
The U.S. can now set its own rates for mail from China and other countries - rjzzleep
https://www.ecomcrew.com/why-china-post-and-usps-are-killing-your-private-labeling-business/
======
kevindong
As a gag gift, I've bought a phone case from Aliexpress for a friend. The
total, including shipping, was $0.46. The case itself did fit the phone and
was technically usable.

I've bought a bunch of small trinkets from Aliexpress. For the most part,
they're the same exact things you can buy off of Amazon for ~$5-15, except
they take 2ish months to be delivered. For some things, it actually does make
sense to just wait that long (e.g. a Google Home Mini wall mount) in exchange
for the savings (>= 50% is normal).

~~~
walkingolof
The hidden cost is the enormous strain it puts on the environment...

~~~
dogma1138
Unless one of the cases is manufactured under considerably different
environmental standards and locally that isn’t the case.

The higher price on Amazon is due to two factors - local reseller markup and
expedited shipping.

Heck many AlizonExpress sellers will have multiple listings for the same
product at different prices based on how fast they’ll ship.

So we can safely assume that both items ship from China.

So we can more or less safely assume that both are shipped from China.

Now when you wait 4-6 weeks for a delivery from China you are essentially
waiting for them to fill a container, when you pay more for a shipping you pay
for the extra shipping space wasted by expediting your shipping.

This is because of how international shipping economics work, international
shipping is economical when it’s full to the brim since shipping companies
have a flat tonnage tax.

This means that shipping companies are taxed based on the total tonnage
capacity of their vessels not the actual amount or value of the goods they
transfer.

Unless you source something locally in a manner that it’s actually
environmentally more sounds that statement is false.

And don’t forget that even buying locally doesn’t guarantee any better
environmental outcome, for example buying a 3D printed case form someone on
Etsy is likely just if not more polluting than buying an injection molded case
from China since the filament, resin and heck even the 3D printer itself came
form China.

~~~
baybal2
I used to run a small business when I was in college in Canada 2010-2012,
selling sunglasses on Ebay, and later Amazon.

It was super low effort. Buy wholesale on Alibaba, tell the seller to send
goods to packing, and silkscreen shop, and send by _regular post_ to my
apartment. Very often, fancy packaging was costing more than sunglasses
themselves.

Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only
like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years. Customs bill was pretty much nothing, and
they never contested the valuation, but the extra paperwork was very
unpleasant at the time when I had to study.

Then you sell $1-$2-$3 sunglasses at $100+ prices. Just make decent websites
for all made up brands you have, have good marketing fluff, and make sure to
call them with some Italian/French sounding name.

You make at around 10-15 sells per month, but what else you want with that
level of effort? Second to that, I was very unsure of my tax/legal status at
large if that business were to become too big. Being kicked out of the
country, with all my money in that degree wouldn't be fun.

~~~
willyt
Did you ever check to see if they filtered UV correctly?

~~~
baybal2
I'm sure, I was at least not picking polycarbonate glasses for reason they
look, and feel too toyish, and too many of them would be scratched in
transit/pop out of frames unless overmolded.

For the same reason, I did not risk buying plastic frames. They break/bend too
easily.

I'm still amazed that Chinese factories managed to make optical grade glass,
cut, and polished for glasses almost as cheap as molded polycarbonate.

~~~
synsynack
It should be the exact opposite.

When buying fake sunglasses or unknown orgin, always buy polycarbonate plastic
lenses as these filter out most UV light.

It's the fake glass lenses that are a culprit and can be very harmful to your
eyes.

I have tested this with a UV light.

------
half-kh-hacker
I'm not American so I'm probably just used to other systems, but does a public
service _need_ to be profitable?

Think of it like a "cost centre" in a business, does the utility outweigh the
price?

~~~
ipython
The trouble is that we are subsidizing the shipment of items from China. It’s
sickening when I have to pay $5 to send something within the US, yet the same
item would cost $.50 from China. You could buy something for $1 from dx.com-
shipping included! Crazy.

So while I agree with you that we don’t necessarily need a profit motive at
the usps, at the same time the taxpayers don’t need to subsidize cheap crap
from China.

