And once the table is flipped, you have no more leverage. Plus, the other side can tell their population, "the US is being a bully." It looks cool, but it's not nearly as effective as the slow-moving grind of global diplomacy.
The current administration seems willing to pull the trigger on anything at all that has ever been vaguely pointed in China's direction: postal union complaints, WTO grievances, party poppers, champagne corks, water balloons filled with urine. You name it; if it hurts China even a pinprick diplomatically, they want to use it. If it has ever been proposed and analyzed, just for preparedness, and then left alone for prudent diplomatic reasons, they're now pulling it out of storage and setting it off, or pushing it from the slow-grind to the fast-track.
It might have been in the works for decades, but the current administration is why it is actually happening in 2019, instead of getting perpetual postponements, hoping to resolve things amicably, without major economic disruptions.
I'm a bit surprised they haven't moved toward recognizing Taiwan as independently sovereign, and I'd bet that someone is carefully redacting any allusions to the fact that Taiwan exists from all briefings, and begging Fox News daily to keep any mentions of it off the air.
You should check the details of what the UPU treaty imposes on the US. I haven't checked, but as they say, it's cheaper to ship from China to US than it is from within the US, and that can't possibly be fair, nor desirable for any reason (including eco-friendliness).
They can claim the US is a bully for anything... Like Europeans will point at Libya and say the US is a bully and they eat it up in self stroking agreement.
