[HN Gopher] Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong
___________________________________________________________________
Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong
Author : DannyPage
Score : 515 points
Date : 2025-02-05 01:43 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.usps.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.usps.com)
| The_suffocated wrote:
| The linked page is about a different notice. The correct webpage
| (that the linked page has linked to) is
| https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
|
| By the way, can anybody explain what's the significance about
| this submission?
| Hatrix wrote:
| Watch things in the US grind to a halt when you can't maintain
| them with cheap parts from China.
| reaperman wrote:
| Yep. We ship in little bits and bobs from China constantly to
| keep our enormous manufacturing center running here in the
| USA. This is going to be horrible for us.
| Kye wrote:
| There are a few channels on YouTube where someone's tasked
| with fixing a laptop or some small electronic thing. They
| pull it open, find some tiny little circuit that won't go,
| dissolve the solder, and put a new tiny little circuit in to
| save a perfectly good device from the landfill.
|
| I hope they can still afford their tiny little circuits and
| tiny little solder dissolving things with more expensive
| shipping.
| dang wrote:
| (This was originally posted in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942236, which has a
| different top level URL, but we merged that thread hither)
| gigel82 wrote:
| There goes AliExpress...
| dahdum wrote:
| Wouldn't this be due to the Lunar New Year, a massive holiday
| that shuts down wide swaths of the country? UPS has a bunch of
| Asia delays right now too.
|
| https://www.ups.com/cn/en/service-alerts.page
| hpone91 wrote:
| It says until further notice. So unlikely to be Lunar New Year
| since it just ended today.
| winrid wrote:
| My Chinese wife says it goes on another week despite what
| Google calendar says (also it's not called Lunar New Year
| evidently)
| dahdum wrote:
| UPs refers to it as "Lunar New Year holidays" on the
| website I linked, probably because it's more than just
| China. You're right though, I should have been more clear.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| CNY goes for two weeks and just started last Tuesday night.
| The golden week holiday however just ended. Most people take
| extra time off so things are usually slow until the whole
| holiday is over.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| In HK it's just a few days...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is still two weeks, just the official days you get off
| from work are only a week or a few days.
|
| In 2008 when they burned down the CCTV cultural center
| with fireworks on the last day of CNY, we were already
| pretty much back to work in Beijing.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/business/china-us-usps-de...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5283957/fentanyl-trump-...
|
| It was already written in project 2025 to do this, they're just
| going down the line.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| How's it work in the US these days with AliExpress (and I guess
| Temu) last-mile delivery?
|
| In Toronto, most of those items are coming to me by private
| courier (and this pre-dates the Canada Post strike).
| karlshea wrote:
| That's an interesting point, I just got some keycaps on Taobao
| and they were shipped all the way to Chicago with CAINIAO and
| then handed off directly to UPS.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Ordered a bunch of server ram and parts. Most are sold by a
| Chinese company but the point of origin is either Ontario or
| California
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| are you sure it isn't Ontario, California?
| tanduv wrote:
| Temu has been using Ontrac
| abrookewood wrote:
| Any idea why?? Presumably the tariff/trade debate?
| csours wrote:
| and drugs
|
| ---
|
| edit: there's why and there's why. Drugs is the answer you sell
| ajross wrote:
| Surely the tariff/trade debate. The question is _which side_
| pulled this particular trigger? Yes, it could be Trump. But it
| could also be Xi, seeing that Trump just got cold feet vs.
| Mexico and thinking he could get ahead of things and force a
| concession.
|
| Folks, this is why you don't engage in brinksmanship at this
| scale. It gets out of hand really quickly. I await the coming
| economic crisis (I mean, the stock market was _already_ primed
| for a correction) with resigned exasperation.
| reaperman wrote:
| If it was China pulling the trigger, USPS wouldn't say "we
| are suspending acceptance of inbound parcels". It's pretty
| clear this is a US action.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Don't underestimate the pettiness of this administration.
| reaperman wrote:
| What the fuck does this even mean? Is it agreeing with
| me, arguing I am wrong, or simply stating something
| related/orthogonal?
| defrost wrote:
| Mind the F-bomb's, this ain't a TISM concert mate.
|
| It is simply stating that
|
| _if_ China was stopping parcels bound for the US
|
| _then_ the current US admin might be petty enough to
| pretend that _they_ are the ones stopping incoming
| parcels from China to appear in control.
|
| This doesn't seem likely, but the sentiment is reasonable
| .. the current crowd do seem exceptionally petty.
| swores wrote:
| I agree that their aggression wasn't needed, but while
| this isn't a concert it is a grown up discussion space
| where we can see the word "fuck", spelled more than the
| first letter, without fainting!
| defrost wrote:
| Thanks for chipping in, good to hear your input.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| https://rb.gy/vekpsm
| swores wrote:
| Are you complaining that I failed to "avoid general
| tangents" or something? Because I don't believe swearing
| is against the guidelines... (and I agreed with your
| criticism of the swearing used by the person you
| initially replied to)
| ajross wrote:
| Or China pulled the plug and this is just PR? Meh. I don't
| think anything's going to be "clear" here. Brinksmanship is
| _literally_ a policy based on uncertainty and fear.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| The orders against China, Canada and Mexico all halt a trade
| exemption, known as "de minimis," which allows exporters to
| ship packages worth less than $800 into the U.S. duty free,
| arguing it has helped Chinese e-commerce companies undercut
| competitors with lower prices.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I don't mind paying an extra 10% on small electronics imports
| (mostly ESP32 CPUs and related modules for hobby projects). I
| mean, I do a bit but I rarely order more than $100 of goods
| at a time, it's just an annoyance rather than a real problem.
|
| I DO mind not getting my orders delivered.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The language of the order getting rid of the exemption
| seems to reclassify all Chinese post as formal post to get
| around the exemption.
|
| That means the amount of dues is still calculated as a
| (fraction of a) percentage, but there is a minimum of about
| 30 dollars. That means a $10 order of components or LEDs
| can end up costing you $42 to actually get it through the
| mail.
|
| When you go beyond those thirty dollars, the rate isn't too
| steep, though, so you can still order in large quantities.
| keltex wrote:
| They are trying to close the de minimis exception which is a,
| "100-year-old tariff loophole that Trump wants to close."
|
| https://www.theverge.com/news/605483/shein-temu-amazon-trump...
| reaperman wrote:
| Why stop the packages though? Just make the shipper declare a
| value and let the receiver pay the tariff if they want their
| package.
| graeme wrote:
| My guess is customs isn't prepared to inspect that volume
| of packages and would need to up their infrastructure to
| handle it.
| reaperman wrote:
| The USA doesn't inspect every package -- almost all
| current tariffs are on the honor system. They could start
| by checking every 1 in 10,000 packages and then build up
| the system until they're spot-checking x in 100.
|
| Customs doesn't even know what half the shit is. If I
| order a quarter-pound of palladium for $4,000 from China,
| but pay tariffs on 4 ounces of lead (say, $5), do you
| really think customs can tell the difference? They open
| the package, see a chunk of metal, and go "okie dokey".
| Yes, sometimes they'll whip out an XRP gun and double-
| check the alloy, but not for a completely random &
| arbitrary 4-ounce package.
|
| This will happen for every. single. product.
| graeme wrote:
| They got rid of the de minimis exemption. Now every
| package needs to pay duty.
|
| They may not inspect the package but they still have to
| collect duty on it.
|
| I live in Canada where our de minimis exemption is like
| $20. Generally when a package comes to in it is help at
| the border where a broker certifies it for customs. Below
| $20 there's no broker.
|
| Now you need brokers etc for every single package. Def
| more paperwork even if they keep the same inspection
| ratio.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sure when you courier stuff into Canada but when it's
| through the postal service, duty & sales tax collection
| is at the discretion of customs.
|
| Customs used to check everything and tax/duty any parcel
| over $20 until ~2011 or so.
|
| Not sure if it was because of cutbacks, rationalization
| (it's a lot of paperwork to collect a couple bucks even
| with their, at the time, $6.95 fee), or a part of their
| reinvention as gun carrying "law enforcement" and
| consistent tax collection being beneath them.
| graeme wrote:
| There's still more paperwork though. Canada Post cites a
| $9.95 handling fee on international packages over $20.
|
| I'm not saying US customs will inspect everything. My
| point is on $800 packages they're moving from a very low
| level of scrutiny to some scrutiny and at scale that
| matters. They'll need to add staff to handle the new
| process and make the new process.
|
| https://www.canadapost-
| postescanada.ca/cpc/en/support/articl...
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Trump and Elon apparently don't know how to do anything
| without first blowing it up.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's divide and conquer tactics. They are not interested
| in continuity or a smoothly functioning economy. They
| want chaos and panic because they can exploit it.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| The problem is they've already threatened most of their
| allies. In divide and conquer the goal is supposed to be
| to divide your enemies, not divide yourself from your
| allies. As it is their enemies and allies now have good
| reason to work together.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| If you assume they are both compromised by Russia and
| China(which they are), then all of their actions make
| much more sense by treating our allies as enemies because
| they are enemies of Russia and China.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I wasn't thinking IR terms. I think they're perfectly
| willing to crash the US economy in order to consolidate
| domestic power, even if it causes an overall loss for the
| US.
| Stealthisbook wrote:
| The sticking point isn't the value of the tax, it's having
| to individually generate the paperwork for each shipment.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Customs could just... not.
|
| It's at their discretion, just like someone bringing in
| more than their exemption of beer and deciding not not to
| charge duty.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Alternate framing: "A 100-year-old thing you could do that
| Trump is trying to tax, also without getting permission from
| Congress."
| maxglute wrote:
| PRC hit back with tariffs vs Mexico/Canada buying time by
| conceding on border / drugs.
| addicted wrote:
| Mexico/Canada conceding by restating actions they had already
| agreed to months ago?
| maxglute wrote:
| Conceded _more_, i.e. CAN adding fentanyl czar, whatever
| that entails, MX adding another 10k troops. Western
| reporting alleged PRC would offer restoring phase1 trade,
| but PRC did the opposite and counter tariffed, on energy
| and agriculture goods, so relative to CAN/MX it's
| escalating/rejecting or no sign of conceding.
| davorak wrote:
| Is there a primary source for sending "additional troops"
| by Mexico? All I found was the twitter post from Mexico's
| president:
|
| https://x.com/Claudiashein/status/1886434747238514776
|
| And the summary of the speech on on instagram:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/firstpost/reel/DFntTIlvOpe/
|
| Neither confirm additional troops rather than just having
| 10k at the border.
| maxglute wrote:
| A lot of the English reporting I'm reading said
| "reinforce" which implies addition. I don't speak spanish
| but the tweet from Sheinbaum also translates to
| "reinforce" if translation valid:
|
| >1. Mexico will immediately reinforce the northern border
| with 10,000 members of the National Guard to prevent drug
| trafficking from Mexico to the United States,
| particularly fentanyl.
| davorak wrote:
| > A lot of the English reporting I'm reading said
| "reinforce" which implies addition.
|
| Agree it implies addition, but if you promise to send
| 10k, then make another promise to send 10k, then send 10k
| you kept both promises to send 10k.
|
| An article saying home many troops are going to be on the
| border ie 10k vs 20k. Or clarity on if 10k had already
| been sent to the border before the pledge to Trump for
| 10k reinforcements. Or something that goes in to detail
| about the timing and number of troop deployments would
| clear up the issue.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I love the "fentanyl czar" position because that's how
| _american_ special ministers are named. Give a minister
| the portfolio, but dumb it down for the orange guy.
| vkou wrote:
| Canada 'conceded' to increase border security to 10,000
| border officers (It currently has 16,000), to spend 200
| million on border security (Which it planned to since
| November), and to hire a 'fentanyl czar'[1].
|
| Trump got paid with his own coin.
|
| ----
|
| [1] To match the power players of the Trump administration's
| all-star television celebrity cabinet, I nominate Robb Wells,
| who did an exceptional job playing Ricky on Trailer Park
| Boys.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I nominate Ya'ara Saks
| somat wrote:
| Probably attempting to correct the shipping imbalance. Shipping
| china to US is much cheaper than shipping US to china. My
| understanding is that a large part of that is due to china not
| needing to pay full local delivery(USPS) fees. Something with
| how international mail is governed.
|
| I think it is this but I don't have access.
| https://www.upu.int/en/Postal-Solutions/Programmes-Services/...
|
| And I found this article which is probably relevant(2019).
| https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/upu-postal-rate-change/...
|
| update with an actual current article:
| https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/trump-tariff-de-minimis...
| warmlander99 wrote:
| Might it be to cut down on fentinal shipments? China is where
| most of it comes from, not that you would know that if you
| listen to Trump go on about Canada.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| No. The ingredients ship from China and India to Mexico, then
| the finished product comes over the border.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg93nn1e6go
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| maybe this is the payoff that Bezos gets for toeing the line
| Taniwha wrote:
| My guess is that because of Trump's "de-minimus" change the
| USPS will now have to collect import duty on each and every
| parcel - they've probably stopped so that they can tool up for
| doing this. The annoying part of buying something is going to
| be physically going down to the Post Office and paying them,
| (or possibly having to poll them to pay online).
|
| I live in NZ, manufacture open source hardware in China and
| ship from there. I ship all over the world, some countries
| charge import duty, some don't, but as an exporter I NEVER have
| to pay anyone's tariffs - Americans are going to learn who pays
| tariffs because now you personally will get the bill and have
| to deal with the annoyance of having to pay it.
|
| Note: NZ charges import duty (which here is essentially our
| sales tax), they have deals with places like
| AliExpress/Digikey/etc to pay it at source (ie it shows up in
| your cart as you check out)
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The most likely reason is because shipments below a certain
| value were not being inspected and this was a loophole that
| allowed China to undermine the US by shipping fentanyl
| ingredients. My guess is that the postal service needs time to
| resolve this issue, and are choosing to stop processing these
| packages for now.
|
| The other possible reasons are to impose tariffs on shipments
| below the low value threshold, to disrupt the Chinese economy
| which is currently weak, to discourage consumption of Chinese
| products, or to use as a negotiation tool in the current push
| to reset foreign policies.
| almaight wrote:
| This is like when Mexico imports synthetic ammonia from
| China, but synthesizes TNT in Mexico and smuggles it to the
| United States, but American politicians say that China
| exports TNT. The funny thing is that TNT is a seriously
| illegal product in China.
| tkems wrote:
| I can confirm that Aliexpress doesn't allow me to checkout with a
| USA address and states that items can't be shipped to my region.
| -edit: Since this post it seems that I can order items again?
| Very odd.
| thih9 wrote:
| > it seems that I can order items again? Very odd.
|
| Perhaps it's now being sent not via USPS?