~~~
Barrin92
I guess the taxpayers are also the people who buy stuff from China so by and
large they're just subsidizing themselves?

Given how ubiquitous ordering stuff from China is these days I'm not really
sure the first impression of this being some good deal is accurate.

In fact subsidizing transport to a degree might probably have a progressive
effect because low wage earners are more likely to order cheaper foreign
goods.

~~~
unishark
Both the seller and the buyer benefits from the subsidy, while only the
taxpayer pays for it. So the net benefit is to the chinese seller and net loss
is to the taxpayers, which only partly mitigated if they are buyers too.

~~~
drdec
FYI, the US Post Office is an independent agency with its own budget. It does
not receive taxpayer money.

So really what was happening is that other people or companies sending mail or
packages were subsidizing overseas mail and packages.

~~~
asciident
I would make the case that they do receive taxpayer money. They have a legal
right and monopoly to show ads in your mailbox. Without that, they would not
exist. Imagine if Facebook were legally allowed to drive by your house and
play recordings of ads over a loudspeaker every morning. Facebook would pay
the government for that privilege. The government is selling your attention
daily (worth billions, if anyone company were to have the ability to charge
for it the same way), and giving it to the post office for free.

------
exabrial
Besides losing money, the biggest thing that bothers me about USPS is the
sheer volume of waste they deliver to my mailbox every month. That is a lot of
diesel and gasoline burnt, not to mention raw materials to create the paper
that it's printed on. We could make a massive dent in greenhouse emissions by
charging actual prices.

~~~
ddingus
You do realize the Post Office is entirely funded by Postage?

The "loss" is artificial, imposed by the Bush administration, which required
the Post Office to prepay benefits so far in advance, that at the time of the
decision, there were people not even born yet, who would go to work for the
Post Office having bennies paid for now.

Frankly, the Post Office could meet that burden if it were not also for deep
rate cuts that essentially force the Post Office to deliver for big publishing
at a loss.

Yes, that volume is significant, and Congress is responsible for it, and the
artificially low costs for it today.

The Post Office is in the Constitution and it must be run by the Federal
Government.

Many in said government want to further privatize the Post Office which in
every other way has given the nation exemplary performance, at respectable
rates, while serving everyone equally.

I am always saddened, and a little bit disturbed, to see the hobbling and
abuse directed toward a clear example of a public service delivering a net
good so well.

Prior to that mess, the Post Office made regular and significant contributions
to the treasury, funds to be part of the General Budget.

It is a shame to see leadership priorities and politics cause so much grief.

~~~
Supermancho
> it must be run by the Federal Government

That's a little broad. Oversight would be sufficient.

~~~
agentdrtran
It would very much not be, oversight is a codeword for doing nothing when the
oversight is as defunded and weak as ours.

~~~
Supermancho
"it must be run" is not in the US constitution. That's the point I was
disputng. The OPs comment is just as valid, and stronger, without this small
hyperbolic statement.

Your comment about what oversight means, is separate and also not legal or
factual. It's partisan comment that adds nothing.

~~~
ddingus
Read it again. "Create" does not mean purchase from someone else.

It means Congress needs to do it.

"Shall" has specific meaning too. "Shall" is not optional. It means "must" and
or "will"

And that is the basis for my comment.

------
cm2012
Random aside. It's hilarious to me how people are worried about data Facebook
has on them, or freaking out about address data being leaked in a hack.

Direct mail marketers, since the 1980s, buy lists of huge swathes of
Americans. These lists include full name, address, estimated income, political
affiliation, companies you've worked for - and the records are pennies each.

~~~
speedgoose
It doesn't contain the list of people I am friend with on Facebook, and people
I'm very likely to be friend with, while I'm not friend on Facebook.

It doesn't contain my GPS coordinates over years.

It doesn't contain the list of my interests, based on my likes and the
tracking of my web browsing.

It doesn't contain an analysis of the conversations with my friends and
family.

It doesn't contain the pictures of my weekends and holidays, uploaded by other
people.

It doesn't contain my face.

However it's still quite bad and such dataset shouldn't be available like
this.

~~~
Aperocky
tbh, there's an upper cap on how much information an individual is worth.

