No more free shipping from China to USA?

[scuzzyTerminator]

Trump Opens New Front in His Battle With China: International Shipping

The New York Times; Oct. 17, 2018
WASHINGTON -- President Trump plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty that has allowed Chinese companies to ship small packages to the United States at a steeply discounted rate, undercutting American competitors and flooding the market with cheap consumer goods.

Noooooooooooooooo! 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/politics/trump-china-shipping.html

[TK]

I prefer to pay shipping on the items I purchase and not subsidize the millions and millions of packages that get shipped from China at US taxpayer's expense.

[helius]

The Universal Postal Union rules are what control the termination fees paid by China Post to the USPS. UPU considers China to be a mid-level developing economy on the level of Mexico or Thailand; this policy seems out of date.

[xaxaxa]

More reason to move R&D to China.

[MK14]

The ironic joke, is that the ability to buy many electronic components and modules at very low cost, such as $1.50. Means that younger, upcoming American, Electronics hobbyist can/could, with their limited $availability. Learn electronics, and potentially be future engineers.
So in some respects, you are shooting yourselves in the foot.

Also, Chinese custom PCBs, will probably be hit. Because the cheapest shipping options, may disappear or cost a lot more.

Maybe this will not be so bad in practice. Just that the postage costs will be much higher, which is only fair, really. The China thing was exploiting a loophole, in practice. Even though it was legal.

[ebastler]

I have not said that about many (any?) items on Trump's agenda yet, but this one makes sense to me.

The bulk of the effort, and hence cost, of distributing these direct parcels from China occurs in the receiving country: Sorting, shipping across the country, and delivery to your doorstep. And I bet that many more individual, direct shipments go from China to Western countries than vice versa. Yet, the Western postal services receive minimal remuneration for their efforts from China, and hence have to subsidize Chinese shippers via the rates they charge from their local customers.

Doesn't seem fair that, on top of allowing Chinese direct sellers to bybass technical compliance requirements and VAT payments, we also subsidize their shipping costs...

[metrologist]

Time to stock up on Arduino clones?

[SeanB]

Nothing new, the Post Orofice here has been charging a handling fee on all incoming foreign parcels for the last year now, around $2 per small packet, and more for larger parcels, in an attempt to get somewhere close to being only a massive money hole.  Who knows, they might actually make a dent in the mountain of mail waiting at sorting centres for processing, and get the waiting time down for processing to under 6 months.

[rdl]

For nearly every cheap Chinese item I see on ebay, I can find someone in the US selling the same thing. Pay a buck or two extra for shipping, but get it in less than a week. Fair trade off in my opinion, been doing it for several years now. I do still buy from China on occasion though.

[xaxaxa]

Really just depends how much they up the rates. If it's just few dollars for small to medium weight packages then it's no big deal, I'll just charge more for shipping to the US. If it balloons to $30 then my business will become nonviable and will just be yet another case of small business screwed over by big government. And given that my business is registered and pays taxes in the west, I think it's shooting yourself in the foot.

[Bud]

I am looking forward to times when shipping from China will be banned. The world was doing very well before China time.

[MK14]

I am looking forward to times when shipping from China will be banned. The world was doing very well before China time.

With Trump, that could be what happens, as he ramps up the trade war.

[rbm]

.... The China thing was exploiting a loophole, in practice. Even though it was legal.

Kind of the way Trump leads his life.  Questionably legal practices that exploit other for his financial gain, sometime dipping his toe into clearly illegal activities.  Very appropriate.

[MK14]

I bet you cannot compete China. And I'm looking forward to times when people can't compete in the harshest situation will be eliminated.

They don't necessarily need to.
Don't forget, that there are plenty of countries in the world. Many others of which, also have very low costs of living/wages.
So, this could mean that countries like India etc etc. Increasingly produce and sell cheap goods, to the West.

[xaxaxa]

I am looking forward to times when shipping from China will be banned. The world was doing very well before China time.

No, the world was not doing well. I remember the earlier days of the hobby when everything costed an arm and a leg, and hobbyist R&D work at the level we take for granted now was simply not possible. I would even go and say my entire career wouldn't have been possible without affordable tools and parts. I simply wouldn't have been able to develop my VNA if not for affordable PCB prototyping and access to parts. Since I was still a student I wouldn't have been able to afford $500 for pcb+parts.

[maginnovision]

Really just depends how much they up the rates. If it's just few dollars for small to medium weight packages then it's no big deal, I'll just charge more for shipping to the US. If it balloons to $30 then my business will become nonviable and will just be yet another case of small business screwed over by big government. And given that my business is registered and pays taxes in the west, I think it's shooting yourself in the foot.

In that case it actually would end up that you were able to do your thing until the government stepped out of the equation. Right now you're benefitting from a government deal. You've got it all wrong.

