Update: The USPS has now resumed acceptance of inbound packages from China. According to the updated Service Alert, they are currently working with Customs and Border Protection to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs.’
Some troubling news hit overnight as the United States Post Office announced via a terse “Service Alert” that they would suspend acceptance of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong Posts, effective immediately.
The Alert calls it a temporary suspension, but gives no timeline on when service will be restored. While details are still coming together, it seems likely that this suspension is part of the Trump administration’s Chinese tariff package, which went into effect at midnight.
Specifically, the administration looks to close the “de minimis” exemption — a loophole which allowed packages valued under $800 USD to pass through customs without having to pay any duties or fees. Those packages will now not only be subject to the overall 10% tax imposed by the new tariff package, but will now have to be formally processed through customs, potentially tacking on even more taxes and fees.
The end result is that not only will your next order of parts from AliExpress be more expensive, but it’s likely to take even longer to arrive at your door. Of course, this should come as no surprise. At the end of the day, this is precisely what the administration aims to accomplish with the new tariffs — if purchasing goods from overseas is suddenly a less attractive option than it was previously, it will be a boon to domestic suppliers. That said, some components will be imported from China regardless of who you order them from, so those prices are still going to increase.
Other carriers such as FedEx and UPS will also have to follow these new rules, but at the time of this writing, neither service had released a statement about how they intend to comply.
Can’t they just pass on the duty payments to the customer like in China – EU trade?
probably, but it’ll still take time to implement something that doesn’t even have any implementation guidelines I guess? It’s not something like IOSS where platforms where able to adapt to something that, well came as a guideline.
It is already being done in other places. Don´t know how the EU one works, but in Brazil the tax is added to the price when checking out the items in AliExpress, for example.
That is the way it works in EU, too.
Confusingly, there are value added taxes and tariffs. Payed are two amounts, 17% to 27 (depending on country, 19-20% in average) VAT and the tariffs (very big muddle depending on the merchandise).
Currently EU talks about removing the 150 € tariff free limit. And adding a shipping costs surcharge.
But as we have seen, tomorrow things might look totally different.
Australia has a 10% tax (GST) added on AliExpress (& Temu etc) as well.
That got added after a local businessman complained we were buying cheap Chinese crap direct from the source rather than from him. F.U. Gerry, we still avoid you. And eff Dick (“Buy Australian!”) Smith as well.
That makes most sense. In Denmark we no longer have de minimis, and since they started charging (and hopefully paying) Danish customs and VAT checkout is much more simplified. Last bill I had for duties and so on was on a parcel from the US
That is happening. This was a less than an hour pause to implement what you just said. It’s a very good move to follow the EU in this.
I think the super cheap China Post shipping from Ali and Banggood and Temu, etc. is still highly subsidized by the USPS and the CCP. If the true cost of shipping is charged to the customer it can be an eye-opener. If they are using container sized shipping by sea to local distribution, which only takes about 12 days, maybe not such a big hit.
The legacy postal arrangements that made for absurdly low postal rates from the far east… we all know that that is too good to last forever. But this new tariff bullsh1t and axing de minimus… just dumb.
No container is going to get you your goodies in 12 days. They will add another week or so for inspection and sorting, and then they’ll charge you for processing and storage.
Think we could set rates since 2020.
https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/universal-postal-union-vote-down-proposal-shipping-rates/563667/
Can’t speak for anyone but myself, but my last several AliExpress orders haven’t involved any postal services at all. Ali seems to be bundling shipments via Cainiao (their in-house logistics company) and then handing off to small last mile services once the stuff reaches the US.
In short. China will continue to sell and the tax gets payed by the US consumer. It’s another way to put government hands in people’s pockets.
Flashback. I expect this may be next. No more free rides for the “developing nation”, LOL, called China, the same fantasy that gets it a free ride in other areas, too (see graph below):
Update October 2018: The Trump administration has announced plans to pull out of the Universal Postal Union which would effectively end ePacket.
For many years, sellers in China have been able to ship for less from China to America than local American sellers can domestically, thanks to something called ePacket.