Say a pretty basic personal information (address, income etc) cost a dime each
person, it can get deeper and deeper until it is no longer worth any extra. 10
political opinion from this person? Interesting. Full reddit history? Maybe
worth 2x the former. Facebook images? probably worthless. The point is that it
quickly gets to the point where all of these information are noise and
essentially worthless to an advertiser.

It is completely another story when you have people with authoritarian
intentions coming in though.

~~~
cm2012
The government goes straight to the ISP 90% of the time anyway for things like
internet history, and to the cell phone companies for location.

~~~
novok
Centralized internet properties are probably good for foreign intelligence,
but then the risk of that to people is also far less.

------
netcan
This whole saga shows us a lot about the institutional shitshow at the base,
mechanical level of the economy.

FYI, this is not an anomaly. In Israel, amazon did a deal with the national
postal service that gives amazon packages priority. Before that, Aliexpress'
free delivery ruled. It's easier in Israel, because there isn't a local amazon
to compete with faster shipping.

Long story short, local businesses pay much more, for slower local delivery
than global companies shipping _internationally._ This is on top of de facto
exemptions from duties & product regulations.

Israel is a tiny country. Geographically, it's a city state. Local ecommerce
is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has extra advantages.

~~~
Avamander
> Local ecommerce is not viable because international is cheaper, faster & has
> extra advantages.

I disagree, some companies in my own country try to claim the same, but when I
look at the market, there are a lot of players, a lot of profit being made, it
can be done.

In a sense I have a suspicion that this is just some companies gotten lazy and
not realising multitude of thing e-commerce provides. People want warranty, a
nice fast mobile app in their native language, fast shipping, to support local
companies - there's quite a lot a local company could offer. But a customer
doesn't want to pay 10x as much and get quarter of that, that should be very
clear.

~~~
netcan
These things aren't absolute.

But, at least in that country, you cannot use the postal service or major
delivery services to deliver packages locally for a similar cost and delivery
price as internationals... With amazon being the recent, and blatant culprit.

They deal they did with the postal service are not a secret. Neither are
delivery times.

Monopolies, and the effect they have on the economy are not newtonian physics.
It's not deterministic. Economic structures create prevailing winds, not
airtight control over outcomes.

Postal services are a structure. The structure creates a prevailing wind that
heavily biases an outcome.

------
afwaller
Wow imagine if you could exploit mail rates between various countries with
some kind of international mail pricing arbitrage

~~ Charles Ponzi

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi)

------
DeonPenny
This actually needed to be fixed. It allowed for dumping of cheap products and
made american companies uncompetitive. This fix was long time coming.

~~~
pnathan
Back when I first heard about this, I read up on it: it seemed to me that it
was quite time to move China off the list of "extra cheap shippers". I know
it'll have a number of knock on effects over the next few years, and I'm not
sure what those will be for the average American.

It'll be nice , in theory, to be able to set up a widget shop in the US and
sell to China at the same parcel rates that my counterpart in China could, to
the US.

------
Fragoel2
It's yet another of the unfair advantages that China had over other countries,
stemming from treaties signed decades ago that no longer make sense.

Glad to see it gone (and I'm not even an American).

~~~
ketzu
The "unfair advantage" is not one sided and otherwise considered developmental
aid for developing countries (as developing countries, rising them out of
poverty, seems to be the best overall strategy for humans). The classification
of china as developmental country is complicated, but you can't just look a
Beijing skyscrapers and go "yeah we're done here." (Or you can, but that's not
very helpful, one option would be GDP/c
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita),
although, thanks to the huge population, the gdp overall is quite high) also
it depends on the time of evaluation.

Until recently the US was on the winning side of the deal, too (according to
wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shifting_balances_and_the_United_States)
) they even blocked an increase of dues in 2010. Until they started to lose
money in 2015. Now it's unfair and a decades old treaty (even though it is
adapted all the time and serves valuable reasons).

------
fyfy18
A bit off topic, but does the US have import tariffs or customs duties for
items purchased abroad?

