Now they're withdrawing from the International Postal Union?

[MBS]

Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2019, 11:05 PM - Edit history (1)

What is the bloody point of this? The article emphasizes the potential effects on international voting, but it would seem that there will be ramifications for ALL international mail.
This is nuts.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/universal-postal-union-overseas-voting-military

In an obscure move that hasn’t garnered much attention, President Trump has begun the process of withdrawing from the international postal union that establishes protocols for global mail delivery, a move which threatens to jeopardize the ability of Americans overseas to cast absentee ballots.

As recently as last week, the White House convened a meeting of stakeholders who work with overseas voters to discuss the exit, TPM has learned. But voting advocates remain apprehensive that the federal and state governments are unprepared for the ramifications of a U.S. withdrawal from the postal union, which could come as soon as this fall.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-trade-overseas-voters-universal-postal-union

The Trump administration has supported plenty of moves to make it harder to vote. But an under-the-radar action President Trump took last year, as part of his trade war with China, may be a case of him just stumbling into that outcome, election experts fear. Trump is threatening to withdraw from the international body that oversees global mail delivery, putting at risk the stability and reliability of the current system of sending and receiving mail internationally.
Any disruption to the international postal service, voter advocates say, could make an already difficult process of casting ballots for Americans abroad even more complicated. Among those who stand to be affected are members of the military overseas, whose ability to vote while serving their country has always been a politically sensitive issue.

The White House told TPM it’s working “diligently” to make sure that if the United States exits the 145-year-old international postal alliance, the withdrawal would be “seamless.” But the administration wouldn’t provide details about its planning, particularly as it pertains to elections, or about who exactly has been working on it. The lack of clarity is prompting anxiety in the election policy world. If the United States leaves the global mail delivery organization, it will happen just a few months before the 2020 primaries begin. “I’ve had sleepless nights worrying what will happen for voters that won’t have the ability to return a ballot,” said Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor at the Democracy Fund who works with elections officials on voting administration issues.She and others in the voting space fear it will be more expensive for overseas voters to cast ballots, if they have to rely on private carriers to do so, or that it will be altogether impossible for them to know for sure whether they’ll be able to get their ballots submitted in time.

Trump announced his intent to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, which sets the rates and rules for international postal delivery across borders, last October. His objections to the current regime pertain to the subsidized rate China receives when sending packages out of its borders, which the administration says disadvantages American manufactures. If the UPU does not allow the U.S. to set its own rates — the organization is gathering in late September for negotiations — the U.S. is set to withdraw from the 192-country organization altogether come October.


While trade experts have said that the administration’s grievances with the system are legitimate, they also say the impact of a withdrawal is unpredictable at best and could result in a more costly and less reliable international mail service.That’s where the move could screw with U.S. elections, voter advocates warn. “This action could seriously jeopardize the integrity of the overseas vote,” said Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the U.S. Vote Foundation, a non-partisan organization that offers voting assistance to overseas Americans. In addition to military members, those Americans include their families, U.S. contractors working internationally, other Americans whose jobs take them overseas, as well as students, missionaries and participants in programs like the Peace Corp. Many of them rely on the mail to submit ballots, with 19 states requiring that overseas ballots be sent back by mail only.. . . .“Sometimes elections are a razor thin margin and [a UPU withdrawal] is a great way to knock out overseas ballots,” Dzieduszycka-Suinat said.

[RockRaven]

1. I wonder how much this is a an effort to hurt 2 entities Trump hates: USPS and Amazon

I've bought a bunch of different things off of Amazon which, when they arrive via the US Postal Service, have apparently been shipped directly from China.

Voting is obviously the political angle of this move, but there is a HUGE economic angle.

[dalton99a]

2. Trump the serial arsonist at work.

[MBS]

3. It is their typical M.O., for sure.

Yet another pointless and needlessly destructive move.

[dalton99a]

4. His daily motto: "What can I fuck up today?"

[MBS]

7. Pretty much sums it up.

[c-rational]

5. More disheartening news. And just after I read a Salon article stating Congress is our last

of defense and they seem to be punting till after 2020. Where is the outrage?

[dlk]

6. Republicans Hate the Postal Service Because They're Unionized

[amcgrath]

8. The post office is a gold mine

Break it and you can prosper. It's an old institution that has been in almost every town for a century or so. Because of the it owns a remarkable amount of real estate - much of it in cities that gave grown immensely. Sweet heart deals could put that into the hands of developers everywhere

[Igel]

9. The "bloody point" of this can be summed up in an anecdote.

My wife sells crap on ebay.

She buys the crap from China.

It costs more to mail a book across Houston than it does to have somebody in China send her a kilo or two of stuff. Now, it takes a lot longer from China, but mail rates from China are incredibly low.

So if a US firm is producing something at the same price as a Chinese company--unlikely, to be sure--the shipping difference can make the customer say, "I can wait and get it from China." That allows Chinese companies to produce things for less and still make a greater profit, undercutting the US company because the postal union treaty sets rates.

I've ordered books from China when I wasn't in a hurry--grammars, dictionaries, readers, that sort of thing--and paid a lot less for the books *and* paid less in international shipping than I'd have paid for having them shipped from San Francisco. (Similarly, I've bought things from other countries, and the rates are remarkably different. Had fun shipping stuff from Prague--put it in a mail sack and you get charged the mail-sack rate, which are so low that they stunned the Czech postal workers and the counter clerks had to go several rungs up the chain of command to make sure they were reading the regs a-right. Since by comparison with American rates the usual Czech rates were already really, really low, it was like shipping 50 lbs of books internationally for pocket change. Stuff from Teheran cost more.)

This particular bit of news is months and months old, and the rationale was originally reported but seems to not be worth mentioning: He wants to renegotiate the postal rates with China in order to reduce the competitive edge China has vis-a-vis American firms, with the threat of withdrawal being the stick. After all, there is no carrot.

[MBS]

11. Really useful point, thanks.

Negotiations with Chinese (and Czechs?) regarding postal rates seems warranted. Still, pulling out of the International Postal Union entirely seems to me an crazy-extreme measure, and likely to cause a huge set of additional problems.

[Turin_C3PO]

10. Trump is a troll.

He’s trolling us and the world. We need to send him back under the bridge in 2020.