In 2010-2011, USPS entered into an agreement with Hong Kong Post and China Post that came into effect in 2011 to offer a shipping option called “ePacket”. What an ePacket basically boils down to is that merchants in Hong Kong and mainland China could now ship packages up to 4.4 lbs, with tracking and 7-10 business day delivery times.
But here’s the kicker – shipping a package from China to the U.S. is about $1 cheaper than from within the United States. That’s not a typo. It’s $1 cheaper to ship from China to the USA than from the USA to the USA.
Fixed the title:
China is building six times more new coal plants than [all other] other countries [combined], report finds – March 2, 2023
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin
“Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas,” she says. “We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined.“
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/US%20China%20fossil%20fuels.png
It’s strange that this loophole continues to exist in the UK too whilst people are bemoaning the death of the high street and this is primarily why.
China games the system. All and any systems. In all and any industry.
It’s been taking the mick on the postal system to get the inbound country to pay for delivery for far far far too long and it’s time the loophole was closed.
“China games the system.”
And Trump during his first term said he doesn’t blame them for that because the loopholes were there for them to game. That’s just smart business. However, he was totally obstructed from doing what he wanted during his first term which is why he’s moving so fast now to “flood the zone” and give his opposition too much to specifically target and deal with.
Unfortunately, thanks to corporate owned governments that ALLOWED it, mainly since the 90s, China has proved the great truth of this old communist adage: “A capitalist will sell you the rope you hang him with.” So, I think Trump’s actions may be too little, too late. The entire world is already far too dependent on the output of a police state on capitalist steroids unlike the Soviet Union which was inevitably doomed by its economic system.
Trump happens to be right.
But an isolationist should be closing them loopholes.
Dont weep for the UK. We voted in the wrong people at the wrong point in history and we’re going to pay dearly for it.
They’re trying to be pals with China and totally forgetting about Hong Kong and an open border policy for people China consider to be dissidents.
It’s going to end badly.
I don’t know how they do it in the UK, but it’s a little unfair to say it’s just China. US businesses absolutely do everything they can to skirt around laws/regulation, hide money, get the best deal possible, etc. I think that’s the part of ‘free market economy’ or capitalism that doesn’t get regulated by itself b/c it’s a concept, not a human with (hopefully) a conscience.
And yet I didnt say that.
They are the worst by a country mile.
It’s their entire model of how to destroy the West and y’all keep buying the tat.
Not sure what China’s coal use has to do with the article but so what? They are also the ones ramping up their green energy projects the most.
I may not like their form of government but I will have to give them this credit, what they are doing does not look like a nation that is attempting to be the biggest polluter it can. It appears to be the largest nation in the world by population, third largest by land ramping up it’s industry trying to catch up in every way that it can, both green and dirty.
I point this out because usually people pointing fingers at them for their coal use are trying to make an excuse to not “green up” their own countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
A lot of what China does is also corruption and mismanagement in their own economic system, like building ghost cities or wind farms that aren’t connected to the grid, or not producing because of transmission capacity limits. The government cronies write the contracts for themselves and get the money, and everything looks good on paper, while the actual power used by the exports industry comes from coal plants – and that’s the point: when you buy from China, you’re peeing in your own cereals both in terms of losing money from the economy to trade imbalance and displacing workers and incurring greater social costs, AND producing more CO2 and other pollution globally than if you were making the stuff at home for a nominally greater price.
Importing stuff from China has the same fallacy as delegating work to “robots”. If a person needs $30 an hour to make the average living, and you substitute them with a robot that costs $4 an hour, the person still needs the equivalent income of $30 an hour to make the same living, which has to come from social welfare or some other scheme like economic gambling or providing non-productive “services”. That means your total cost for the two – man and robot – is $34 which is more, not less. The only way you “save” any money as a society is by reducing the living standards of your population by increasing income disparity, so a greater portion of your population is living below the mean.
China is building coal plants AND nuclear plants as well, sometimes even very near each other, the idea is if you look at a satellite photo of China at night half the Country is black, China is trying to bring it’s own people into the 21st Century by running roads and electricity to EVERYONE. The coal plants can be brought online very quickly while the nuke plants take longer, so as the nuke plants come online the coal plants will be shut down.
In theory. In practice, demand outstrips supply by far and both remain in operation into the foreseeable future, or at least until the plants reach the age of decommissioning, which is 60-80 years. If you’re worried about climate change, that’s far too late – they never should have built the coal plants in the first place.