In the EU for most items over €20 purchased outside the EU, you will need to
pay customs duty and VAT, and possibly a processing fee. The rates depend on
what exactly the item is, but can be quite substantial. I bought an action
camera from a site like GearBest (I can't remember exactly which one) a few
years ago for ~€60, and when it arrived I needed to pay another €50 in fees.

If it wasn't for this I would buy a lot more swag - as most companies will
ship from the US, it means a $25 t-shirt would end up costing me closer to
$50.

~~~
ascorbic
The important things is that the US doesn't have VAT, which makes up the
majority of the cost. The de minimis value for import duty is much higher, and
the rate is much lower.

~~~
AnssiH
Do you have some source for the lower import duty rates?

They heavily depend on the specific item category - in my experience usually
0% or ~5% for the tech items I've imported (but that is not really enough to
draw any conclusions from). The de minimis for import duty in EU is 150€
(compared to $800 in US).

Edit: here is the Finnish Customs duty calculator:
[https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-
calculator?current=goods&cu...](https://tulli.fi/en/customs-duty-
calculator?current=goods&currency-id=1) (VAT is Finland-specific, duties are
the same EU-wide). A quick look shows that e.g. phones, computer components,
and DVDs are 0%, which probably accounts for most of my €150+ imports and thus
explains my experience above...

~~~
ascorbic
That's the kind of level I was thinking. Compared with VAT levels of around
20% in most EU countries, with a de minimis level of around €15, I'd call that
a low rate and high de minimis level.

Edit: it seems there's no de minimis threshold for VAT anymore, so that's even
more of a contrast

~~~
AnssiH
Ah, sorry, I misinterpreted your post.

I thought you meant that USA import duties are much lower than EU import
duties, but I now see you meant EU import duties are much lower than EU VAT
taxes.

Completely agree then.

The removal of the €22 low-value exception for VAT will happen in EU on July
1st 2021, so not in effect yet.

------
tehjoker
"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."

This system was undoubtedly maintained so that US business could get cheap
labor rates in China. Sending mail from China should be more expensive than
domestically if the cost is based on distance. However, that would be a
barrier to trade. US business spent the 90s trying to outsource manufacturing
to China and a barrier to trade would foil that plan to exploit cheap labor
overseas and avoid unionization domestically.

Clearly the US national business community must feel threatened by China's
changing policies or by a change in their negotiating position or this
wouldn't be going through.

------
guug
Hasn't this already been addressed by US's new deal with the UN?

------
techntoke
Guess that means they should start selling more mass spam mailers with no way
to opt out.

------
chaostheory
This is old news. I'm not a fan of Trump, but his gambit on withdrawing from
the UN Postal Union is one of the few good things that came from his
administration.

~~~
president
Looking at all the flagged child posts, seems you have invoked the wrath of
the "orange man bad" patrol. Very sad state of affairs for critical discourse
in this country.

------
SecurityMinded
Why aren't they asking the recipients pay for the loss ?Obviously people are
so gung-ho for buying cheap chinese crap from ali-express or wish, they can
pay the additional couple of bucks to hav etheir packages delivered to them or
send them back to china.

~~~
Johnny555
That sounds like a bigger loss of money - having the postman collect a couple
dollars for every package would be labor intensive and result in multiple
delivery attempts, and if the recipient didn't pay, then they'd have to return
the package to the shipper, so the package would have 2 trips through the
system.

Collecting more money from the sender sounds like the better solution.

------
econcon
And government makes boatload of cash by changing tariffs, port clearance, and
tons of other fees etc... If you remove all of them, we can get wayy cheaper
price than what we get.

------
classics2
Want a real shock? Look up what it costs to send a 4lb package from the us to
China, the exact same package they pay $18 to send.

~~~
bluesign
Because China subsidize the cost of shipping from China to US. But US is
charging you for that part.

Also for big mailers, they are even subsidize in US shipping.

This is kind of political theatre, US sellers will never match up with chinese
sellers even after this change, even not in 5 years.

US is trying to close this 75M usd gap in 5 years with this agreement, what
china will do? They will just subsidize 75M more.

This 75M will not make any difference in US pricing of mail. Chinese will
continue with free shipping, US prices at best will get little lower.

------
lazylizard
If the usps is losing money every package..why don't it stop delivering those
packages? Or deliver less of those packages?

Like. Do some QOS?

