that small packages sent from China to the US surged 182 % between 2011 and 2012.
According to the analysis, the U.S. move of " withdrawing from the group" will probably lead to higher costs for small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce businesses relying on UPU, including China, and thus lower competitiveness, and China's EMS express delivery and postal international parcel service will also be affected accordingly. Small self-delivered sellers on platforms such as ebay and Amazon may have to turn to non - U.S. cross-border markets or adjust their original channel strategies, such as turning to overseas warehouses.
Both China and the United States will be affected
Song Guoyou, deputy director of Fudan University's Center for American Studies, believes that the main impact will be long-term low-cost e-commerce with completely uncompetitive products. He told the Global Times reporter that for most Chinese e-commerce businesses, the " postage subsidy" in each order is not too large, and if necessary, it can be digested in various ways in the future. " U.S. postal subsidies to all developing countries now amount to 300 million U.S. dollars a year, not all of which go to the e-commerce sector, not all of which' subsidize' Chinese producers, so the average cost of each e-commerce to China is not as high as expected. "
" In fact, the U.S.' subsidy' is not Chinese e-commerce but domestic consumers and middlemen," Song Guoyou said, once the rate rises, the bottom U.S. people can only choose to move to other channels to consume or endure higher-priced cross-border e-commerce direct mail products. In addition, in the short term, the U.S. domestic postal industry may also face the challenges of decreasing business volume and declining income of industry staff.