One thing that is a real shame is they could have used renewables early on and boot strapped it sooner but chose the cheap and easy route of coal.
you think this wasnt already happening? who do you think pays the cost of shipping on packages from china that cost a buck to ship. the buck goes to china post and the cost of shipping inside the us is passed on the the post office and ultimately paid through hikes in postage or by the taxpayer. were used to having a (mostly) free lunch, but that’s not sustainable.
It’s completely sustainable. I’m totally fine with rich taxpayers funding the shipping costs for my cheap Chinese tools. Works for me.
They’re not. They’re passing the cost onto you through the price of basically everything and through evading taxes.
I was thinking about that this morning, as someone who lives in another country that the US is imposing tariffs against. A tariff is such a weird thing — like a sword with a blade for a handle. If you want to stab someone with it, you’d better be prepared to maybe cut a finger off in the process.
Not if you’re wearing a glove. The basic idea of a tariff is that you collect a tax which you then spend back on the people, so the people should generally not lose over the tariff because you spend it to investment in your own economy. It’s a different matter if you’re mis-using the revenue to pay government buddies instead – but that’s beyond the principle of it.
Should add: the fundamental point is that when two countries have a difference in living standards – how much people get paid in real terms – then under the ideal laws of economics, the two societies tend to equalize: the people in the richer country lose and the people in the poorer country win. You meet somewhere in the middle.
If there is a country that deliberately maintains low living standards for its people by despotic rule to remain the cheaper country for the benefit of its ruling class, it will drain the richer country and not improve the living standards of their people. The tariffs can level off this difference by virtually increasing the price of imported goods to equal the domestic goods and stop the drain. In principle, it’s a necessary action against the abusive regime, but where it ends up depends on how the richer country is spending the tariffs collected: on the people or on the elite?
The problem wit tariffs is it assumes there’s a local source – for most of the Chinese imports there isn’t.
And if there a local manufacturers, they promptly price-gouge by raising their prices to match the imports, like what happened with steel in the USA.
(And of course kicks off a trade war, as the soybeans farms how tariffs works out for them.)
For the moment.
The idea is that raising the import price will encourage more domestic companies to enter that sector of the market, because there’s money to be made. You can’t expect that to happen immediately – things have to get worse before they get better.
Most likely the local source you have now is just surviving at razor thin margins against the overseas competition, or losing money and facing insolvency in a few years time. Companies need profit to expand, hire and develop their products. The fact that they’re able to raise prices to something that is sustainable for the long term is not price-gouging – it’s simply returning the prices to a level where your own companies can survive. When you have money in the market, competition arises, and that competition settles the prices to a minimum level that is sustainable in your economy.
Thinking that you can pay less than sustainable prices is what lead to the off-shoring of all productive enterprise in the first place. The loss of value-producing business leads to the introduction of non-productive “services” that are simply about getting people to spend money and grabbing some from the middle without introducing new value to replace the spent. This latter non-productive sector is then surviving off the imports, because they want to minimize the money they spend to maximize the money they take from the economy – they’re fundamentally just traders, and the society can’t survive by just people buying and selling to each other.
It is a way to collect a tax without recording every part of your life like income, number of children, deductions, etc. etc. Like a sales tax. The US ran on these taxes before 1913.
It’s long past time tariffs were introduced on goods made by near-as-damn-it slave labour in state-funded manufacturing facilities. Some of the stuff I’ve seen on AliEx costs less to make and ship across the world than the raw materials cost in this country. Supporting that helps nobody.
Yes and epacket shipping granted by the US makes it cheaper to ship from China to the US than WITHIN the US.
Buying exactly the same stuff from a domestic vendor (because a lot of stuff is exclusively made in china, unless you pay 20-50x as much) who charges 5-10 times as much, isn’t really helpful either. Might as well buy it straight from china, if the alternative is ‘We put in a middle man with additional profit margins for the hell of it’.
True. See my comment below. Too little, too late.