~~~
jariel
It's a very reasonable question, and the answer is the USPS should not do
this.

The Postal Union predates the UN by at least 50 years, the notion that each
nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce as we understand it
and doesn't make sense.

This program should have been abolished decades ago.

~~~
buran77
> the notion that each nation would honour each other's mail predates commerce
> as we understand it and doesn't make sense

Is this that much different from net neutrality, phone call routing, email
routing, etc? Should an ISP have to carry data belonging to other services?
Should a mobile operator just refuse to route calls coming from another
operator or country? Should Google refuse emails from another email provider
or country?

I pay to get my mail delivered to a foreign country and both source and
destination postal systems get a cut. Honoring the deliveries works in the
favor of all sides. If the implementation is bad fix that, don't drop the
system.

~~~
jariel
I see what you're saying but it's not quite the analogy you're looking for in
Net Neutrality.

In shipping, they have to charge you a different rate for packages than they
do mail (i.e weight) or else it won't work.

With data, it'd be nary impossible to clear prices for such services. With
mail, it's entirely possible.

There is basically no reason that China Post can't charge their customers a
rate to get something to the US, and then another rate by the US Post to get
to final destination.

Because shipping involves real labour and money, it's like any other service,
it should be priced normally.

If the postal union was not borne 150 years ago with this odd kind of
arrangement, nobody would suggest it today. It needs to go.

------
batoure
Start shorting eBay a massive part of their business has been based on taking
advantage of this

------
mwnivek
The title could probably be improved to reflect that changes to rates begin in
three days:

> On September 25, 2019, the United States and United Nations reached a deal
> for America to stay in the UPU in return for being allowed greater
> flexibility in setting prices. In other words, the U.S. can now set rates
> for mail from China and other countries. The U.S. will be allowed to set its
> own postal rates starting on July 2020 and other countries will be allowed
> to starting in 2021. There will be a five-year period of phasing in new
> rates.

> The maximum annual increases for all countries cumulatively from 2020 to
> 2025 will be between 119%-164% (with China being on the upper end). This
> works out to annual increases of 15% in 2021 and 2022, 16% in 2023 and 2024,
> and 17% in 2025.

~~~
dang
OK, I've attempted changed the title above to something representative from
what you quoted.

Submitted title was "USPS loses on average $1.10 for each package it delivers
from China"

------
mcv
This is probably the one meaningful, positive thing that Trump
accomplished[0]. It's ridiculous that shipping from the other side of the
world is cheaper than shipping locally. The one thing I disagree about, is
that it currently only fixes the problem for the US, and the EU has to wait
(another half year, I think?) before they can fix their prices.

[0] Blocking TPP is another candidate, although I think I'd rather see it
fixed than blocked completely. I suspect Trump might actually have agreed with
the original TPP, had he known what it was about.

~~~
addicted
Blocking TPP was a disaster. TPP would have achieved everything the Trump
administration has failed to achieve with China and has spent tens of billions
of dollars doing so in direct costs (the indirect costs are even higher and
will last for decades).

The major complaint about TPP was the IP protections. But the hypocrisy is
that the lack of the IP protections is exactly the same people complain about
China.

There was absolutely no reason to block TPP, which in a nutshell, gave Chinese
neighbors the opportunity to do business that the US was doing in China
currently, and in return agree to implement an IP protection environment that
everyone agrees China should have but doesn’t.

Besides providing American (and non American) companies with multiple
alternatives to China where their IP would not be stolen, it would have built
massive American soft power with Chinese neighbors at absolutely no cost to
Americans, since the business going to those countries was business being done
in China anyways.

~~~
mcv
TPP also included corporate courts that could force a country to reimburse
foreign companies for losses due to changes in democratic laws. That is the
big part that many people on HN and elsewhere objected to.

But yes, TPP also had its upsides, which is why I prefer a fixed version
rather than blocking it completely. The US, by the way, was the biggest
proponent of those corporate courts. Sadly the Trump administration lacks the
know-how or desire to negotiate that sort of nuance. So while I agree with
blocking it in the form it had at the time, I disagree with blocking it
completely, which is of course what Trump did.

------
gremlinsinc
Easy solution: Raise postage, make china pay for it, or stop delivering to
China.