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| Cainiao (AliExpress's shipment arm) and others will probably
| end up chartering planes to get customs' cleared packages to
| the US and then cross-ship them from somewhere in the US like
| Kentucky or Long Beach. Shipping costs will rise but
| hopefully not by much.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| They can ship via UPS, FedEx, DHL, or shipping container. From
| the news...
|
| >The majority of inbound shipments originating in China come by
| ocean or air freight, not the mail system.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| It depends on the seller and shipment method. I just made a
| panic order of some stuff Choice and not-Choice and it went
| through.
|
| Account says: 63 Shipped, 42 To Ship
| dwaite wrote:
| Depends quite a bit on the item. Some items are actually
| shipped domestically, for instance, and can be sold out within
| the country.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Well the page is gone
| neuroelectron wrote:
| It's working fine for me :
|
| Suspension of Inbound Parcels from China and Hong Kong
| INTERNATIONAL SERVICE SUSPENSION NOTICE - effective Feb. 4,
| 2025
|
| Effective Feb. 4, the Postal Service will temporarily suspend
| only international package acceptance of inbound parcels from
| China and Hong Kong Posts until further notice. Note the flow
| of letters and flats from China and Hong Kong will not be
| impacted.
| xnx wrote:
| Bad for consumers, but seems like a very good thing for AMZN?
|
| Amazon won't have to compete against the much cheaper Temu,
| Aliexpress, Shein(?) etc.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I got the distinct impression Amazon shifted mix significantly
| in that direction, via the resellers and the resellers
| themselves shifting
|
| Which reminds me of a rule: price up, demand down
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Cheaper and better.
|
| This country is so painfully stupid. Now I have to pay 2x as
| much for inferior products, if not the same exact stuff
| imported by an American company.
|
| This alone is probably going to cost me about 1000$ to 2000$
| per year. We literally don't make much most of this stuff in
| the US. For example I just ordered a guitar bag, 15$ direct
| from China. The same exact bag, made in the same exact factory
| is going to be 40$ on Amazon.
|
| That's assuming this resolves before resellers run out of
| stock.
|
| If I had any idea this stupid policy change was happening so
| soon I probably would of brought more stuff.
|
| The next 4 years are going to be very expensive, the price of
| everything is going to skyrocket.
| liamwire wrote:
| Admittedly I've not looked past the linked page, but does
| this stop direct importing via other means? If not, and it
| holds, I'd expect to quickly see a bunch of US-based
| importers pop up very quickly just to resell onto the usual
| channels.
| xnx wrote:
| Bezos donations to Trump are taking money right out of our
| pockets and putting it in his.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| People started realizing Temu/AliExpress/Shen are literally
| selling the same exact stuff.
|
| Now Amazon is going to get their 50% markup. I'm literally
| going to just stop buying a lot of stuff if this policy
| isn't reversed.
|
| It's not like you can buy an Xbox built in Texas, this has
| the potential to make almost every product more expensive.
| addicted wrote:
| > We literally don't make much most of this stuff in the US
|
| Not said often enough is that we DONT WANT to make much of
| this stuff in the US.
|
| People seriously don't get how remarkable it is that the U.S.
| is able to get other countries to send them actual usable
| stuff in return for pieces of paper that the U.S. prints. And
| how much richer this makes Americans.
|
| I don't believe the U.S. should be fully free market. Clearly
| it went too far away from industrialization to the point that
| the U.S. was reliant on China for critical stuff and has lost
| the capacity to scale if it needs to. The CHIPS act was the
| first tiny step towards changing this.
|
| But these actions and the industries targeted needed to be
| strategic and not random.
| queuebert wrote:
| The new problem is the factories making a lot of this stuff
| are heavily polluting, and we have little to no control
| over that because they are abroad. Part of a good climate
| strategy must involve regulating them somehow.
| conception wrote:
| At least for China they have an environmental plan far
| and away better than the US's "what do the rich want to
| do?".
| stikit wrote:
| Can you give details of China's environment plan?. All I
| hear about are the dozens of coal plants China builds
| each year. Are they no longer building those plants?
| stephenitis wrote:
| As of August 2024, China has 55 nuclear reactors in
| operation, 25 under construction, and plans for an
| additional 36 reactors. In August 2024, China's State
| Council approved five nuclear power projects comprising
| 11 new reactors. Overall, China aims to build 150 new
| nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Renewable energies account for 29% of China's energy
| production and 21% of US's.
|
| In 2010, this was 19% and 10% respectively.
|
| So, they have a bit of a head start, but are
| transitioning to renewables just as quickly as the US.
| Their much larger population does make the overall impact
| they're having on the environment larger, though, and yes
| they are still building new coal plants to keep up with
| rapidly increasing energy needs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_U
| nit...
| defrost wrote:
| It's _all_ true ..
|
| they have a large population, largest in the world, India
| second (or not, I don't recall) and with a growing middle
| class (it alone now larger than the entire population of
| the US) with western consumption patterns and
| expectations they have insane power demands and
| projections.
|
| So, more renewables than anywhere else, more nuclear than
| anywhere else, and more coal than anywhere else.
|
| That said, they build new coal plants that are state of
| the art and "less bad" than the many older coal plants
| they are ripping apart. They also use coal power to
| supply energy to transition off of coal and create solar
| farms, etc.
|
| "It's complicated"
|
| See:
|
| https://www.iea.org/countries/china (and drill down)
|
| https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-
| investment-2024/chi...
|
| https://www.iea.org/reports/meeting-power-system-
| flexibility...
|
| compare and contrast with other countries (according to
| the IEA) and then look at other non IEA big picture
| summaries.
| vkou wrote:
| They are building more renewable capacity than the rest
| of the world combined, and have an 86% renewable target
| for 2050.
|
| What's the US target for 2050?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Yes and. China is still rapidly expanding their
| electricity production (because their energy use per
| capita is still way below US/Europe), and they don't have
| huge amounts of natural gas like the US does. As such,
| they are building coal plants that in the near term boost
| energy production, and in the medium term will be used as
| peaker plants for when the massive amount of renewables
| that they're also installing don't meet demand.
| tpm wrote:
| > All I hear about are the dozens of coal plants China
| builds each year.
|
| I suspect this is partly true and gets repeated a lot,
| but then nobody follows up with the actual numbers of
| plants that get built and are producing. I have found
| these where a lot of the coal plants gets approved but
| then not actually built, cancelled etc:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sHBsK_Ez7C9XA4HKR
| QSv...
|
| https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-puts-
| coal-on...
|
| Also China's coal use seems to not grow too much anymore.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| China doesn't actually care to much about green energy
| production, it's more that green energy production just
| happens to be one of the best ways for China to achieve
| energy independence.
|
| China doesn't have huge reserves of fossil fuels, and
| they don't have a truly reliable way of importing them
| (and any import will always be vulnerable anyway).
|
| So they are left with coal, nuclear, wind, and sun to
| build energy independence with. This is the primary
| driver of massive "green" investment (and coal investment
| too). They want all their energy made in house with what
| they have, which turns out to be a lot of cheaply
| accessible sun and wind.
| throweep wrote:
| Please stop trusting whatever CCP says
| blitzar wrote:
| Ignore the investment, the land, the input costs, the
| pollution etc. - the jobs pay 50c an hour (+ and the jobs
| making the input materials and parts pay 50c an hour) and
| the rich owner of the factory might rake in a cool
| $25,000 a year.
|
| Either all the things cost way more or everyone from
| employees to owners lives like peasants.
| nyjah wrote:
| The other issue is American quality has gone down the tank.
| 10-15 years ago I'd look for American quality over Chinese,
| but nowadays I prefer the Chinese manufacturer almost 100% of
| the time. Not always the case but anecdotally chinas quality
| has gotten better while American stuff has gotten worse.
| queuebert wrote:
| We must buy different things.
| TylerE wrote:
| I will absolutely concur with American products getting
| far worse. Everything is cost cut to the bone.
| doubled112 wrote:
| With few exceptions.
|
| In general, if I'm going to buy something that's going to
| last 2 uses, I might as well just buy the cheapest one.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's not so much that it is cost cut to the bone, but
| that the expertise is being lost.
|
| I can tell you with a straight face that american
| manufacturing is being held up right now by grey beards
| pushing back retirement because young people have zero
| interest in manufacturing boiler conduit fittings. You
| can crash course an IT cert and come out making more
| money than you would ever make pressing steel couplers.
| TylerE wrote:
| No, a lot of it really is just obvious cost cutting.
| Things like replacing metal fasteners with plastic ones
| that break or strip easily.
| wenc wrote:
| Yes. People associate Chinese manufacturing with low
| quality products, but I feel those people misunderstand
| systems. It's not Chinese manufacturing that is low
| quality. It's really the sites like Temu and Shein that
| create low quality products -- because of their aggressive
| pricing, they create a cascade of systemic cost pressures
| on manufacturers, who have to cut corners.
|
| AMZN on the other hand probably provides more headroom and
| reduces cost pressure on manufacturers. If you know how to
| shop on Amazon (avoiding 3P sellers, and only getting 4
| star and above products), you generally get high quality
| products.
|
| I've only rarely gotten anything bad from Amazon (from
| Chinese manufacturers).
|
| I've bought Chinese products like Anker batteries,
| Thermopro thermocouples/sensors, Jigoo (weird name I know)
| dust mite vacuum, Tapo camera, Levoit humidifier, Cosori
| air fryer, and little clever tools like toothpaste tube
| squeezers and the like.
|
| They've all exceeded expectations.
|
| (I recently bought a Insta360 Flow Pro 2 gimbal, also a
| Chinese product, and it's amazing).
| fragmede wrote:
| China makes quality things, they just keep it for
| themselves, and ship their crap to us.
| eru wrote:
| If you are willing to pay (and know where to look), you
| can get good quality from China just fine.
|
| Most iPhones come from China after all.
| vaccineai wrote:
| That's hilarious. The most popular grocery stores in
| Shanghai right now are Costco and Sams, with lines
| everyday out the door, not Chinese grocery stores.
| Chinese citizens don't want to buy cancerous food
| products for example.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Comparative advantage in action!
| tssva wrote:
| > Levoit humidifier
|
| Be careful with that. I liked mine too until it burst
| into flames one evening.
| wenc wrote:
| I've had it for years running 24/7 and nothing happened.
| You might have gotten a dud.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Bursting into flames shouldn't be possible, that's a LOT
| worse than a "dud". (Assuming parent isn't exaggerating)
| tssva wrote:
| Not exaggerating. I had it for a little over a year. I
| used it in my bedroom. As usual I started it going and
| then went into my bathroom to brush my teeth before bed.
| Partly through brushing my teeth I smelled something
| burning. I came out and saw the humidifier in flames.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It does raise the question of certification and product
| safety in general, there are so many electrical devices
| that probably don't meet Western safety standards. A
| humidifier is basically a heating element in a plastic
| housing, it should be engineered with safety features
| (overheating protection etc) so it shouldn't be able to
| just catch fire, someone clearly didn't do their job
| properly at some stage. I wonder how product recalls work
| with that sort of thing.
| wenc wrote:
| I don't think I would make that leap about falling short
| of Western safety standards.
|
| All electrical products sold in the US are legally
| required to be NRTL certified (according to US
| standards). Levoit is ETL certified.
|
| Non certified products are seized by customs or recalled
| from the market.
| wenc wrote:
| It's very unlikely and I agree, not acceptable, but any
| household appliance with a heating element has a nonzero
| fire risk. I read that for UL certified humidifiers the
| incidence rate is 1 in 100k, similar to fans. The seems
| worryingly high.
| throweep wrote:
| as a non American i would prefer
| American/Japanese/German/Taiwan stuff over Chinese ones.
|
| Chinese products are just crap
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Or it's going to save you a ton because you are not spending
| money on frivolous shit.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| "This country is so painfully stupid."
|
| Not all of the country is stupid, a lot of us didn't vote for
| the idiot who is causing all this lunacy. Unfortunately, not
| enough of us.
| taurknaut wrote:
| hah, I would say that blaming voters is the best example of
| american stupidity I can think of. What do you expect when
| you have two parties that agree on virtually everything but
| abortion? Blaming the voters just enables this dynamic. At
| some point people need to get pissed off that we haven't
| had policy worth voting FOR since well before I was born,
| just an endless cycle of people explaining why nothing will
| ever improve and all our problems are intractable.
|
| Trump is easy to laugh at, but he genuinely understands
| this country and how democracy functions on a level most
| people in DC and in newsrooms across the country completely
| fail to grasp. Why people aren't more pissed with the
| democrats for pushing unpopular losers is baffling.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| I miss wrote, I should have written, "Unfortunately,
| there weren't enough rational voters to stop the idiot."