Here applies, “it has to get worse before it gets better.”
thing is when good are made in china for a domestic company, there is at least some accountability in terms of quality standards, product safety, user support, warranties, etc. when you buy directly from china, a sketchy no-name corner cut product where once you pay they are done with you. sometimes the 20x markup is worth it, sure beats products that work for weeks before catching on fire.
Honestly I’ve had better luck with no-name imports than made-in-USA stuff.
With all the hate Trump gets, I can totally understand that you want to put taxes/tariffs on stuff coming directly from china. The EU collects VAT for stuff privately imported from China (~20% depending on country). Aliexpress directly forwards that money to the country. IMO thats a good thing.
Of course the EU told everyone in advance this would happen so everyone could prepare. Instead of causing chaos by being a lunatic.
Shame ebay doesn’t. They charge the end user and then pocket it.
Many/most China based sellers are also registering for VAT fictitiously.
Do you realize that in China following the rules or laws of other countries is in business considered optional, unless you’re going to suffer from not doing so?
Isn’t that how it goes with any rules, anywhere? The suffering is what makes a law a law.
Trump is doing what is called in US football “flooding the zone” or what I call “giving the clowns too many balls to juggle.” He learned well from his CONSTANT and highly successful obstruction during his first term.
Additionally he is doing the “I want to be famous” thing.
Just add so much stuff, have so many plans, create so many ideas that in the end one or two might remain. And brag about everything.
I think (and hope) in the end all his plans will fail. We are in the F*ck around phase. After that we will slowly see the Find out phase. The goose will learn that voting for Christmas might have been an error. Slow process, takes time.
Also known as “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.”
A fool that persists in his folly will become wise.
Wasn’t he already pretty famous?
I do wish the bragging used the word “we” more frequently, but humility is not a strong suit with Trump.
The failure has already happened. A slow process that took time. The finding out was being suppressed.
I thought him being elected the third time was the “Find-out” phase.
It’s not obstruction when someone puts the rule of law above obedience.
We don’t have VAT in the US, exactly, but AliExpress already collects and pays state sales tax on US orders. So they have the mechanism in place.
On a totally unrelated note, there has been a sudden surge in packages arriving from Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc.
Fine. They’re not military adversaries of the US and the West. What our corporate owned governments have allowed proves the old communist adage heard in various forms, being the basic message of a much longer quote by Lenin, “A capitalist will sell you the rope you hang him with” except, in this case, we funded their rope factories, allowed the IP to be stolen without consequences, and then BOUGHT the rope they hang us with.
My comment was in reference to Chinese shippers evading tariffs by routing through neighboring countries…
Sorry, understand and that’s probably what will happen.
Another way to get around this is for the Chinese sellers on Amazon who ship from China via USPS epackets, the ones with the LONG shipping times, to simply bulk ship to Amazon at which point the price will increase slightly because Amazon is then in the profit loop.
Well, creating warehouses and shims in these places brings more money to China than following other coutries´ rules.
IMHO the whole problem boils down how the shipping fees for small goods are fixed by the universal postal union (UPU). AFAIK China is still considered as an “emerging” country. Therefore the fees for shipping something from China is much less than the real costs and the difference has essentially to be paid by the postal service of the receiver’s country. IMHO this does not fit anymore considering China’s economic power. As far as I have understood what was decided in 2019, the fees for China will increase gradually. But countries are also allowed to negotiate bilateral agreements if they are not happy with the current situation.
With a space station.
“an ’emerging’ country”
“With a space station”
And rovers on the moon and Mars albeit neither working at this time.
USA say googby to cheap HW! Long live EU!
Nah, there are numerous ways around this described above.
i stopped ordering from china some time ago, mostly because of counterfeit parts, and because an american seller is more likely to be accountable for flub ups, and retailers who sell asian goods out of us warehouses also greatly reduce shipping times.
frankly idk how the buck i was paying for shipping wasnt completely ripping off the usps, there is no way you can ship domestically for less than a buck. im usually willing to pay more for shipping, if they can get it here in less time than amazon takes to move it to the end of the conveyor belt to actually mail it.
also it appears that the tariffs are more to force a re-negotiation than anything. both mexico and canada have negotiated a temporary halt to the tariffs so that a better arrangement can be made. this will i hope in time also bring china to the table, though trump’s stance on china is significantly more antagonistic. it will make prices go up in the short term.
what it will not do is bring back american manufacturing, there just aren’t enough people to work the factories, especially while cracking down on immigration. a reduction in bullcrap jobs may help, and i suspect the reduction in dei policies will allow companies (and even the government) to stop creating unnecessary positions just to fill quotas. this would free up some of the labor force for manufacturing. but i cant imagine that would create that big of an impact on the job market. except maybe a boon to the legal business.