[xaxaxa]

In that case it actually would end up that you were able to do your thing until the government stepped out of the equation. Right now you're benefitting from a government deal. You've got it all wrong.

Private couriers in China are cheap and fast and reliable. It's only the western ones that rip you off for some reason.

[all_repair]

In that case it actually would end up that you were able to do your thing until the government stepped out of the equation. Right now you're benefitting from a government deal. You've got it all wrong.

Private couriers in China are cheap and fast and reliable. It's only the western ones that rip you off for some reason.

True, not only that, private couriers charge competitively, yet are highly profitable and efficent. 

[Mr. Scram]

For nearly every cheap Chinese item I see on ebay, I can find someone in the US selling the same thing. Pay a buck or two extra for shipping, but get it in less than a week. Fair trade off in my opinion, been doing it for several years now. I do still buy from China on occasion though.

What do you think will happen to their shipping costs?

[TK]

I am looking forward to times when shipping from China will be banned. The world was doing very well before China time.

No, the world was not doing well. I remember the earlier days of the hobby when everything costed an arm and a leg, and hobbyist R&D work at the level we take for granted now was simply not possible. I would even go and say my entire career wouldn't have been possible without affordable tools and parts. I simply wouldn't have been able to develop my VNA if not for affordable PCB prototyping and access to parts. Since I was still a student I wouldn't have been able to afford $500 for pcb+parts.

It is the mistake most novice hobby manufacturers make, wrong costing derives to wrong pricing and it makes it very difficult to scale the business without increasing the price significantly... it happened to saleae, they had to increase the price and new products are too expensive compared to the initial devices they produced, and I can see tons of products on tindie that are priced for direct manufacturing, selling and shipping and there is no room to grow the business through marketing, hiring, selling through additional channels and distributors...

[TK]

For nearly every cheap Chinese item I see on ebay, I can find someone in the US selling the same thing. Pay a buck or two extra for shipping, but get it in less than a week. Fair trade off in my opinion, been doing it for several years now. I do still buy from China on occasion though.

What do you think will happen to their shipping costs?

Sellers in China will have to charge separate for the shipping and buyers will bundle items to optimize shipping costs, like it used to be... and probably they will end up increasing sales volume

[rdl]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't think the US sellers were be bringing their stock into the country by mail.

For nearly every cheap Chinese item I see on ebay, I can find someone in the US selling the same thing. Pay a buck or two extra for shipping, but get it in less than a week. Fair trade off in my opinion, been doing it for several years now. I do still buy from China on occasion though.

What do you think will happen to their shipping costs?

[xaxaxa]

It is the mistake most novice hobby manufacturers make, wrong costing derives to wrong pricing and it makes it very difficult to scale the business without increasing the price significantly... it happened to saleae, they had to increase the price and new products are too expensive compared to the initial devices they produced, and I can see tons of products on tindie that are priced for direct manufacturing, selling and shipping and there is no room to grow the business through marketing, hiring, selling through additional channels and distributors...

More like their business overhead was too high; if you are an engineering company most of your profits should go into engineering, not sales/marketing/office work, and you should also really try to push your costs down as much as possible so that you can give your customers the lowest price. Have a minimal corporate footprint and keep operating expenses low. Fuck distributors too; they take half the money and add little value.

If I, as a one-person company, can price my products competitively and still have plenty of resources for R&D, then the big names have no excuse. OTOH trying to "grow" the business, hiring, and marketing are great ways to piss away a lot of money and have nothing to show for it; we've all seen how the big kickstarters that raised millions flopped in the end and ran out of money without delivering anything.

[Nusa]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't think the US sellers were be bringing their stock into the country by mail.

For nearly every cheap Chinese item I see on ebay, I can find someone in the US selling the same thing. Pay a buck or two extra for shipping, but get it in less than a week. Fair trade off in my opinion, been doing it for several years now. I do still buy from China on occasion though.

What do you think will happen to their shipping costs?

What alternate methods did you have in mind?

Nearly all the international shipping methods use the USPS for the last mile, except when package size, hazardous materials and/or delivery time demand something else.

And naturally, if domestic suppliers shipping costs go up on foreign goods, then their prices have to go up as well. End result is their customers get it faster, but effectively pay for shipping twice.

[all_repair]

Unless the buyers are just throwing what they buy into bins.  Almost all benefits of cheap shipping goes to the buyers.  Cheap cost of iterations also means faster iterations because one can be more agressive in testing out ideas when mistake is cheaper (or almost free) With expensive shipping, maybe volume of those ebay dropshipper shall suffer a bit, what most expensive and valuable thing that US going to loose is the time of the people trying out their ideas.  If their time and speed correlate to innovations, then it is innovation that suffers.  And able to out-innovate others is the core strength of US.