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This alone is probably going to cost me about 1000$ to
| 2000$ per year.
|
| This is a temporary hold while they figure out what's going
| on.
|
| They're not announcing that shipments from China are over for
| the year.
| viraptor wrote:
| They're not going to stop. But they'll need more people /
| time. And everyone will have to pay extra for that.
| froh wrote:
| > by an American company ... > cost me about 1000$ to 2000$
| per year.
|
| they sponsored 2025, they collect the benefits, and peons
| pay.
| treis wrote:
| >15$ direct from China. The same exact bag, made in the same
| exact factory is going to be 40$ on Amazon.
|
| Do you have examples of this? It hasn't been the case for me.
| Usually the prices are similar and I tend to find that Amazon
| is slightly cheaper.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Amazon , 40$ https://a.co/d/6HSc2A6
|
| AliExpress , 17$( see coupons below).
| https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806198514308.html
|
| Plus AliExpress tends to offer coupons.
|
| So let's say you buy 300$ of stuff from Amazon, and 300$ of
| stuff from AliExpress.
|
| Even if the products are the same price, AliExpress will
| offer a 30$ off coupon.
|
| Amazon has to build in a higher margin though, they
| practically have a no questions asked return policy for
| anything less than say 100$. AliExpress is a bit more
| difficult here.
|
| I even remember getting on chat support with Amazon, and
| telling them I was basically too dumb to put a table
| together right. No return, they just refunded me $200. You
| don't get that with AliExpress.
| treis wrote:
| $17 is temporarily half off with list $37.19. So normally
| it's pretty similar.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Everything on AliExpress is always half off.
|
| Lenovo does this too.
|
| It's just marketing.What matters is at the end of the day
| what you paid for it.
| ulfw wrote:
| The same amazon that happily ships from the US TO Hong Kong
| free of charge (above USD49) with SF Express (a Chinese
| company). Funny how that goes.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| All those cargo planes gotta go back, worth filling them up
| with stuff.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Probably 80% of the listings on Amazon I see come from Chinese
| resellers drop shipping off AliExpress.
|
| Reverse image search usually finds the original.
| xnx wrote:
| I wouldn't even mind paying extra for the Amazon return
| policy, but I hate the dozens of listings for the same
| product.
| harha wrote:
| Isn't half of Amazon just resellers of aliexpress with a
| markup?
| tofof wrote:
| No, no definitely nowhere near half, don't be so pessimistic.
| It's at least 90%. ;)
| Neil44 wrote:
| For about a week until their stock from China runs out...
| However this won't last that long.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why does any regulation that affects China follow this recipe?
|
| "Good for <US tech company>. Guess they won't have to compete."
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Oh, look! We've cut off shipments from China! Now you'll have to
| buy American.
|
| News flash: we can't afford to buy American. Why do you think we
| were shopping there. It's too late to fix it now - we no longer
| have the money or the ability to make the money to buy American
| and even if you gave more money to Americans, prices would just
| increase accordingly.
|
| Also, some of those products were paid for already. Someone owes
| the purchasers reimbursement for their loss.
| mcphage wrote:
| > News flash: we can't afford to buy American.
|
| Oh come on now, how much more does an iPhone made in the US
| cost?
|
| Oh. Hmm.
| fineman1618 wrote:
| Probably 3x - 10x cost If You have the infrastructure to
| manufacture it. And they years it take to build
| infrastructure in china its months, in us? Years. Just look
| into how long it takes to put a bus station or a factory
| mcphage wrote:
| And we've got none of that. Right now, a US made iPhone
| doesn't exist, and is years away from existing. It can't be
| bought with any amount of dollars.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| But many iPhones are made in India and Vietnam.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Right now. $10bn?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It's like the right is doing everything they can to make the
| country be pissed off at them. Do they understand we still have
| the power to vote?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| They're hoping to fix that before it comes up again.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| In four years.
|
| People have short memory.
|
| Feasible.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I hope you're voting more frequently than every four years
| bro
| fragmede wrote:
| Details matter. Vote in two years to choose your
| representatives in Congress.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The usual pattern is they blame the democrats for all the
| things they did which were unpopular.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Do you?
| bb88 wrote:
| So if you're worried about packages coming from AliExpress, you
| probably shouldn't be. The last several packages I ordered were
| shipped USPS with an origin of the US. Los Angeles was the origin
| of the last one I received with AliExpress Choice(tm).
|
| It may affect ebay purchases of electronic parts from Shenzhen
| though. Particulary if the vendors use the Chinese post office.
|
| I also ordered a Keychron keyboard last weekend and it's being
| shipped from Shenzhen via DHL.
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm worried more about the prototypes my R&D department is
| designing in partnership with Chinese contractors and
| fabrication facilities. We manufacture the final products here
| in the USA, but a LOT of components we air-mail from China.
|
| A huge percentage of the nation's R&D efforts (for DOMESTIC
| MANUFACTURING) is going to be completely and utterly fucked if
| they can't rush-deliver niche items from China. This is a
| disaster.
|
| And it's not just R&D! If you have a big factory here in the
| USA but you need a rare part/tool/electrical component to fix
| the factory - often the OEM you buy it from will ship it from
| their China warehouse and it'll arrive in 1-4 days.
|
| As a person who works in domestic manufacturing, this seems
| really, really bad for domestic manufacturing.
| bb88 wrote:
| I would say so, but there are options right? FedEx? DHL?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I doubt you were using USPS before for those, so your company
| shouldn't be affected unless this affects private shipping
| companies as well.
| soganess wrote:
| Honest question, why? USPS is cheap. Is there something
| special about a stack of blank PCBs (or ICs, or caps, or
| whatever) that precludes USPS from shipping them? I know
| they are weird about batteries, but everything else, right?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| USPS is cheap! Much cheaper to send from China to the USA
| than the other way around d for some weird reason. But
| I'm guessing a business who was interested in air mailing
| parts and prototypes..isn't interested in value.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| It's cheaper because USPS has been subsidizing the costs.
| That's why a lot of small packages were shipped with
| usps.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Also cheap because the entire world subsidizes China-to-
| elsewhere shipping via the UPU continuing to classify
| them a "developing country".
| umanwizard wrote:
| Why would China not count as a developing country?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3921082-house-
| unanimously...
|
| > "Their economy size is second only to that of the
| United States. [The] United States is treated as a
| developed country, so should PRC," Kim said. "And is also
| treated as a high-income country in treaties and
| international organizations, so China should also be
| treated as a developed country."
|
| And CCP also usually paints PRC superior to US in
| everything so it's kind of their choice too...
| umanwizard wrote:
| Which country is poorer: Luxembourg or Kenya? Luxembourg
| has a lower GDP, after all.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > PPP-adjusted GDPs per capita
|
| ftfy.
|
| on which btw China scores higher than Mexico and World
| Bank classifies Mexico as an upper-middle-income economy
|
| And the answer is Luxembourg by a mile.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The US is treated as a high-income country because
| incomes are high. Incomes in China are low. There's
| nobody disputing either of those claims.
|
| USA NGDP per capita 2024: US$86,600, just below Norway.
|
| China NGDP per capita 2024: US$13,000, just below
| Malaysia.
|
| Their economy is large because there are more of them.
| That doesn't do anything for their income.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| High income != developed. There are different metrics.
|
| Overall GDP very high, GDP PPP per capita middling,
| incomes highly disparate, etc. Developing status becomes
| kinda subjective and this particular move is not insane.
| Sadly it's unlike many many other moves.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > High income != developed. There are different metrics.
|
| You might want to replace the quote you were citing.
| transcriptase wrote:
| When you're the worlds 2nd largest economy,
| technologically advanced, and exerting geopolitical
| influence like a superpower, it's somewhat comical to
| declare yourself a developing nation incapable of
| participating in global commerce without your shipping
| costs being subsidized by everyone else.
| bb88 wrote:
| Not so much anymore. Aliexpress shipping has become quite
| a bit more expensive lately (unless it's "Choice").
| Somewhere in this thread you can see my theory about
| their "Choice" shipping service.
| bb88 wrote:
| This is kinda funny. I ordered a bunch of blank PCB's and
| it was inspected (opened) by ICE. It had their green tape
| trying to close it up (badly) after they opened it.
|
| I think they're looking for things that can't be X-rayed
| or scanned.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| The point is Jeff Bezos wanted AliExpress shutdown
| because $$$$.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| That's not the point. The point is the USPS is abusively
| discriminating against trade for political purposes.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| That brings up a good point. Does this only pertain to USPS? So
| you can still get a package from China via DHL? If so, private
| couriers are about to go way up in their business
| bb88 wrote:
| Well if my DHL shipment from shenzhen gets blocked, I'll let
| you know.
|
| I'm guessing Aliexpress choice fills up entire shipping
| containers shipping them to contractors on the ports. Once
| inside the US it's simply a matter of relabeling packages
| with a USPS sticker.
|
| If Wal-Mart, e.g., can no longer import containers from
| China, well, Wal-mart would be fucked long faster than
| Aliexpress.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Didn't a lot of Chinese drop shippers concentrate product in
| the US in anticipation of tariffs? If so, we might hit supply
| shortages as the stockpile winds down.
| userbinator wrote:
| I don't remember seeing Ali ship directly from China either,
| and they were doing that long before this, I suspect due to
| cost reasons.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| It's effectively the same price as on Amazon but good luck ever
| returning that to China. https://amzn.com/dp/B0CSYB8RNC
| persedes wrote:
| I'm unclear on this, but to my understanding if I order of Temu,
| Aliexpress etc I forfeit any consumer rights that I might have in
| the country I reside in? E.g. if the cheap stuff burns down my
| house / takes out my eye [1], there's no one to blame about gross
| defects / QC oversight?
|
| [1] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/lawsuit-ruling-dog-leash-
| purch...
| Aurornis wrote:
| You're not forfeiting any rights by buying something on
| Aliexpress.
|
| US law doesn't apply in China. Nobody is going to take your
| case because some Aliexpress seller has no reason to even
| respond to your threats to take them to court.
| swores wrote:
| You're not legally forfeiting rights as in the laws saying
| "you lose these rights", but in common parlance of course you
| are as you explain in your second paragraph.
|
| If the default situation is that when you buy faulty goods
| you have legal recourse against the seller, but when you buy
| direct from a foreign country you do so knowing that should
| there be a problem you won't have that option, you are de
| facto forgoing, or forfeiting, those rights by choosing to
| make that purchase.
|
| It's nothing specifically to do with China, but it's how
| things work (except/until between countries who agree to
| mutual protection of consumers rights, which I think is the
| case between EU member states but I'm not sure about any
| other examples).
| freeone3000 wrote:
| You're getting items more or less as described for a few
| dollars at the most. Heck, when I got my ebike motor they even
| asked what power wattage sticker they should put on it. More
| reliable than Amazon, that's for sure.
| hedora wrote:
| It's the same for Amazon, at least in the US. By law, if a
| retailer sells you a thing, liability first goes to the
| manufacturer, and, failing that, the retailer.
|
| Amazon isn't a retailer, they're a "marketplace" or some other
| BS the courts buy, so they're not liable if they sell you stuff
| that's negligently dangerous. Good luck tracking down
| SGVEEESQRTS or whoever built the thing.
| persedes wrote:
| in the case linked above amazons defense that they're just a
| "marketplace" did not work though.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If you buy from an American store, you can file your claims
| with the store under American law and everything is easy.
|
| If you import from China, American laws apply to you and
| Chinese laws apply to the seller. If you get scammed or hurt
| yourself with a dangerous product, you can try two things: sue
| the Chinese seller in your home country (they won't turn up if
| the court even cares enough not to dismiss your case) or sue
| the Chinese seller in China under Chinese law (good luck with
| that as a foreigner).
|
| You have rights, but your cheap products come at the cost of
| having to jump through many hoops to enforce them. I don't
| think many people will follow through on the paperwork required
| for a Chinese visa just so they can spend months or longer
| trying to sue a dropshipper in Shenzen, but you could!
|
| As for gross defects and QC: keep in mind that QC on Chinese
| websites is done to comply with Chinese standards. What's
| considered carcinogenic or dangerous in one country may be
| completely fine to sell in another (see: importing American
| soda to Europe, if it contains any banned food coloring).
|
| Do note that platforms like Craigslist, eBay, and Amazon are
| often not considered as the business you're doing business
| with. The same Chinese seller can be active on Aliexpress and
| Amazon, and you'll still have to go after the Chinese entity if
| you want your medical bills paid.
|
| Don't buy foreign if you want to be able to enforce your local
| laws. Buying locally is more expensive, but at least you have
| an address to sue.
| persedes wrote:
| Yes, that's of how I see it too. The upcharge has to come
| from somewhere and I guess it's up to regulators on how much
| they would allow the public to take on that risk. My guess is
| that most people are completely ignorant about that gotcha
| and (understandably) only care about the price.
| Ginger-Pickles wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942236
| dang wrote:
| We've merged that thread hither, since this one has the more
| specific link.
| reaperman wrote:
| This is going to utterly fuck so many R&D projects at my company.
| We actually do large-scale manufacturing of industrial valves in
| the USA. But a lot of our prototyping involves working with
| Chinese suppliers and getting small batches of samples /
| prototypes / revisions sent in packages on airplanes.
|
| I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware engineers
| will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages from China.
| It's going to halt all our R&D for at least 6 months while we
| onboard domestic contractor alternatives --- which will also just
| generally be shit. Not to mention the American contractors WONT
| BE ABLE TO SHIP IN THE FUCKING ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS FROM CHINA
| THEY NEED FOR THE PROTOTYPES.
|
| Every single R&D department in the USA just got fuuuuuuuuucked by
| this.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Well if you're not busy you'll have time join in a general
| strike. Shutting the economy down is rapidly becoming the only
| nonviolent option.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The only nonviolent option to support Chinese imports?
| Imagine black Americans being like "that's the last straw! I
| thought life in the US had become intolerable when cheeto
| hitler threatened USAID, but now he's going after Chinese
| shipping loopholes?"