“american seller is more likely to be accountable for flub ups”
i’m not agreeing there. for example, i used to be loyal to form futura’s easyfil PLA filament. form futura is in europe and i’m in USA. i didn’t want to buy direct from form futura because of the expensive shipping and all of the unknowns involved in that. so i bought from US-based distributors. but despite my best efforts, i never succeeded in buying from a given vendor twice. every time i ordered a spool, it came from a new vendor. and i continued to do that until i got a spool that was humidity-damaged and then it was no longer “trouble free” and my brand loyalty was over.
my experience of amazon (cheap goods fraudulently mislabeled) versus temu (cheap goods as such) suggests it’s not an isolated incident. the specific dynamics around reselling imported goods in the US are bad for accountability.
there’s a huge variety of kinds of markets and vendors and everything. but buying from US distributors has put me in contact with a series of fly by night irreputable vendors.
i don’t have any remedy, i’m just pushing back on the generalization.
Never tried Temu. Every time I saw a deal I cross-shopped it and AliExpress had a better price, (and AliExpress doesn’t make me play the one armed bandit or spam me from my friend’s address book.
i dont like temu because its constantly checking if im a bot. i had to do 3 capchas before i found the thing i wanted, then found it cheaper on ebay.
There are millions and millions, they’re just working somewhere else (with better pay and working conditions). Now that their slave labor is getting deported, factories need to step up their game if they want workers. Supply and demand applies to labor, too.
” Now that their slave labor is getting deported, factories need to step up their game if they want workers. ”
$15x40x52=$31200 in payroll plus another $2806.80 to cover employer share of taxes=$34k if they pay no benefits.
Bots could work double shifts, maybe even triple shifts if they can be hardwired or have batteries hotswapped to avoid charging breaks. Weekends and holidays the factories or farms keep buzzing with bots.
Musk is planning pump out 1m Optomus robots a year at $30k a head.
It might not be them, but there will be companies that succeed in these goals in the very near future.
That puts each bot at the equivalent of 2.8-4.2 workers.
That drops “labor” costs to $3.57-5.35/hr if the robot only “lives” a year.
The minimum wage in china is ~1.62/hr but the average factory worker earns ~$5-6/hr.
So once the bots are capable, and produced, its a competitive possibility.
There are ~11.8 million factory workers in the US. There are ~2.6 million farm workers. Together thats only ~4.3% of our population.
3-5 years @1m bots a year could potentially cover ALL of those jobs.
About 5–6% of the value of China’s manufacturing sector is destined for the US. As of 2024 they employed ~112 million workers. So roughly 6 million workers are earmarked for US production. While I realize thats not how things work in reality, humor me. An increase in US factory workers of ~50% would cover our chinese factory produced goods pushing the number of robots required from 3-5M to 5-7.3 million.
Self Driving Trucks could eat another 3.55 million jobs, pushing the “robots stole our jerbs” figure to ~5.36% of our workforce being displaced.
Any new factories or increase in trucking capacity above current requirements wouldnt be LOST jobs, they just wouldnt be NEW jobs.
Add in the fuel savings and pollution reduction NOT shipping goods from china to the US……
“I for one welcome our robot underlings”
It was found during the demo those robots were being puppeted by someone over the internet.
Besides Tesla aleady lost this race to a Chinese company Unitree.
During A DEMO in 2024 they were being partially puppeted. That means that their systems motion systems were functional enough to perform the complex movements demonstrated. The rest is just programming and time away.
And yes Unitree has theirs, So does Agibot, Agility, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure, Fourier, Kepler, Sanctuary and 1X just to name a few. Like I said, It might not be tesla, but there will be companies that succeed in these goals in the very near future.
