I was once told that the Chinese government subsidises post in exchange for getting prompt tax returns. Don't know how true that is.
There's also some sort of agreement between postal services that means every country gets uncharged local deliveries in the destination countries in exchange for uncharged local deliveries in china. I think this is how the subsidy works - the chinese post being government owned can arrange their accounting so they don't have to balance these sums out. Thus exporters can aggregate their deliveries into a bulk carrier (hence the delay that's longer than DHL/UPS) and pay nothing for the last leg. On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 8:27 PM Johan Helsingius via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > It becomes a political discussion. On one hand the US is all about > "free trade" (when it is an issue of selling US products abroad) > but then the US imposes trade barriers against other countries. > > Yes, the Chinese government does subsidise exports. So do > most countries. > > Julf > > > On 02/07/2024 21:05, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > On Tue, 2 Jul 2024, Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote: > >> Chinese to UK shipments are still relatively cheap but have also risen > >> somewhat with more sellers charging for postage. > > > > eBay Chinese shipping seems impossibly low. > > > > Does the Chinese guvmint sunsidize shipping exports? > > Does that influence the balance of trade? (and demise of USA industry?) > > > > > > Decades ago, USA was concerned about "dumping" (charging excessively low > > prices for exports to USA). They decided that RAM was being "dumped", > "in > > order to drive out USA competition", so USA set up punitive tariffs on > > handheld power tools, and LCD panels (which contributed to the > elimination > > of laptop manufacturing in USA). > > I don't understand why the punitive tariffs were not on the items being > > "abused". > > Jerry Pournelle said, "How get we get them to dump Mercedes?" > > > > -- > > Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com >
