A bullying bull in a China shop?
“President Donald Trump is taking another swipe at China,” Jen Kirby wrote for Vox back in 2018, “by ripping up an international treaty that’s more than a century old.”
We’re talking about the Universal Postal Union — or UPU. “At 144 years old, the UPU is one of the oldest intergovernmental agencies,” she explained.
“The organization made possible the international mail system,” offered Washington-based attorney and UPU expert Jim Campbell.
Wellesley College Professor Craig Murphy, “an international organizations expert,” called Trump’s threat “absurd.”
“It makes the international postal system run smoothly,” explained Kirby, “it’s the reason why you can get a package from South Africa or a postcard from your aunt on vacation in Bali.”
So why gum up the efficient delivery of letters and packages?
“Trump does have a legitimate gripe,” Kirby abruptly changed tone, “and administrations going back to Ronald Reagan have voiced similar complaints about the UPU.”
“Countries like China that were developing nations in 1969 . . . still pay the U.S. Postal Service a pittance to deliver mail,” Foreign Policy’s Keith Johnson clarifies, which “means that Chinese firms had a tiny edge in shipping goods to the U.S. market — making the Postal Service pick up much of the tab for actually delivering the package, even while costing U.S. firms potential sales.”
“Tiny edge”?
Bull.
“[I]t’s actually cheaper to ship some products from certain places overseas to the US,” Kirby acknowledged, “than it is to deliver something between New York and Kansas.”
The gripe?
The “disproportionately dramatic response . . . reveals the White House’s obsession with what it sees as China’s unfair advantage in global trade.”
Yet, this is an unfair advantage.
Er, well . . . was.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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