Using Musks recent claim of being on the cusp of producing 1 million a year just made the easiest jumping off point for the discussion of the potential for worker replacement in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
How much in groceries, electronics and clothes does a robot buy per year? How about services, do they eat out at restaurants much? I just wonder how much demand for the products they make will be if nobody has a job because of them.
My earlier post mistakenly cited percentage of our population rather than the percentage of our workforce. So the 5.6% engaged in trucking, farming, and manufacturing was short. The actual figure for those three industries combined is closer to 12%.
In 1900 41% of our workforce was employed in agriculture. 15% were in manufacturing
In 1960 Only 8.7% were employed in agriculture. while 32% of our workforce were involved in manufacturing,
In 1980 Agriculture had shrunk to 4% and Manufacturing to 20% of our workforce
In 2000 Agricultural employment represented a mere 1.9% while manufacturing had shrunk to below 15%
By 2023 Agricultural employment only accounted for 1.2% and manufacturing 9.7% of our workforce, While trucking engaged only 1% of our workforce.
As times change so does the distribution of the workforce.
If we reached a point in which employment of all forms becomes unnecessary and unavailable, Then we would no longer be able to sustain a capitalist system as we know it. Some form of socialism, communism, or progressive utilization theory would have to take its place.
Unless you wish to entertain a dystopic solution of mass sterilization, Medically mandated euthanasia of the elderly and infirmed, and the expansion of capital offense to include most any crime or antisocial behavior, spiraling the population down to a few percent of the wealthiest or otherwise deemed worthiest, in which case a substantially smaller set of farms and factories would be required,
In a situation in which ALL vocations were almost entirely automated the government would need to regulate the prices, production, exportation, importation and allotment of essential items, while taxing non essential production, exports, and imports sufficiently to ensure the funding of our populations needs.
What a shame for everybody that didn’t vote for the village idiot, which is just under half the population.
For the other half: this is what you voted for. It sucks to be dumb I guess.
For most other things that have been dreamt up so far I would totally echo your comment, and trust me, I have no love for the newly elected POTUS, nor for his … associates (to avoid vernacular language).
This time: not really. I’m totally for removing the no longer “emerging” economy of mainland china from that list and make their postal service pay for the transport. If products still are competitively priced so be it. I’m all for global movement of wares, with the addendum of products having to comply with the laws and regulations of the country they are imported into. It also sucks a lot to get stung with a forged IC.
One major point of criticism: the time frame. Announce this with a certain lead time. A month or three would make all the difference for US consumers.
It wasn’t about the cost of postage, it’s about slapping crazy tariffs on trade with enemies and long-term allies. His actions border on extortion, and he is rapidly destroying the US reputation of being a reliable trade partner.
I agree that the postage situation (which is the same in the EU) is crazy, and that should change. Nowadays, packages from AliExpress are often bundled, reducing the handling cost later in the chain. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to order several things at once, and paying for the consolidated package to be delivered to your door.
However, his completely unhinged actions are not the way to accomplish things and still be friends afterwards.
“His actions border on extortion, and he is rapidly destroying the US reputation of being a reliable trade partner.”
No, a reliable trade sucker. Look at the tariffs placed upon it by other countries including China. Fact is, the US is the consumer market that most all other nations depend upon. Look how fast both Mexico and Canada caved on those threatened tariffs which were threatened simply to get them to better secure their borders with the US.
Foreigners only get their superficially impression of what is going on in the US right now from their biased media which is as biased as the mainstream media in the US. If you actually had a DEEP understanding of what is ACTUALLY going on here and why you wouldn’t be criticizing it.
And, NO, I don’t worship any politician let alone Trump.
Why is the new administration bullying neighbors into beefing up the borders to keep stuff OUT of the US?. Can’t the US provide its own border security?
And why isn’t there a huge outcry on those huge additional taxes on the US residents that you call tariffs? This is money paid by US residents, and that money is going directly to line the new administration’s pockets. Nobody outside the US is paying a single penny of those taxes.
@Paul
If we tariff Mexico 25% and Mexico retaliates with a 25% tariff then we export $362 billion to Mexico, while importing $493.1 billion. It looks like we are impacted MORE by the tariff than Mexico.
But if you take into account that 76-83% of Mexico’s exports go to the US, and 42% of the imports come from the US, While only 12.6% of US imports come from Mexico, and only 16.6% of our exports go to Mexico. It becomes clear why Mexico quickly folded to Trumps demands.