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No, the only nonviolent option for people who want to
| protest the administration's scattershot behavior, of which
| this is but one example. I think you understand this just
| fine, don't you?
| boopdewoop wrote:
| ill buy em for ya mate, get them posted from Australia, It will
| just cost you $500 in postage fees.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Let's do it via New Zealand, it's $600 plus you wait about 6
| months.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| The obvious solution to this is to BUILD IT ALL IN AMERICA.
|
| And while waiting 15 years for that to become possible, just
| move that US based R&D to countries not ran by idiots.
|
| I blame myself for not immigrating earlier. I had a chance to
| move overseas for a least a year and I didn't.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I know it's absolutely _not_ the point of your post and you
| don 't mean 15 years as a literal prediction but I thought
| about it anyway and damn, 15 years is pretty optimistic.
| Think about how long it took China to become a manufacturing
| giant. It would take the US even longer to get back to that.
| The US would have to do what China did, with _additional_
| challenges such as:
|
| - overcoming environmental regulations
|
| - a more disjointed government that changes hands every 4 or
| 8 years
|
| - competition from, well, China
|
| - US dollar making exports very challenging because of
| strength relative to yuan
|
| etc
|
| it would take, honestly, more like 30-50 years and/or a true
| forcing function like a world war (heaven forbid)
| transcriptase wrote:
| I think you've, intentionally or not, hit on a critical
| point that most like to ignore while passively accepting
| that "China is simply where things are manufactured". As if
| that wasn't the case until about the time the median HN
| reader was born.
|
| Some will attribute it to the proximity of factories to one
| another, collaboration between those in adjacent
| industries, culture, government intentionality, a general
| lack of enforcement on IP as long as it favors China... but
| the truth is if China along with every alternative adopted
| Western environmental and labor laws tomorrow, by mid-2026
| there would be factories open in every town and city in the
| USA and Canada.
|
| The West loves to play holier than thou while paying others
| to put their negatives on their books. Canada implementing
| carbon pricing and phasing out coal domestically while
| simply shipping it to Asia instead is the perfect example.
| Or banning single use plastic because we were shipping it
| to countries that claimed they were recycling it and
| instead dumping it into rivers.
|
| There is no reason why we can't produce things, aside from
| the fact that it's unpalatable and often illegal to have to
| deal with the realities of manufacturing like toxic
| effluents and aerosols.
|
| It's why we tend to stick to manufacturing things that only
| involve assembling, processing, and welding materials after
| the bulk of the nastiness has been done overseas.
| rfoo wrote:
| At this point, adopting Western labor laws actually helps
| China. China is facing increasingly severe challenges
| caused by the distribution of wealth. Changing labor laws
| does not fix them all, but it likely helps.
| 8note wrote:
| > Canada implementing carbon pricing and phasing out coal
| domestically while simply shipping it to Asia instead
|
| Canada's carbon pricing is to incentivize buying stuff
| that has less carbon emissions. there's nothing
| particularly holier-than-thou about it, its just there to
| get the infrastructure to swap.
| eru wrote:
| Well, the other 'obvious solution' is to minimise your
| reliance on that volatile banana republic that is the US.
|
| If none of your R&D is in the US, you don't have to worry so
| much about them throwing a fit.
| dtquad wrote:
| >I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware
| engineers will do their jobs now if we cannot receive packages
| from China
|
| As a software engineer who works closely with electrical and
| firmware engineers I know what you are saying is completely
| true.
|
| The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has there
| never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB, PCBWay,
| JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese
| firms are so cheap? How can JLCCNC take ~$120 worth of raw
| material, CNC machine it into our specified part, anodize the
| part, and send it to Denmark for ~$120? Like what is going on?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > The question is how did we let it go this far? Why has
| there never been serious Western alternatives to JLCPCB,
| PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.? Has anyone asked themselves how these
| Chinese firms are so cheap?
|
| It's not really a secret. They have cheap labor. Very lax
| environmental standards (big deal for PCB manufacturing).
| They have a high density of manufacturing and production. One
| factory can get their materials and machines from other
| factories nearby. Their government manipulates exchange
| rates.
|
| People are also quick to forget US companies that serve these
| same markets. OSH Park was doing cheap PCB panel share before
| JLCPCB was a common name. Boards manufactured right in the
| United States. They don't have the volume of JLCPCB but
| they've been doing cheap boards for hobbyists for a long
| time: https://docs.oshpark.com/services/
| stingrae wrote:
| In China, they compete with each other to get be the
| cheapest. Here (Bay Area) it feels like the PCB fab and
| assembly houses have decided to be higher priced because
| the defense contracts (and FAANG Quick turns) are willing
| to pay it.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The assembly houses have done this, but the American PCB
| fabrication companies often have a "slow and cheap"
| service. They definitely optimize for the defense market,
| though.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I think your cause and effect is backwards. They target
| defense and FAANG R&D because there's no way you can
| compete on price when you have to pay your employees
| $20-30 an hour and you have to do small batches because
| you can't compete on price.
| stingrae wrote:
| In China they are pushing automation. When you are
| charging $500+ a pcbs, you don't care as much.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Most US-based PCB manufacturers can do low-volume PCBs
| rather cheaply for you, but not quite at China prices.
| AdvancedPCB in the US has their "$33 each" which gets you a
| very quick turnaround on a pretty-good-tech 2-layer board
| for $100 total (minimum 3 boards). They do 4-layer PCBs for
| $66/board and they apparently also do RF materials for
| $100/board. Sierra Circuits, for example, also has similar
| prices. This is a market that exists.
|
| This is not the price you get from China, but this is still
| a pretty damn good deal. When I was in college, $33 each
| was great (this was before JLC and PCBWay), and I would say
| the same for most hobby projects.
| Aurornis wrote:
| OSH Park has been doing 4 layer boards for at $10 per
| square inch for a set of 3 for years. Shipping included.
| 2 layer for $5/sq in. Much cheaper for anything but the
| largest boards.
|
| It was actually only recently that China low volume
| manufacturing beat out OSH Park for very small boards
| once you factored in shipping.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| At one point recently, I used OSH Park to make a PCB that
| was exactly 1 square inch, and I felt like I was stealing
| money from someone with how cheap it was.
|
| For the record, college was more than 3 years ago for me,
| and $33/board (last I checked) does not beat any of the
| other prototyping services except at very large sizes -
| they go up to 60 sq in for that price.
| Animats wrote:
| That's not bad. Sierra and Protologix are much more
| expensive.
| jdietrich wrote:
| "Not quite at China prices" is something of an
| understatement. JLCPCB offer five 100mm*100mm 4-layer
| boards for $7. Not $7 each, $7 total for five boards.
| Shipping to Europe is $1.50.
| p_j_w wrote:
| For a company doing R&D, this difference is so small it
| hardly matters. It's less than an hour of an engineer's
| time.
| eru wrote:
| Chinese labour isn't that cheap anymore.
|
| Chinese wages are higher than those in Mexico for example.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| My impression, having visited the place, is that the
| Chinese laborers just work ridiculously hard. Part of
| this is due to culture and very heavy handed management,
| part of this due to the working class seeing huge returns
| on their labor (wealth has grown exponentially in their
| own lifetimes).
| eru wrote:
| Going a bit on a tangent:
|
| I grew up in Europe, but am now living in Singapore. It's
| interesting: despite all the PRC's advances and progress
| in the last few decades, they are still the poorest
| Chinese-majority country. You can go even wider, and look
| at countries with sizeable Chinese minorities, like
| Malaysia or Thailand, and I think you will find that the
| average ethnic Chinese person there also makes more than
| the average ethnic Chinese person does in the PRC.
|
| I haven't checked the numbers for all of the relevant
| countries, but I think it's fair to say that by and
| large, PR China has the poorest ethnically Chinese
| people.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Similarly the UK is pretty much the poorest Anglo
| country. It seems to be a pattern where the most
| ambitious/productive types "boil off" to where there is
| more opportunity. I suspect this pattern is reflected
| with most diaspora groups.
| neom wrote:
| It also begets the other, a place that has that
| opportunity attracts people who want to work, people who
| want to work build opportunity, attract more people, etc.
| Once you're in a death spiral of people who don't want to
| work and you're not specifically building socialism, you
| end up in this half functional dead state like my country
| (Canada). I always say, I honestly don't care if we do
| communism or capitalism just pick one and do it well.
| lazylizard wrote:
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese
|
| how to quantify "by and large"? there's not many chinese
| people outside china and most of them left china in the
| last 100 years in search of better lives.
|
| and usa and singapore are rich?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Don't know about China specifically, but "working
| ridiculously hard" is just "working" if everyone around
| is doing the same and you had no points of comparison.
|
| If you've seen enough people graduating into non-working
| class, or you have had yourself, that changes your
| perspective.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| I guess that would add credence to the culture element.
| All of east Asian shares in this practice really. Given a
| structure/framework in which to work productively, they
| tend to really crush it economically. However it seems
| this often comes at the expense of other aspects of
| society (underemployment, low fertility rates, elder
| poverty, deflation etc).
| Veliladon wrote:
| Because there's nowhere in the US like Shenzhen, Guangdong or
| Hong Kong.
|
| Remember how Apple couldn't just pick up and move the
| production of iPhones to India or Vietnam? You need all the
| ancillary industries around the production to be there, along
| with being competitive and commoditized as well.
|
| When a supplier has something go wrong a line of
| manufacturing doesn't go down. You go down the street to the
| same guy selling the same thing and have them pick up the
| slack. If you want a 1uF ceramic cap come hell or high water
| there's going to be a dozen people selling them all quoting a
| price a little above cost. When Apple moved production to
| India and Vietnam? When you hear Apple talking about a few
| billion in investment in Indonesia? This is what they're
| helping set up and what takes a decade to do.
|
| Anyone can buy automation equipment but there's nowhere in
| the US you can do what JLCPCB/PCBWay do with PCB and
| electronics assembling because we literally don't manufacture
| all the ancillary stuff required in the US, little alone
| manufacture it all in the same place. If the SMT components
| are manufactured domestically say for military purposes it's
| going to be spread out all over the US because politicians
| pork barrel contracts for their districts and states.
|
| You could setup next to a Mouser distribution hub but Mouser
| is a middleman and they have you over a barrel. What do
| middlemen do in that situation? They raise prices just enough
| to the point where it's uneconomical to leave.
|
| You metaphorically need to invent the universe to make it
| work in the US.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| > Remember how Apple couldn't just pick up and move the
| production of iPhones to India or Vietnam?
|
| You left out the part about dormitories full of modern-day
| slaves, complete with nets so they don't leap to their
| deaths. Generally this is frowned upon in the West. India
| and Vietnam wouldn't tolerate it either, despite being
| developing countries. Wasn't there a riot at Apple's India
| factory over work conditions or am I thinking of something
| else?
|
| Bury this post all you want; I know a guy at Apple that saw
| the nets in person. It's quite a sight to behold and
| humbling experience.
| moshun wrote:
| While I agree with the sentiment, the new administration
| clearly doesn't care about that and has no intention of
| fixing it. This political theater so they can _fix_ it
| later.
| throw37373 wrote:
| Except they have dormitories with safety nets in India
| and Vietnam too.
|
| The riot in India was because they weren't getting paid,
| not because of the work conditions.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Gosh, they were not getting paid despite those
| conditions? That's batshit crazy.
| pembrook wrote:
| Sorry, but comparing the living/working standards of
| [developing country] to the wealthiest nation on earth is
| a silly 1990s emotional appeal ignoring the reality that,
| every society has to climb the ladder. And actively harms
| this process.
|
| You do realize the default state of humanity is living in
| the dirt and fighting off starvation daily right? It
| takes decades/hundreds of years to develop an advanced
| economy and fight for the institutions that enable this
| not to be the case. Undesirable manufacturing jobs lead
| to desirable manufacturing jobs (as is happening rapidly
| there!)
|
| Foxconn not being a rung on the ladder in China doesn't
| mean locals suddenly get American living standards, it
| means they never climb the ladder and get stuck with
| _even worse_ alternatives --- I don't think you realize
| the history of China is basically constant mass
| starvation:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| There are nets on bridges and other places in the US,
| too.
|
| Also I don't think the suicide rate of those workers you
| are referring to is higher than the general population.
| There are simply _lots_ of workers. For example, Foxconn
| has _more than 1 million employees_ so it is normal that
| there would be some level of suicide within such a large
| population.
| consp wrote:
| We have millions of people here, suicide rates are not
| that high, and no nets. So what is your argument exactly?
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Did you actually compare suicide rates to China in
| general? Something tells me you didn't.
| ben_w wrote:
| The US? Your suicide rates are higher, and you do have
| nets[0].
|
| In their worst year, Foxconn had 15 suicides from 930,000
| people for a rate of 1.6 per 100k[1].
|
| The US region with the current lowest rate is the
| District of Columbia, at 6.1 per 100k; the US national
| average in Foxconn's worst year was about 13 per 100k[2].
|
| Today, the USA national average ranks them #31 highest in
| the world with a rate of 14.5 per 100k, while China's
| national average of 6.7 per 100 is close to your best
| region (DC) and ranks them #122 (higher rank number means
| lower rate)[3].
|
| Foxconn, in that year, had a workforce about the same
| size as the total population of South Dakota. South
| Dakota in that year had a suicide count of 139 [4].
|
| [0] https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-
| projects/suicid...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_S
| tates#/...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_su
| icide_r...
|
| [4] Page 5: https://sprc.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/11/South-Dakota-Sui...
| close04 wrote:
| > Generally this is frowned upon in the West. India and
| Vietnam wouldn't tolerate it either
|
| Yes, "frowned upon" is the perfectly realistic way to
| describe it.
|
| Dior was just caught using slave labor including illegal
| immigrants in Italy (so they can say "Made in Italy" on
| the label), all working round the clock shifts and
| sleeping locked in the makeshift factory, operating
| machines with safeties disabled so they're more
| productive, making 2700E handbags for 53E [0]. The court
| just called it "Unethical Supply Chain" but no criminal
| charges. Luxury brands are "put on notice".
|
| > thousands of small foreign-owned manufacturers supply
| luxury brands with goods that can claim the prized "Made
| in Italy" label but are produced at "Made in China"
| prices.
|
| If you thought now you can sleep well but still buy cheap
| (or even a 2700E handbag) because your product isn't made
| in China, think again. And this isn't just Italy, it's
| everywhere. And it isn't just iPhones or Dior handbags,
| it's almost every cheap thing you buy and some expensive
| ones too. Business owners are greedy and chase profits,
| and customers are cheap and don't care beyond their own
| needs and wants.