~~~
arcticbull
Rates are determined by the United Nations Universal Postal Union. The US was
threatening to withdraw over this last year, but settled on the ability to
raise rates on China starting next month. [1] This is covered in the article,
too.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-
postal...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/business/universal-postal-union-
withdraw.html)

~~~
ed25519FUUU
It’s amazing how we had to threaten the UN to get them to end this OBVIOUSLY
uncompetitive practice. Why should US company tax dollars go to subsidize the
cost of a foreign competitor? And we’re not talking about helping our a 3rd
world country here, we’re taking about our largest rival for world power.

The UN being unwilling to separate China from the rest of the lot until being
threatened says enough.

~~~
nelaboras
No, this was by design. The US and Europe wanted to encourage trade by
developing countries, so built in cheaper rates for them. This also still
makes sense for Rwanda or Nepal, less so for China which simply developed at
an unexpected speed and scale. Obviously a mistake not to build any kind of
automatic adjustment in...

~~~
jariel
"No, this was by design"

No, it was not 'designed' to fund Chinese competition and outsource massive
numbers of manufacturing jobs over there. This was a side-effect of the
program gone obviously and terribly awry.

The original program is ancient and really was a matter of national courtesy
in delivering other nation's international mail.

EDIT, FYI:

"The Treaty of Bern was signed on October 9, 1874, establishing what was then
known as the General Postal Union.

The treaty provided that:

There should be a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world
Postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail
Each country should retain all money it has collected for international
postage."

The current practice of giving China free postage was established 150 years
ago, not in some modern trade strategy, and it was a means of simplifying
postage and not having to worry about balancing accounts (i.e. host nation
keeps the fee). This kind of economic reciprocity is basically unheard of in
anything else, but it makes sense for a strategic industry that's not
necessarily very expensive.

For shipping goods, obviously, it makes no sense.

I challenge anyone to explain how an agreement made in 1874 for critical
international communications, that has unexpectedly given China a massive
trade advantage in developing industries, was part of any plan. The argument
that the terms may have been advanced due to helping places like Africa with
trade just don't hold in the current context. The US government subsidisation
of Chinese e-commerce doesn't really make any sense.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union)

~~~
ketzu
You are ignoring that the Union was established 150 years ago, but the
agreement is changing over time. And like every other country, the US is
trying to modify it in a way it sees profitable for themselves at the time.

According to your wikipedia article in 2010 the US blocked increases because
they were on the winning end of the treaty. But as unforseen changes actually
made them lose money on the deal, it was suddenly unfair and out of date.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shiftin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union#Shifting_balances_and_the_United_States)

~~~
jariel
I'm not ignoring that it changes over time.

The principle that 'nations pay for local delivery for free' as a matter of
convenience, was established 150 years ago.

That basic principle remains today.

If that agreement were not made an eternity ago, nobody would even think to
suggest it today - because it doesn't make sense.

You are missing the point when you're referring to 'making or losing money' on
the deal. It's not so much about the cost of regular shipping - it's about the
subsidisation of entire competitive industries.

The rise of e-Commerce has changed everything related to shipping, quite
fundamentally.

A US subsidy on their own imports to China, even a smaller one, can make quite
a substantial change in commercial trends.

The treaty was not designed to do that, nobody was thinking in those terms, at
that scale.

Not even 25 years ago did we think individuals were going to be buying little
parcels from China on an individual basis.

The treaty now has to live in the context of e-Commerce and it should
essentially be abolished for packages, because it simply does not make sense.
In an era before computers, it might have made sense to honour each others
letters. But now there's no reason why the sender just can't pay appropriate
rates for shipping.

Edit: I should add - there isn't a single argument presented by anyone on the
entire thread as to why one nation would arbitrarily deliver another nations
physical packages 'for free' or on reciprocal basis. This is because there is
no reason to support it in 2020. It exists for historical reasons,
bureaucratic and political momentum.