The same holds true when you look at Canada who sends 75.9% of their exports to the US and receives 62.2% of their imports from the US. While that only amounts to 17.3% of US exports in total, and 14% of our imports.
While the US is those countries PRIMARY trade partner, our trade portfolio is much more diverse.
China’s more like us in that regard. Trade with the US only makes up 16.22% of their exports and around 7% of their imports. That accounts for 16.5% of our imports and 7.5-8.6% of our exports. This is why China takes a tariff and gives one back and both countries populations eat the “tax”. Its business not politics. Whereas the Mexico/Canada tariff was more political tactic than business practice.
The US pours quite a bit of money into our own border security. Pressuring our neighbors, who seem to have no real concern for the porosity of our shared border, into ponying up their share just saves us the money and manpower needed to increase that security.
“better secure the border”
From all the illicit substances coming from Canada? Plus the majority of drugs coming from Mexico are through legal points of entry, manned by USBP it’s not about securing the border.
@Anon
There are around 50 places to cross the border between the United States and Mexico. These crossings include roadways, rail lines, and a ferry.
The U.S. Department of State estimates that there are around 120 land ports of entry with Canada. Add to that The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system moves more than 160 million tons of cargo each year between the United States and Canada.
97% of the precursor chemicals for the worlds fentanyl supply are produced in China. The fentanyl produced by the mexican cartels isnt homegrown, it is fueled by chinese chemical imports.
In 2022, China shipped 268,990,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) to Canada.
Canada’s largest minority after its indigenous people are of Chinese descent comprising 4.7% of their population. 71.6% of which were born outside of Canada.
There are 10 major Chinese criminal organizations operating in Canada.
The often cited 22 pounds of fentanyl coming from canada only representing 0.2% compared with 21,148 pounds at the Mexican border, about 96.6% is not a indicative of how much fentanyl landed on our streets. It merely demonstrates the disproportionate effort placed on our War on Drugs on our southern border.
Given our enhanced border efforts in the south, coupled with the porosity of our northern border, Its only logical that the more successful we are at curtailing Cartel controlled fentanyl the more lucrative the opportunity for chinese importation through Canada becomes.
I am not particulary fond of him and his cohorts either but some kind of tax was bound to happen eventually though maybe not as blunt and ham fisted if the other candidate won.
At least if the other side won and did it maybe the money would have gone to funding something of beneficial to society.
Well, he’s definitely not from a village. I doubt he’s ever seen one in person either.
except its not dumb. the point was not to have tariffs, the point was to force a re-negotiation of terms. and in the case of canada and mexico, its working.
Why not keep track and update in 12 years?
Dunno if it sucks to be dumb. Us dumb people sure are happy right now. How you doin?
It’s already outdated news as the halt is over. It was just for an hour or so. But I’m glad to see that the US is following the lead of the EU.
Seems apropos, though I acknowledge that many will disagree:
“Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.”
anyone who has a fruit tree will tell you,
good trees bear good and bad fruit.
Bad trees bear good and bad fruit to, just less abundantly.
Really bad trees bear nothing at all.
You plant more trees than your land can support.
First you cull the trees that grow too slow.
Then you cull the trees that produce the least.
Then you cull the trees that used to produce the most but have faded with age.
Then you plant more trees.
That’s a powerful analogy for politics, especially in the context of leadership, ideologies, and policies. The “trees” represent political systems, leaders, or parties, and the “fruit” symbolizes the outcomes or benefits that come from them. The idea of culling trees reflects the ongoing process of evaluating the effectiveness and relevance of policies, leaders, and parties—deciding which ones still serve the community’s needs and which ones are no longer producing results.
The cyclical nature of planting more trees speaks to the idea of renewal, evolution, and adapting to new challenges, while also acknowledging that not every investment (or party, policy, or leader) will succeed at the same level.
Spider mites ate my tomato plants this summer. I’ll know what to look for next year. I’m getting ready for the collapse…learning from those citizens of Detroit that stayed.
How is this being re-framed as a question of subsidized shipping? This isn’t a shipping rake hike. It’s a stop on the delivery of already agreed and paid for goods under the guise of supporting a totally artificial fee, a tariff which is a tax on the consumer.