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2024/06/24/i
| talian-...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| It's not just >Business owners are greedy and chase
| profits, and customers are cheap and don't care beyond
| their own needs and wants.
|
| You have the judicial system of Italy that is complicit
| in this behavior in this instance and others in different
| cases.
|
| Although, it seems to be Dior's subcontractors: >found
| two of its Chinese-owned subcontractors based outside
| Milan had exploited their workers.
|
| And Dior was not doing audits.
|
| No comment in the article on the fate of the
| subcontractors who violated the law.... very encouraging.
| ben_w wrote:
| > You left out the part about dormitories full of modern-
| day slaves, complete with nets so they don't leap to
| their deaths. Generally this is frowned upon in the West.
|
| Frowned upon, but you (the US) do have them:
| https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-
| projects/suicid...
|
| Seen them here in Germany, too:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/vDSL4HeQrLLfYU2m7
| Evil_Saint wrote:
| That's not the same at all.
| inetknght wrote:
| That's funny because I've thought it _is_ the same for
| years and I 'm happy to see someone else post a comment
| about it instead.
|
| Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on why you think it's not
| the same.
| antonyt wrote:
| These are the extremely obviously different. A company
| that has to take specific measures to prevent the suicide
| of their workers should raise a much different level of
| scrutiny that the fact that a massive bridge available to
| millions of people is used to commit suicide.
| inetknght wrote:
| Why should a company require more strict scrutiny than,
| say, a public bridge? Well of course there are many
| reasons, but specifically: in the case of addressing
| suicide? If a bridge is being used to commit suicide
| then... perhaps the problems causing suicide should be
| addressed instead of (or... in addition to) the symptom
| of suicide being prevented.
| ben_w wrote:
| The company had just shy of a million people in it at the
| time, making the comparison "about the entire population
| of South Dakota" (which had 139 suicides that year) or
| "121% of the population of San Francisco" (32 jumped from
| specifically the Golden Gate bridge in 2010, which was
| Foxconn's worst year[0], and that doesn't count any of
| the other suicides in SF that year, just jumping
| specifically off that specific bridge), and it's nowhere
| near the only example of this in the USA.
|
| This university had three students jump to their deaths
| in 2010, out of about 26k students, compared to 15 in
| Foxconn's worst year out of 980,000 employees:
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/suicide-nets-college-attempts-
| to-...
|
| Population adjusted, what happened at Cornell University
| was as if 112 people rather than 15 had jumped in
| Foxconn.
|
| Or this one:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Holmes_Bobst_Library
|
| """In late 2003, the library was the site of two
| suicides. In separate incidents, students jumped from the
| open-air crosswalks inside the library and fell to the
| stereogram-patterned marble floor below.
|
| After the second suicide, the university installed
| Plexiglas barricades on each level and along the
| stairways to prevent further jumping. In 2009, a third
| student jumped to his death from the tenth floor,
| apparently scaling the plexiglas barricade.[7]
|
| The library has since added floor-to-ceiling metal
| barriers to prevent any future suicide attempts. The
| barrier is made of randomly perforated aluminum screens
| that evoke the zeros and ones of a digital
| waterfall.[8]"""
|
| 2 out of 59,144 students would be equivalent to 33 out of
| the 980k Foxconn employees, double the number who
| actually jumped.
|
| [0] https://abc7news.com/archive/7878562/
| Evil_Saint wrote:
| The Golden Gate Bridge is a public bridge and a
| destination for suicidal people.
|
| Foxconn is a place where people live and work. Not
| accessible to the public.
|
| Where is the overlap?
| ben_w wrote:
| Foxconn is the same size of the _combination_ of all of
| San Francisco on one side of the bridge with quite a lot
| of the small settlements on the north side.
|
| Treating Foxconn as "a company" is fine for legal
| purposes, but it's on a scale of "one of the larger
| incorporated cities, close to the top 10" by US standards
| -- or indeed "South Dakota". (Similar population, but
| Foxconn's revenue is about 3.7x South Dakota's GDP or 81%
| of San Francisco's GDP).
| HPsquared wrote:
| I don't get all the hubbub about the nets. Classic
| example of trying to do something good (save lives) and
| getting attacked for it.
|
| Compare to barriers around train/subway platforms, nets
| or high barriers on bridges. All sorts of things. It's
| pretty much a "large number of people living around tall
| structures" thing.
| ben_w wrote:
| When I'm feeling positive about humanity, I think it's a
| failure of comprehension of the scale of Foxconn. The
| company is about the size (both population and economic
| output) of a small country all by itself, and people are
| bad at imagining things on that scale.
|
| When I'm feeling negative, a Tom Gauld cartoon comes to
| mind: https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2xljaz/us_v
| s_them/
| bayindirh wrote:
| > complete with nets so they don't leap to their deaths.
|
| These nets are everywhere here. In the our other
| building's (which is an R&D facility where nobody is a
| modern day slave by your definition) stair well,
| construction sites, bridges, etc.
|
| I saw it all over Europe in buildings, bridges, etc.
| openplatypus wrote:
| Which Europe? I live in Germany and travel frequently
| around most of the Western, Central and Northern Europe.
| No nets.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I think I saw one in Freiburg, in University. I vaguely
| remember seeing some nets in The Netherlands. Probably
| inside Science Park buildings.
| ben_w wrote:
| This is in central Berlin, the net is just about visible:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/vDSL4HeQrLLfYU2m7
|
| Clifton Suspension Bridge in the UK is infamous for it,
| which is why it's now got a barrier up on the pedestrian
| section: https://maps.app.goo.gl/U1xYZHqhhxNoKMDV7
| youngtaff wrote:
| US prison population is essentially modern day slaves...
| yes some of them are there for truely horrific things but
| a lot are their on minor issues
| meigwilym wrote:
| > If the SMT components are manufactured domestically say
| for military purposes it's going to be spread out all over
| the US because politicians pork barrel contracts for their
| districts and states.
|
| Or possibly politicians attracting investment to their
| districts for the benefit their voters. What's the
| alternative here, a centrally planned economy?
| reaperman wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. None of it makes any
| sense.
|
| > because politicians pork barrel contracts for their
| districts and states.
|
| > Or possibly politicians attracting investment to their
| districts for the benefit their voters
|
| That's literally the same thing - you just gave the
| definition of pork barrel spending. It isn't _purely_
| bad, it 's just excessive or unnecessary to benefit one
| politician's constituents.
|
| And pork barrel spending is also literally a centrally-
| planned economy. It's the federal government saying "put
| this industry here" despite the fact that capitalism
| would not have put it there.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > You metaphorically need to invent the universe to make it
| work in the US.
|
| You didnt answer the obvious question of the why things are
| the way they are now? US used to have their entire
| electronic supply chain, save from raw materials, in USA in
| the 70s... So why cant US build its own Shenzhen or Hong
| Kong? taxes? corporate taxes are relatively low in some US
| states, infrastructure? US has all the infrastructure
| needed. Engineers? US claims to have the best universities
| in the world...
| willvarfar wrote:
| In the 1800s the UK led the industrial revolution. Most
| things were manufactured there. Raw materials were
| shipped in from all over the Empire but the manufacturing
| was usually happening in the mills of the UK.
|
| In the 1900s the USA took that crown. Most things became
| manufactured there. A lot thanks to Britain bankrupting
| itself to defeat Germany in WW1.
|
| In the 2000s China has taken that crown. Now most things
| are manufactured there. But the owners and customers are
| in the US. The US corporations have outsourced their
| manufacturing to China and get rich from it.
|
| And now the USA workers wonder if it was all actually a
| good idea?
|
| The financiers are still getting rich and looking not to
| move their manufacturing back to the US but rather to a
| less developed and so cheaper country further abroad...
| brickfaced wrote:
| >And now the USA workers wonder if it was all actually a
| good idea?
|
| We were never asked.
| myrmidon wrote:
| That is extremely simple, because there is less money to
| be made compared to just going into pure
| software/finance/etc, which is why all the US talent
| shifted there in the past.
|
| Economically speaking it was a big advantage because you
| could get all the gadgets manufactured at chinese wages
| for the last decades-- electronics made in the US _will_
| be more expensive even after all the necessary
| investments are paid for (duh).
|
| A possible model sector for how this could look like is
| agriculture: Most nations subsidize the shit out of it to
| keep a good chunk of it local (~$20 billion/year for the
| US). You could treat heavy industry/electronics
| manufacturing the same way, it would just cost taxpayers
| a bunch and also increase prices in general (because you
| then poach manpower and capital from _other_ unsubsidized
| industries).
| abirch wrote:
| What I would love to see is a public payer heath plan
| paid with a VAT. Then every startup gets subsidized as do
| large corporations. It sucks when you have to think about
| health care costs when doing a startup or rolling the
| dice.
| bdcravens wrote:
| It barely explains the full situation, but I feel like in
| the US we have lifestyle expectations (which is more than
| just money) that go with our education and career
| choices. This puts a virtual boundary on where you'll be
| able to get talent to go. (Relating it to our common
| experience, there's a reason why San Francisco or Austin
| is a much more attractive city for developers than
| Houston)
| harimau777 wrote:
| I'd almost say that the lifestyle expectations come
| first. I care about getting paid a lot primarily because
| high pay is necessary to live somewhere like San
| Francisco/Austin/NYC.
| floatrock wrote:
| The boston-95-ring-vs-silicon-valley/noncompete-
| enforcement story gets close to this. Or the detroit-
| automotive-supply-chain story.
|
| It's largely about can you set up an effective ecosystem
| of suppliers.
|
| The story of the Traitorous 8
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight is
| basically the tale of how free-market competition spawns
| the economic prosperity of an entire region. In those
| times, Boston's 95 ring was the favored home of
| semiconductor tech, but the popular story goes that
| Massachusetts enforced non-compete clauses while
| California didn't, and the result was the ascension of
| Silicon Valley as people out west intermingled between
| semiconductor and computer companies, traded ideas,
| started new firms from those ideas, etc.
|
| Shenzhen is amazing because it's an entire village of
| micro-manufacturies... one bodega specializes in one type
| of capacitor, a neighborhood specializes in rapid
| prototype boards, there's institutional social
| connections between all these folks so you can just run
| to the other side of town if you need something for this
| week's production run or if your assembly line controller
| board failed.
|
| As for why we can't reproduce that in the US, my best
| guess is we've had the "get big or get out" mentality
| since Nixon. VC's won't fund a bodega specializing in
| some obscure electronics niche -- we favor rapid
| injection of capital into something that can quickly grow
| and dominate an entire industry. "Lifestyle business" is
| a pejorative here. The Shenzhen model on the other hand
| is an interconnected cottage industry village of
| generalists that focus on small runs of whatever Temu
| gadget is trending today and can rapidly change and adapt
| week to week. No individual bodega dominates, but as an
| ecosystem it does. Something something anti-fragile.
|
| Yes, there are also the megafactories that make our
| iphones and galaxies and have dormitories for the
| basically-slave-level workforce, so the models do mix.
| But it's largely a different business mindset --
| ecosystem vs. winner-takes-all.
| macleginn wrote:
| "VC's won't fund a bodega specializing in some obscure
| electronics niche" --- is it generally known who funds
| Shenzhen bodegas?
| floatrock wrote:
| My armchair understanding is they're closer to "lifestyle
| businesses", and if there's larger funding sources at
| play it's in supporting the ecosystem at large.
|
| But I'm just an armchair commentator here. I hangout here
| cause I'd love to hear some better firsthand experiences
| if my story is off.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Walking through there and nearby HongKong it's literally
| well educated individuals in garages each doing a 'thing'
| that all comes together to make something bigger. No
| investment needed here.
|
| As in I witnessed a bespoke electric motor manufacturer
| that was in the ground floor garage space with a couple
| of guys neatly winding insulated copper around an iron
| bar cut to the size needed (very large).
|
| You might see a massive train motor and say 'where'd they
| get the funding to start this bespoke train motor
| company'. But it's literally a couple of guys in an area
| where they have another couple of guys make the custom
| brushes, someone else doing the housing, they wind on the
| coils and boom you have a bespoke motor manufacturer. No
| investment needed.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| You are forgetting insurance/healthcare. Public
| healthcare would make it way easier for individuals to
| setup small boutique bodega manufacturing shops.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Shenzhen is a Special Economic Zone and Hong Kong is/was
| a major hub for finance. People used to say, "China
| didn't take Hong Kong, Hong Kong took Shenzhen". It would
| be hard to replicate the opportunity of Deng's
| liberalizations being new and adjacent to a major center
| for finance. It would be like having Manhattan across the
| bay from an untapped backwater like rural Mississippi and
| have Mississippi declare, "anything goes, we're open for
| biz".
|
| Look at the existing issues with the Rust Belt as an
| example. The higher cost of labor could be offset by
| higher worker productivity. The issues are in regulatory
| compliance, demands from politicians and unions. As soon
| as a major project is announced, the demands start
| flowing in. Look at what happened with Amazon's attempted
| fulfillment center in NYC. Look at the amazing strategic
| location and port infrastructure of a city like
| Baltimore, and ask why it cannot attract more
| development. There are major political obstacles which
| need to be tackled in every case. Even California's
| failed highspeed rail project should tell us something.
| troyvit wrote:
| > So why cant US build its own Shenzhen or Hong Kong?
| taxes?
|
| I would guess labor costs and practices are a big aspect.
| We send all our kids to stupid school instead of paying
| them pennies to get their tiny little fingers to work
| building micro-controllers for us and stuff.
| fpoling wrote:
| It is much more profitable to invest into financial
| industry in US than into manufacturing. So the latter
| attracts top talent.
| bogantech wrote:
| You can't even get a bare PCB manufactured anywhere else
| for a price even remotely close to that of JLC, PCBWay etc.
|
| Component availability has nothing to do with that, JLC
| have always been way cheaper than US/EU board houses even
| before they started doing assembly services
| jaredklewis wrote:
| > The question is how did we let it go this far?
|
| Because allowing countries to maximize their comparative
| advantages is great for economic growth. It doesn't make
| sense for every nation on earth to have their own copy of
| every industrial sector. We don't need all nations to
| manufacture their own jet engines, oil tankers, t-shirts, and
| Tylenol. Trade is good.
|
| The idea that China is a major security threat is basically
| brand new. Half of century of economic policy can't be
| reversed in 5 years.
| eastbound wrote:
| > The idea that China is a major security threat is
| basically brand new
|
| That's what I was taught when I grew up in the 1989ies.
| brabel wrote:
| > The idea that China is a major security threat is
| basically brand new.
|
| And as far as I can see, that idea comes from China simply
| having grown its economy to a size comparable to that of
| the USA, nothing else?
|
| But everyone during the Chinese miracle growth (from 1980's
| to today) expected China would've become the largest
| economy in the world by the 2020's. I guess people just
| didn't really take that seriously until it actually became
| true?
| throw310822 wrote:
| Exactly. We knew perfectly well it was coming, for
| decades, and we knew perfectly well the US would have put
| up a fight to prevent it. Not a competition, a fight:
| real and fake accusations, FUD, tariffs, or even actual
| war.
|
| Now the time has come and we're in the middle of it. At
| least, I hope this is not just the beginning.
| elfbargpt wrote:
| They expected China to grow in a way that would lead to
| the "west" exerting much more control over China than
| they ended up with today. Basically they wanted more
| western-style capitalism, reduction of state control,
| etc...
|
| Now China is very strong, and the west exerts very little
| influence
| vaccineai wrote:
| China is weak, its current economic engines of real
| estate and internal consumption has failed. It is
| currently heavily dependent on export, of which,
| sanctions and tariffs on China would wreck their economy.
| elfbargpt wrote:
| They account for 30% of global manufacturing, have the
| second largest GDP (largest GDP PPP), and are rapidly
| developing in the tech sector. Not weak by any means
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| China would have a hard time economically without being
| able to sell to the US. But it's been developing markets
| and economies in Rest of World, especially Africa. And
| its internal market is huge.
|
| Meanwhile this is a thread about the US tech and retail
| sectors being unable to survive _at all_ without imports
| from China.
|
| Turns out offshoring was one of the most self-harmingly
| stupid decisions in US economic history.
|
| Still - at least it prevented worker unionisation. So
| that was such a win for corporate America.
| zxilly wrote:
| "tariffs"
|
| My memory is not very good, but it seems that something
| similar has happened 4 years ago, do you remember?
| maxwindiff wrote:
| We hoped China would grow into a Korea or Japan, instead
| we got ourselves a Russia.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So in essence a colony or puppet state? Thankfully China
| avoided that. And is not controlled by others like Soviet
| satellites were.
| geenkeuse wrote:
| Lol. you are speaking like a parent. Only China was never
| your child, like Korea and Japan was. You never
| overpowered or controlled them and forced them into
| whatever mold you wanted. You were never in control of
| China.
|
| While you were basking in your arrogance, they overtook
| you. And now you have to deal with that. People are
| literally saying how they cannot do their jobs now that
| their stuff is not coming in from China. Why is that? You
| thought you were exploiting cheap labour, but meanwhile
| you were making them smarter with every bit of "menial"
| work you gave them. Now they can do anything that you can
| do, and a lot of it they can do better and cheaper. You
| are more dependent on them then they are on you. But your
| ego refuses to let you see it.
|
| Here is some comparison from an uneducated
| nonprofessional...America is a company masquerading as a
| country. China is a country run like a business. Once you
| know the difference it will inform you of the way
| forward...Dankie
| jazz9k wrote:
| It's funny because Trump saw this years ago and the
| entire point of the tariff is to gain Chinese
| manufacturing independance.
| roamerz wrote:
| >>The idea that China is a major security threat is
| basically brand new
|
| You're kidding right?
| suraci wrote:
| timing is important
|
| China is always a 'security threat' to the US since 1946,
| but it never get a high priority untill now
|
| - 1946-1991 Cold War with Soviet - 2001-2017 Global War
| on Terror in MiddleEast - 2018-now Trade War and Chip War
| with China
|
| I highly doubt the memory capacity of americans, it seems
| like americans can only remember things that are
| "present"
|
| it's just like the meme
|
| 1. Remove the chip 2. Overwrite Iraq -> China 3. Insert
| the chip _click_ 4. "China is our destined enemy"
| ta20240528 wrote:
| > China is always a 'security threat' to the US
|
| Only because its been recently revealed that everyone is
| a security threat to the US.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| No. I guess it's a matter of degree but my memory of the
| 90s, 00s and even early 2010s the middle east and North
| Korea both received far more attention from the press and
| politicians than China. China seemed to be on a
| trajectory towards a free market and less repressive
| government. I don't feel like the current "cold war"
| esque situation set in until the late 2010s but maybe I'm
| wrong? What's your take?
| vaccineai wrote:
| You are so very wrong.
|
| Just one example around free market: China's private
| sector has lost ground as state sector has gained share
| among top corporations since 2021
| https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-
| privat...
| newswasboring wrote:
| 2021 is not recent for you?
| vaccineai wrote:
| I'm responding to "China seemed to be on a trajectory
| towards a free market and less repressive government"
| newswasboring wrote:
| I thought the point being made was that this trajectory
| has been reversed recently.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| It's been a gradual shift with rising and falling
| tensions and various flare-ups, but if I had to pick a
| date I would pin it to around 2012, when Xi Jinping
| became the leader of China and began taking a more
| hardline stance.
| roamerz wrote:
| You're right it's definitely a matter of degree. And I
| would have to say early 2000 when Clinton signed the
| trade agreement with them. That is when our manufacturing
| capacity started moving to China and with that our
| security. It's of course way more complex than that but..
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Great for who's economic growth? As in, when staring at the
| graph of GDP vs wages plotted over the last 50 years, that
| big-ass pie slice that everyone's excited about? That
| appears to have ended up in roughly 800 people's pockets.
| Meanwhile even mention domestic manufacturing in the
| country that basically invented consumer electronics and
| kazoo music starts playing in the background. _grits teeth_
| We knew NAFTA was bullshit, we knew it was going to break
| basically everything, and yet folks just couldn 't quite
| get mad enough to scare the political elite badly enough to
| back off. I love my country, we have always been at war
| with Eurasia, I am going the fuck to bed.
| anavat wrote:
| For humanity? It is the same reason most of us don't grow
| our food or make our shoes. Specialization makes a lot of
| sense. Western tech wouldn't have been able to grow as
| fast if electronics manufacturing were not concentrated
| in China. It is (was?) a win-win.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| One of those "wins" was based entirely on toxic wealth
| hoarding by financial elites, which is why we are we are,
| with the flailing remains of a US government taking a
| hatchet to science and education while infrastructure
| crumbles around it, and climate change alternately floods
| and burns prime real estate.
|
| So in reality, not so much.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| China is a nuclear power and has been recognized as a major
| security threat since they acquired nuclear weapons (in the
| sixties?).
|
| But your last sentence is true. Politicians and corporate
| executives failing to accurately extrapolate long-term
| consequences have not done us any favors over the past 50
| years, and now we're super fucked. It'd be hard even if we
| still had a competent government instead of the smoking
| ruin in progress.
|
| (Thomas Friedman and his globalization-is-brilliant shtick
| making people think this was all OK wasn't great either.)
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| > Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to
| JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.?
|
| Because the West has to actually follow environmental and
| safety regulations. As opposed to write them down on paper
| and wipe your ass with it when the West isn't looking.
|
| Evidence: I watched a tour video from one of these Chinese
| PCB houses and some of the workers were wearing surgical
| masks.
|
| Not for COVID mind you, for presiding over open vats of
| boiling poison that would need a chemical respirator in any
| responsible country.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| Given how much the US wants to deregulate everything,
| perhaps it can become the Shenzhen of the West. And not in
| the good way.
| ab5tract wrote:
| *A handful of oligarchs and their useful idiots in the
| US.
|
| Fixed that for you.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| "Because the West has to actually follow environmental and
| safety regulations"
|
| ... that can only exist because they can circumvent them by
| offshoring all their production to the East and South. If
| they _actually_ wanted to comply rather than bypass said
| regulations they would have to curb consumption for which
| there would not be support.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| Next you're going to tell me that the cobalt used to make
| batteries for the electric vehicles _literally saving the
| environment right now_ in the West is being mined by
| enslaved children in the Congo with archaic hand tools
| and no PPE under inconceivable conditions.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| No, I'd tell you that the cobalt for electric cars is
| only a tiny fraction of the total cobalt used, and that
| combustion engines also need a lot, AND that there's less
| un-ethical sources of cobalt that many manufacturers use.
|
| But that's the nitpicker in me. The general point that
| our over-consumption drives like 80% of the bad things in
| the world still stands. The only real solution is to
| consume less.
| jdietrich wrote:
| BYD and CATL are using cobalt-free chemistry in most of
| their batteries. I suppose that makes the Chinese evil
| for stealing the bread from Congolese children's mouths.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_batt
| ery
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Why would there be no support for products if they were
| made in compliance with environmental and safety
| regulations? Or why would people not be able to consume
| them?
| suraci wrote:
| I post this elsewhere, i'll just put it here again:
|
| Due to underdeveloped economies, developing countries cannot
| avoid economic dependence on developed countries, especially
| in areas such as high technology, equipment, and precision
| instruments. However, this dependence varies depending on the
| development stage of each country. For example, African
| nations primarily require food to sustain basic living
| conditions.
|
| Regardless of their specific needs, this situation has
| resulted in a unique exchange mechanism: developing countries
| must offer their best products in exchange for goods from
| developed countries. As a result, people in developing
| countries are unable to enjoy the finest products produced in
| their own countries, and sometimes not even second-tier
| products, as these are reserved for foreign consumers.
|
| The U.S. market features products from various countries and
| regions, including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan,
| Jamaica, and Mexico. The world's finest products flow into
| the U.S. market in exchange for U.S. dollars. As everyone
| competes to obtain dollars, competition intensifies, leading
| to high product quality and low prices. This has created
| unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. market. This outcome is
| a result of market mechanisms and the benefits that the U.S.
| has gained from the global status of the dollar, established
| by the Bretton Woods Conference after World War II.
|
| However, the massive influx of foreign products into the U.S.
| has also impacted its domestic industries, causing factory
| closures and rising unemployment. This issue cannot be
| ignored, which is why the forces of free trade and
| protectionism in the U.S. have been in constant conflict.
|
| -- Wang Huning, America Against America
|
| as long as the US still export USD to exchange products, this
| situation will not change
|
| > how these Chinese firms are so cheap?
|
| believe me, we don't want this, we have no choice, just like
| all other 3rd countries, cheap products, cheap minerals,
| cheap men and women, all running to the US to be exchanged
| for dollars
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| For those that don't know, Wang hunting wrote that in 1991!
| Now he is one of the top dogs in the Chinese government
| ....
| thesaintlives wrote:
| Because it is not $120 of raw material...
| somenameforme wrote:
| Prices in the West are maximized with the goal of reaching
| the peak point on the supply vs demand curve. Prices in the
| East, and China in particular, are minimized [presumably?]
| with the goal of maximizing longterm marketshare. One of the
| easiest examples of this is water [1] because it's a
| relatively low-labor, low-processing industry. Yet a bottle
| of water in the West tends to cost about 700% more than a
| bottle of water in Asia. As a result of this I can buy a
| bottle of water in the middle of the desert in the Mideast
| for a tiny fraction of what I'd pay in Michigan which, alone,
| has ~20% of the entire world's fresh water supply.
|
| This is also why GDP is extremely misleading. PPP is supposed
| to account for these differences but often is often wrong by
| a rather wide margin for many critical industries.
|
| [1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/bottled-w...
| Peteragain wrote:
| Good point. Capitalism's fundamental is RoI, and in China
| the time scale is "forever" while in the venture capital
| market it's 5 years max.
| vaccineai wrote:
| Chinese government only thinks in terms of months, not
| forever. Why do you think they overbuilt housing and
| crashed the economy? It's because the government
| officials want to quickly cash out and escape to other
| countries.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Building out more high-speed rail interconnections than
| any other part in the world is a well-known sign of a
| country that thinks short-term.
| vaccineai wrote:
| Building out mostly unused high-speed rail
| interconnections and being in debt is a well-known sign
| of a country that thinks short-term. the local government
| gets paid for building these useless rails out.
|
| China Sees More Stations Shut Down as High-Speed Rail
| Debt Crisis Deepens https://english.pardafas.com/china-
| sees-more-stations-shut-d...
|
| China's High-Speed Rail Is Dead: Over 4,000 Ghostly
| Stations, Billions Spent, No Passengers
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhclmurNUuw
| blitzar wrote:
| Building nothing and being in even more in debt is the
| high IQ play.
| frikskit wrote:
| First time I genuinely LOL'd on HN
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's short-termism but not the kind you first think of in
| the West.
|
| Chinese local officials are expected to meet and exceed
| targets for GDP growth. Investment is GDP growth, so
| officials are incentivized to build lots of flashy
| projects to boost growth even if there isn't a clear need
| for them.
|
| The central government is so concerned with local
| government spending that has resulted that it has ordered
| 12 provinces to halt new projects:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-orders-
| indebted-lo...
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's amazing how different accounting systems can affect
| decision-making.
| Daishiman wrote:
| That's... worse than the US not building any
| infrastructure?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Is built infrastructure any good if it has to close or
| never operates? https://english.pardafas.com/china-sees-
| more-stations-shut-d...
|
| The local government debt burden that has resulted has
| also started resulting in other services getting cut,
| like local bus services ceasing to operate. What good is
| a high speed rail line you can't get to?
| https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Chinese-bus-
| crisis,-a-new-bu...
| Maken wrote:
| Wasn't the housing crisis mostly the Chinese middle class
| trying to secure their savings from inflation by
| investing in real state?
| ygouzerh wrote:
| In a world based on mutual respects instead of trading wars,
| there should be no point to redo everything again in every
| country. If one country is very good at doing something, why
| try to re-implement it again?
| anonzzzies wrote:
| That doesn't exist though; politician use globalism to
| paint all negative stuff (immigration, inflation, wars,
| climate change, whatever), people (including them) start to
| believe in it and there we are. Every rich country/country
| group will need to implement everything (energy, military,
| tech, food, health, etc) themselves to sustain themselves
| and 'normally' drive trade to cut prices but at any moment
| be able to fold into itself again.
| logifail wrote:
| > Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to
| JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc? Has anyone asked themselves how
| these Chinese firms are so cheap?
|
| Of course we've asked ourselves that, we know the answers
| too! Manufacturing costs are so low, and the cost of shipping
| is so low.
|
| I recently made contact with a manufacturer at a trade fair
| in Europe.
|
| I was wanting a sample of their product, they had one at
| their stand - I had it in my hands - but due to time
| constraints we didn't have time to seal the deal on the day
| and I had to leave town.
|
| So they ended up taking the item all the way back to Asia,
| and then a week or so later air-freighted it all the way back
| to Europe. Shipping cost was approx USD55, they shipped it
| out on a Friday, it was delivered on the Monday.