If the shipping is losing money, raise the rate. Deliver what is already contractually obligated to be delivered but don’t sell any more shipping at the cheap rate.
If you are going to add tariffs. Don’t. But if you are going to anyway then add them to all the future sales that have not already been finalized.
This whole “I’m stopping things right here, right now” stuff is nothing other than a display of authoritarian power.
They’ve already backtracked.
https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international/suspension-of-inbound-parcels-from-china-and-hong-kong.htm
But the de minimis exemption is gone, meaning big delays on every package. The estimate is 3.7 million packages per day from China that will need customs duties applied (including ones that already did have that).
This is already a common thing in the UK, where VAT is charged on items imported into the country from china. For a while you’d get a letter from imports asking for the fee to be paid before the item was released. Now it’s all automatic / added on at the sellers end.
One workaround we used to use for a while was to put in the order “Please Mark as Gift” since gift’s were exempt from the VAT, but I’m guessing that probably won’t work in this case.
If it encourages building items in your own country then I’d say its a good thing long term.
But I’m not a US citizen at the same time so I’m not in a position to say what you should or shouldn’t be doing.
Shein is getting around that by using exactly this system and destroying the high street in the process because the young ones dont care about slave labour as long as they look good for cheap on tiktok.
Almost like it was planned…
I might be wrong, but I thought development boards used to be exempt from VAT? Not any more though, apparently.
UGH, I have a Ryzen 7800X3D and 7700 inbound. Hope its not crazy expensive to pay duties.
I’m an AliExpress junkie! Waiting to see what happens with some orders I have already on the way. And I ordered a couple of cheap things earlier today to test what will happen going forward…
Lately most of my packages have arrived via their own courier, not USPS. And much of it is being pre-staged at US warehouses. How all this will be impacted I cannot fathom to guess especially with Mr. Unpredictable running the show.
And what half-assed scheme does the administration have for magically creating “domestic suppliers”??
The materials I order for my job are anywhere from 70-400% higher with larger MOQs if bought from US suppliers rather tham Chinese. Half of these materials simply arent made in the US. This will majorly impact bottles, glass, plastic and cardboard which are used to package everything anyone ever buys. It gives companies an excuse for further inflationsploitation
70-400% higher domestically?
So youll just eat the 10-25% in tariffs and still come out ahead.
Packaging and raws make up a very small portion of my companies COGS. Inflation has raised our packaging costs by 10% in the last 3 years and our raw material cost by that much in the last 18 months.
In the last 9 years our city has raised minimum wage from 9.75 to 15.95. Thats around 7% increase per year. Weve always paid well over minimum and, despite no mandate to, have more than matched the increase in our remaining employees wages. Unfortunately we have reduced our workforce by nearly 50% and automated a number of previously manual tasks to maintain our expenses.
Our big 3 retailers take 60% of our production volume, down from 85%, would phase us out if we changed their bulk wholesale price. So we had to increase our b2sb and dtc sales to keep our net from slipping as our COGs has risen over the years. Our products retail has stayed stable across all channels.
Adapt or dissolve. Thats capitalism for you.
Clutch my pearls! Oh man so China will go back to shipping personal parcels to Uncle Chang in New York lol? Good. Tax the shit out of Mordor. The epak mess and sample paks were garbage we subsidized twice over as consumers and taxpayers.
Also why no report on the MONTHS LONG Canada Post Union strike? This crap lasted all of two hours lol.
My comment has been deleted with some others…. really??? what’s the heck??? I would be little beat interested to know if it’s come from hackaday’s staff or an offended reader, but i think i will never know. It’s seems that to be kind and respectful to people is not anymore a thing? The worst thing, Isn’t this the rules of the comment section?!?!? Or we just have to be respectful to the people easely offended, who think their action doesn’t have any consequences?
Are we not suppose to be in a place focused on science and tech? One of the science fundamental is Action – reaction . Pure and basic science. No reaction without action. For anyone who doesn’t acknowledge this, I will recommend reading Lavoisier’s, the little guy who just made chemistry a science, the little guy who laid down a big part of the basis of all the actual scientific world…