| altairprime wrote:
| The opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn the necessary
| prereqs to launch such startups are no longer present. US
| political leaders and businesses responsible for fiscal
| policy and (anti-)taxation lobbying do not consider
| "investment in education of industrial workers" to be a
| relevant enough factor in domestic manufacturing security to
| be worth taxing, spending, or lobbying for. The fiscal
| climate for launching new businesses of this sort is also now
| extremely hostile; entrepreneurs are expected to self-fund
| their businesses, which is now due to wage deflation wholly
| incompatible with high-capex industries like electronics; or
| to persuade a VC investor to bet on them, which is how we get
| Juicero; or to pursue subscription-based revenues, which is
| how we get the Cricut revolt of a couple years back; or to
| persuade a bank to take a risk on a large capex loan with
| uncertain outcomes, when banks can make more reliable money
| gambling on financial derivatives and government bailouts and
| monetary policy does not compel them to loan out excess
| reserves.
|
| This is the long con of Reagan in the 80s: extracting value
| and diverting profits from households to shareholders will
| only get you a few decades before the last well-trained,
| well-funded workforce ages out and no one's left to prop up
| the scam. In SimCity terms, the US is collapsing from High-
| Density Industrial to Medium-Density Industrial because all
| the schools had their funding cut for 50 years while the city
| budget has Commercial taxes set to 0%. The solutions are
| similarly apparent to any SimCity player, but deeply
| unpalatable for the real-world beneficiaries -- the 0.1% --
| that are now accustomed to their diverted income. Ironically,
| one of the best ways to learn more about the grifter's
| mindset is to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand; not because
| she proposed a workable solution or because it's a good or
| bad novel, but because her portrayal of the grifter
| sociopathy is dead-on accurate for what we now see happening.
| Or, watch the TV show Leverage; the villains are often a
| stellar model of the same.
| Animats wrote:
| There are US PCB makers who do prototypes. Sierra Circuits
| [1] is in Sunnyvale, CA. Pentalogix is near Portland, OR.[2]
| But 5 small boards will cost about US$75 each.
|
| [1] https://www.protoexpress.com
|
| [2] https://www.pentalogix.com/
| bsdice wrote:
| Check AislerHQ on Twitter, based in Germany and should not be
| affected from the block.
|
| No affiliation except that I like to look at naked PCBs.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why has there never been serious Western alternatives to
| JLCPCB, PCBWay, JLCCNC etc.?
|
| We have our own PCB shops but they are like double or
| quadruple the price of Chinese shops because of labor costs
| and a lack of investment capital to introduce automation.
|
| > Has anyone asked themselves how these Chinese firms are so
| cheap?
|
| As said, extremely low labor costs plus ecosystem
| efficiencies. When the shop making capacitors by the
| container load is one block away there's barely any handling
| effort or stockpiling required, whereas domestic Western
| shops have to keep much more stockpiles.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > The question is how did we let it go this far?
|
| I've tried to get PCBs fab'd stateside and I think its
| multidimensional. I didn't NEED to get them made stateside,
| but I wanted to try. The price for a board for a run of ~150
| fairly simple PCBs was 2-3x what the chinese fabs offered. On
| top of that, American fabs are typically for ITAR/defense
| contract work. They'll snub their nose at small orders, give
| you the runaround, etc.
|
| When working with Chinese fabs, the main downside is the time
| difference. JLC and PCBWay have both been great to work with,
| offer a good price, especially for a hobbyist(which is
| important if you want more hardware R&D).
| beej71 wrote:
| > The question is how did we let it go this far?
|
| It's an optimized market, isn't it? Didn't it naturally go
| this far?
| ge96 wrote:
| OSHPark but more expensive
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Can you ship via non-USPS couriers? FedEx, etc?
| anonylizard wrote:
| Indeed you can. This only affects the heavily subsidized usps
| shipping process. If your r&d cannot afford fedex you
| shouldn't be doing r&d.
|
| For all the supposed panic and importance of this process,
| the poster didn't do even a google search of this issue
| reaperman wrote:
| upvoted by poster. BUT - USPS stopped subsidizing Chinese
| packages back in 2018?
| https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/418081-usps-is-done-
| subs...
|
| So on the surface, this looks more like corporate welfare
| to FedEx/DHL.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| (declaimer: I am from Hong Kong, and have worked on some
| import tax/declaration system)
|
| Import tax and tariff relies on clear and accurate import
| declaration.
|
| For DHL/FexEx imported package, you can fine them when
| the declaration isn't right.
|
| For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS -- they
| didn't know what's in package when it arrive. You can't
| fine Hong Kong Post or China Post, because they are not
| US entities. Rejecting parcel in bulk is one of the
| reasonable option if they can't get the shipper fill in
| the correct declaration form.
| callmeal wrote:
| >For USPS imported package, you can't fine USPS
|
| Or you could do what pretty much every other country in
| the world does, and fine the recipient.
| bunnie wrote:
| "let them eat cake"
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| Yes, private shipping is perfectly fine. This is not a
| shipping embargo. USPS is just not taking packages. Letters
| and flat rate will continue to be processed.
| onion2k wrote:
| If the basis of this move is that the USPS haven't figured
| out how to collect the tariffs on imports from China you
| would expect other couriers to be implementing the same
| measures very soon.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| No.
|
| USPS forwards packages from HongKong Post and China Post --
| they don't have direct relationship with the shipper.
|
| FedEX/DHL, otoh, have their local office in HongKong and
| China, they help the customer do declaration and inspect
| them before seal.
|
| When FexEX/DHL package got the declaration wrong, they got
| fined. When USPS package got the declaration wrong, they
| are hand-tied.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| For $$$$$
| smileson2 wrote:
| Yeah probably makes sense to just offshore r&d more to
| countries that don't get in the way so much
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ha ha, whoops, just placed an order with AliExpress earlier
| today.
| paxys wrote:
| AliExpress uses private couriers, not usps.
| King-Aaron wrote:
| Can you get things forwarded via Singapore or Australia etc?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Are there not other delivery services? Is FedEx also not
| allowed to deliver packages?
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| Your company is grossly mismanaged or your work isn't very
| important if you are shipping hardware China Post. Which would
| take weeks on a good day.
|
| Had you read the article you would realize this only affects
| parcels sent through the mail.
| khelavastr wrote:
| Surely they can use DHL/UPS, right?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Should be minimal disruption; when someone in China wanted to
| send me a package, they used DHL anyway.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| This is $$$$ compared to China Post Epackets.
| eru wrote:
| Could you ship to eg Singapore first, and then ship from there
| to the US?
| briandear wrote:
| Then ship UPS/DHL/Fedex.
|
| Those aren't affected.
| thesaintlives wrote:
| Time to step up?
| instagib wrote:
| Well add a mid ship point in Mexico, Canada, or Japan.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| It would be cheaper to temp relocate a bunch of teams to the EU
| at this point, than completely stop all R&D.
| stonogo wrote:
| The only team you need in the EU is someone to peel shipping
| labels off inbound parcels and ship them on to the US.
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| That's a fantastic way to get the attention of and end up
| getting the stick from the US, so I think (hope) the EU
| would have mechanisms in place to quickly shut down tariff
| evasion strategies that would involve just relabeling
| goods.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We don't even have that in place for illegal Russian oil
| exports or imports of stuff they use to make rockets to
| shoot at Ukraine with.
| stonogo wrote:
| It is already an established business model.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| My guess is that a shitton of R&D labs will move out of the us
| now?
| catherd wrote:
| Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a bit
| more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS.
|
| Your fast prototypes coming by air freight likely aren't routed
| through USPS at all unless it's the last leg of a consolidated
| shipment that's broken apart once it reaches the US. Those
| would be using some other carrier to get them from China to the
| US and then USPS only inside the US. USPS all the way from
| China is slow.
|
| Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever the
| new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts in 3-5
| days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your suppliers will
| just need to start filing the export paperwork correctly.
|
| These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off the
| shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or AliExpress, who
| were previously taking advantage of both the de minimis rule
| and inequal international rates through USPS.
|
| Your Chinese suppliers can still ship by any of the normal
| commercial express shipping carriers as long as they understand
| how to file export paperwork or have an agent who can do it for
| them. Previously this usually added 1-2 days to the transit
| time over shipping undeclared "samples". Last year DHL moved to
| a paperless system and that extra 1-2 days delay is probably
| going away anyway. They may have even done it because they saw
| this coming. People have been grumbling about the de-minimis
| stuff for a while now.
| boxed wrote:
| > Only if "utterly fucked" somehow means you can still pay a
| bit more to DHL and get packages even faster than USPS.
|
| That probably will work for like a week, considering how fast
| and reckless the administration moves.
| relistan wrote:
| I'd deem it extremely unlikely that US customs processing or
| the express carriers will be able to handle that overflow in
| anything like a reasonable timeframe.
| catherd wrote:
| Could be.
|
| The carriers do already have practice ramping up and down
| for Christmas and Chinese New Year so it seems plausible
| they could absorb significant extra volume in whatever time
| it would take to negotiate the leases on the extra flights
| they use during those times.
|
| For that matter customs processing also has experience
| managing the same surges.
|
| I'd believe we might have some sort of own-goal planned for
| customs that could hang things up.
| relistan wrote:
| Yes, they do. But my understanding is that we're talking
| about almost the entire US-bound volume from China of all
| of Aliexpress, Temu, eBay, Amazon, and all the other
| retailers shipping from China. USPS carries a massive
| amount of load there. And almost none of that was dutied
| in customs because of the high de minimis value in the
| US.
| hnfong wrote:
| apparently DHL is not accepting parcels from Hong Kong to US:
| https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-
| news/section/4/22675...
|
| not sure about other carriers but that doesn't sound good
| dwaite wrote:
| This USPS announcement is most likely a reaction to just how
| far backlogged US customs is about to get. DHL won't save
| you.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Paying ~$30 for express shipping through DHL (plus whatever
| the new tariffs end up being) will still get you those parts
| in 3-5 days to most major shipping hubs in the US, your
| suppliers will just need to start filing the export paperwork
| correctly.
|
| In my european experience, DHL is anything but fast when
| customs are involved. And I doubt they have the manpower to
| handle it for the new US rules.
|
| > These changes will likely have bigger impacts on cheap off
| the shelf parts from e-commerce places like Temu or
| AliExpress, who were previously taking advantage of both the
| de minimis rule and inequal international rates through USPS.
|
| Again in my european experience, the likes of Temu have
| solved the problem. You just order and a courier shows up
| with the taxes already handled. You paid Temu for them when
| you ordered and they paid the taxes for you at the point of
| entry to the EU.
|
| Unfortunately they probably don't have a similar setup in the
| US, but they're likely to solve it much faster than DHL.
|
| And of course prices will increase. Will that make them less
| competitive? Time will tell.
| catherd wrote:
| DHL B2C shipments to the EU are generally held in customs
| until the duty is paid, which makes it slow but ensures DHL
| isn't left holding the bag when people decide they don't
| want to pay unexpected import duties.
|
| That's (historically) not the case for US B2B shipments.
| For those, DHL pays the duty as the shipment goes through
| customs and then sends an invoice after the parcel is
| delivered.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| DHL doesn't accept packages anymore (or temporarily,
| hopefully) either
| https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-
| news/section/4/22675...
| nottorp wrote:
| Understandable, they have to reevaluate the effort and
| probably adjust pricing. Upwards.
|
| > DHL B2C shipments to the EU are generally held in
| customs until the duty is paid, which makes it slow but
| ensures DHL isn't left holding the bag when people decide
| they don't want to pay unexpected import duties.
|
| Nothing is unexpected with DHL considering the amount of
| paperwork they want you to fill each time :) Even if you
| check "retain my data for next time and don't send me
| this form again".
|
| They indeed send me a payment link and i pay for customs
| online before the package starts moving.
|
| I don't do Asia->EU shipments but I get prototypes maybe
| 2-3 times per year from the US. We gave up on DHL and are
| using UPS now... they want 800% less forms, cost much
| less and take about the same time to deliver.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, DHL has been usually a pain with customs paperwork
| - needed far too much hand-holding compared to other
| options (eq. a regular local European carrier doing the
| same thing).
|
| Unfortunately, with DHL this can even end up costing a
| lot of extra as they might even start to accumulate a
| storage fee as they hold the package while they make
| sense of the documents you sent them. :P
| account42 wrote:
| > DHL B2C shipments to the EU are generally held in
| customs until the duty is paid
|
| That used to be the case here in Germany until recently
| when they started paying the duty for you and then demand
| it at pickup along with a "small" markup (up to 1000%
| when the duty was low) for a service you never asked for.
| jagermo wrote:
| > In my european experience, DHL is anything but fast when
| customs are involved. And I doubt they have the manpower to
| handle it for the new US rules.
|
| yeah, but like with t-mobile, I think the US branch might
| be working better than what we are used from them in
| europe/germany.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I had the same experience with DHL while I was in the
| Netherlands. Here in the US its been fine, my best guess is
| that it has to do with how customs and duties are handled.
| rjsw wrote:
| It isn't just the EU that does this, AliExpress collects
| the taxes for shipments to the UK as well.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| DHL hk announced they stopped shipping to us, except for
| letters
| bboygravity wrote:
| Just get them through Europe? Outsource to European
| contractors?
|
| You could literally just outsource your prototyping to me (I'm
| in Europe, EE with embedded programming skills and good
| connections to local 8--day turn-around PCBA production) and
| I'll ship them from Europe to US (using 1 day shipping if
| needed).
|
| Ok, sorry for spamming, but my point is: there are ways?
| qwertox wrote:
| > Every single R&D department in the USA just got
| fuuuuuuuuucked by this.
|
| The problem is that your important R&D purchases are competing
| against the lipstick order of the neighbors wife (or his own)
| or that cute little cat toy.
|
| IDK who's to blame for if R&D then starts having problems, but
| it might be R&D department itself if they are happy to compete
| with lipsticks, in terms of shipping.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| > I literally do not know how the electrical and firmware
| engineers will do their jobs now
|
| Move. Like the rest of us had to when all the tech was in the
| USA.
| bgro wrote:
| It'll be circumvented with proxy shipments from other
| locations, or third party shipping companies. Just like Russian
| sanctions and anything else people prepanic about or think will
| have any effect good or bad.
|
| Any raise in cost will disappear and be absorbed as profit in
| supply chain shrouds of smoke and mirrors, permanently. Unless
| it legitimately costs slightly more money or causes any
| inconvenience to companies and we hear about it on the news.
| K0balt wrote:
| We do R&D in the Dominican Republic. Like most nations in the
| USA orbit, we receive our eastern imports via the USA via
| transshipping.
|
| This is also disrupting the nascent technology industries in
| the Caribbean and the Latin-American diaspora. For us
| specifically, it will increase our logistics costs by multiples
| and lead times by weeks.
|
| I expect this will result in substantial schedule misses and
| cost overruns.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Perhaps new transshippers in Canada or maybe Mexico could
| take the place of the Americans.
| meaningjoj wrote:
| Not just R&D. This is how manufacturing works in general.
| Nobody is like "here's the CAD, go ahead and send me 50,000
| units! I'm sure it will be fine."
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Hopefully the company started setting up those relationships
| when Trump was elected. I personally bought a bunch of hard to
| get domestically "Made in China" stuff I knew I'd need in the
| next year back in December to hedge against Trump's anti-China
| policies, so I imagine most American companies that rely
| heavily on China aren't completely unprepared right now.
|
| Edit: if you don't agree with something I've said, please
| comment and explain why. I really don't see how this is
| controversial.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > But a lot of our prototyping involves working with Chinese
| suppliers and getting small batches of samples / prototypes /
| revisions sent in packages on airplanes.
|
| There are shops in the USA that can do that work.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Big US corps moved manufacturing to China to save money and
| destroyed the supply chains that used to exist in the US.
|
| Oops. But at least big shareholders made a lot of money, and
| GDP is up!!
|
| (I don't think most people realize how easy it is for China to
| f*k with the US for this very reason. Yeah, they'd also be
| shooting themselves in the foot, but they're a country that
| might be willing to do that if they had to, because they don't
| have elections to worry about.)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Shareholders made tons of money and consumers saved tons of
| money.
|
| People demand cheap shit, and riot over expensive stuff. Hell
| Trump is arguably in power because people couldn't handle
| prices increasing since 2020 (despite wages increasing too).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Consumers didn't save tons of money. They just bought more
| stuff with the money they had.
|
| > People demand cheap shit and riot over expensive stuff
|
| Sure, agree. But moving manufacturing to China wasn't done
| under pressure of Americans protesting that prices were
| high.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I remember the 90s before China joined the WTO and things
| did feel "more expensive", the rise of Chinese production
| definitely led to lower prices and basically tamed
| inflation for a couple of decades.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| No, but it was done under pressure of Americans buying
| Walmart over local mom and pop.
|
| I cannot take anyone seriously who thinks people care
| about "Made in USA" more than $10 sweatshirts and $50
| dinnerware sets.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I didn't say Americans cared about Made in USA - any more
| than they care that WalMart destroyed small down America.
|
| And by the time they wonder where the jobs all went and
| start griping about it, it's too late.
|
| But it was a deliberate decision to offshore
| manufacturing that started the process (you can't sell
| cheaper goods until you start making cheaper goods
| abroad). Americans didn't switch from Kraft or Whirlpool
| or whatever to some Chinese brand. US companies offshored
| production.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| It will create jobs, for customs inspectors. Good, high-paying
| jobs with the best health insurance and lifetime pensions.
|
| And it's a small price to pay for the freedom of Ross Ulbricht
| and the January 6th patriots.
| nico wrote:
| The speed at which all of this is happening is astounding
|
| Is this all improvised or was there a big list of stuff to do
| ahead of time?
|
| If the latter, does anyone have a copy of that list?
|
| Alternatively, is anyone keeping track of what's already been
| done so far?
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Broadly speaking it's
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025, but it's been tough
| for me to find bullet point summaries that don't come across as
| biased.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FUL...
|
| EDIT: you downvoted me for giving the other poster a primary
| source document from the original publisher, with no
| commentary? What are you mad about?
| reaperman wrote:
| Yeah this definitely deserves more upvotes than just mine.
| reaperman wrote:
| This is (probably?) related to the de minimis exemption, so
| here is the section of Project 2025 which provides bullet
| points for dealing with that:
|
| - Stop Communist China's abuse of the so-called de minimis
| exemption, which allows it to evade the tariffs for products
| valued at less than $800.
|
| - Reinvigorate and expand the DHS crackdown on the CCP's use of
| e-sellers (including third-party sellers) and the shippers and
| operators of major warehouses such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba
| to flood U.S. markets with counterfeit and pirated goods.
|
| - Strategically expand tariffs to all Chinese products and
| increase tariff rates to levels that will block out "Made in
| China" products, and execute this strategy in a manner and at a
| pace that will not expose the U.S. to lack of access to
| essential products like key pharmaceuticals.
|
| - Systematically reduce and eventually eliminate any U.S.
| dependence on Communist Chinese supply chains that may be used
| to threaten national security such as medicines, silicon chips,
| rare earth minerals, computer motherboards, flatscreen
| displays, and military components.
|
| - Significantly reduce or eliminate the issuance of visas to
| Chinese students or researchers to prevent espionage and
| information harvesting.
|
| - Prohibit the use of Communist Chinese-made drones in American
| airspace.
|
| - Provide significant financial and tax incentives to American
| companies that are seeking to onshore production from Communist
| China to U.S. soil.
|
| - Prohibit Communist Chinese state-owned enterprises from
| bidding on U.S. government procurement contracts (for example,
| contracts for subway and other transportation systems).
|
| - Ban all Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat,
| which pose significant national security risks and expose
| American consumers to data and identity theft.
|
| - Prohibit all Communist Chinese investment in high-technology
| industries.
|
| - Prohibit U.S. pension funds from investing in Communist
| Chinese stocks.
|
| - Delist any Communist Chinese stocks that do not meet Public
| Company Accounting Oversight Board standards or, alternatively,
| close off the Chinese "A shares" stock market to U.S.
| investment and deregister U.S.-sanctioned Communist Chinese
| companies.
|
| - Prohibit the use of Hong Kong clearinghouses as transit
| points for American capital investing in the Chinese mainland.
|
| - Prohibit the inclusion of Chinese sovereign bonds in U.S.
| investors' portfolios.
|
| - Sanction any companies, including American companies like
| Apple, that facilitate Communist China's use of its Great
| Firewall surveillance and censorship capabilities.
|
| - Order the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and
| Department of Justice to contract with U.S.-owned and
| U.S.-operated artificial intelligence companies that are
| capable of detecting, identifying, and disrupting both the
| domestic groups' and CCP influencers' social media operations
| and funding streams using public information as a rapidly
| available offensive measure.
|
| - Compel the closure of all Confucius Institutes in the U.S.,
| which serve as propaganda arms of the CCP.
|
| - Hold the CCP accountable for the COVID-19 virus, which almost
| certainly originated as a genetically engineered virus from the
| Wuhan Institute of Virology, and do so through the
| establishment of a presidential commission or select
| congressional committee that would investigate the origins of
| the virus; its various costs, both economically and in human
| life; and the possible means of collecting damages from the
| CCP, which are likely to rise to the trillions of dollars.
| tristor wrote:
| Honestly, most of this doesn't sound like a bad idea from a
| strategic perspective, although there will be a lot of pain
| along the way. Once we get down towards the bottom of the
| list, there are some items which are almost guaranteed to be
| unconstitutional, or are a bit ridiculous, but in general the
| US and the West in general is very over-reliant on Chinese
| manufactured goods and this puts at a strategic disadvantage
| as China becomes a more serious geopolitical adversary,
| reducing or eliminating that reliance is just good sense.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Some of this was already done by the EU and UK in the last
| few years. The de-minimis exemption equivalent was removed
| [1], but with over a year's notice which allowed time for
| logistics companies and their clients to develop software to
| pay the required taxes. (If I browse Ali Express from
| Denmark, I see prices including 25% Danish VAT.)
|
| The next step seems to be starting this week [2].
|
| [1] https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/customs-4/customs-
| proc...
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/05/eu-to-
| tight...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Guess my little stash of ESP32 devices just doubled in value.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Good time to list all that Chinese junk I never use on ebay
| caspper69 wrote:
| The parade of stupid continues unabated.
| anomie31 wrote:
| Could an expert mention if this violates the Universal Postal
| Convention?
| boredatoms wrote:
| Regardless of violation, is there an enforcement body?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's a UN body, so there's no strict enforcement. If the USA
| decides to ignore the UPU's fees and regulations, there's not
| much reason for other countries to accept American postage
| stamps and post in general under UPU rules, though.
|
| Without the UPU, the USA would need to negotiate rules and
| fees with every other country on the planet individually,
| causing an explosion in complexity, administrative overhead,
| and cost. If the negotiated rates are good enough there can
| be a net benefit for the American government, but I doubt
| they'll be able to make it work.
|
| I don't think the USA will leave the UPU, though, they're
| probably working up a small fine to try to force
| renegotiations. A dangerous game, given how sick the world is
| getting of America already.
|
| During Trump's last presidency, the UPU was already involved
| during the trade war started against China, and the USA paid
| off the UPU for 7 million dollars.
| hpone91 wrote:
| Looks like everything will be hit by the MPF
|
| What is a Merchandise Processing Fee? The Merchandise Processing
| Fee (MPF) is a user fee that the US Customs and Border Protection
| (CBP) charges. It is charged in addition to US Customs duty as an
| ad valorem tax at a rate of .03464%. It is calculated as a
| percentage of the value of the shipments shown on the invoice,
| also known as the Customs appraisement. This user fee carries a
| minimum and maximum amount depending on the entered value of the
| shipment. MPF is required on informal (goods valued $2,500.00 USD
| or less) and formal (goods valued over $2,500.00 USD) entries
| into the US.
|
| Informal MPF Rates Rate: $2.53 USD
|
| Formal MPF Rates Minimum: $32.71 USD Maximum: $634.62 USD (And
| under Trump's decree, all mail from China must be labeled as
| formal goods now, so minimum $32.71 fee applies)
|
| https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-02293.pdf
| reaperman wrote:
| Just to be clear - if I order $5 of LED's from China, I now
| have to pay at minimum $37.71 instead of $5?
| hpone91 wrote:
| Yes
| Symbiote wrote:
| Ordering from Denmark, a medium or larger retailer in China
| would collect the Danish VAT (25%) and send that to the
| Danish tax authority. They'd mark the package with a
| transaction id for this, and it would go through EU customs
| without any further charges. (Presumably they still scan it
| for guns etc, and make random checks that these packages are
| labelled correctly.)
|
| Goods ordered without using this system would be charged the
| 25% plus a handling fee, which is about $20 here.
|
| However, the EU gave the logistics companies and retailers
| over a year to get these systems in place. The USA is taking
| a different approach.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Wow, that's fucking bullshit. I buy electronics components
| every year from Shenzen, talking with my supplier now about
| shipping from Singapore or Japan.
| antigeox wrote:
| Fully support this move. America needs to build.
| Havoc wrote:
| > America needs to build.
|
| Without the needed parts apparently
| ggm wrote:
| Anyone got a non-intuited, horses-mouth reason why? I suspect
| (ie, intuit) that its actually an attack on the USPS, not on
| China. The party of government doesn't like the post office, and
| this is to teach us not to like the post office either.
|
| I guess if they stopped using electric cars, they might like the
| post office again.
| seo-speedwagon wrote:
| Getting rid of de minimus exemptions made it impossible to
| assess duty on the volume of packages coming in. So they just
| won't accept packages at all.
| ggm wrote:
| And forgo the revenue? Or, do the other carriers do a better
| job of meeting the imposts?
| mastodon_acc wrote:
| It's a govt service, they are not trying to meet wall
| street quarterly shareholder expectations
| nozzlegear wrote:
| It's worth noting that Congress has been trying to force
| the USPS to run itself like a self-sustaining business
| for decades at this point. It started in 1970 with the
| Postal Reorganization Act, which transformed it from a
| government department to an independent government entity
| that was expected to fund its operations entirely through
| its own revenue. Then in 2006, a Republican-controlled
| Congress passed the PAEA which required the USPS to pre-
| fund retiree health benefits _seventy-five years into the
| future_ 1. Congress even restricted the USPS's ability to
| set its own rates, expand its services or close
| unprofitable locations without political interference.
|
| 1 The retiree funding requirement was only changed
| recently when Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act
| of 2022 into law.
| taurknaut wrote:
| > It's worth noting that Congress has been trying to
| force the USPS to run itself like a self-sustaining
| business for decades at this point.
|
| That's the narrative, but this was always a blatant bid
| to destroy the USPS. There's simply no other explanation.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| USPS does more or less teeter on the edge of solvent and
| sustainable depending on how you measure and when you
| measure. All things considered, I think that's pretty
| damn good. Pretty much no other government service can
| claim that. I think the retiree funding requirement
| is/was dumb and an unnecessary handicap but the way USPS
| runs itself should be a model for other government
| services. The only reason we don't look at USPS as a
| massive success is because the idiot left brains want it
| to be run like a charity and the idiot right brains want
| it gone entirely.
| evilduck wrote:
| > Pretty much no other government service can claim that.
|
| Sure there are, they just don't get the air time and
| political attention. Examples I'm familiar with: The
| minerals, oil, and gas regulatory agencies bring in
| billions of dollars. A single lease sale in the gulf
| would make BOEM as an agency incredibly profitable but
| instead the money just goes up to the federal government
| and is redistributed. National Parks already collect
| entry fees and the NPS could easily raise those prices to
| meet or exceed agency expenses, public demand would
| almost certainly pay it, and they could also teeter like
| the USPS. Social Security, if it were never fucked with,
| would have more money from just interest than most
| country's GDPs but we've robbed that piggy bank numerous
| times already.
| troupo wrote:
| > And forgo the revenue?
|
| There's no revenue. The postage fees you pay (if you pay
| them) on Chinese goods are paid to China Post (or whatever
| Chinese shipping company), and USPS doesn't see a cent of
| it. And still has to deal with a frankly insane amount of
| packages from China.
|
| It's not just a US problem. PostNord (Scandinavia) imposed
| a mandatory fee on all packages arriving from China until
| they reached an agreement with China Post (?) to get some
| of the money people pay for shipping
| ggm wrote:
| Sorry I responded to a comment which mentioned duty
| assessment. If this UPU/international postal union
| settlement rate stuff, that's not duty, it's a global
| model for cost reconciliation.
|
| > _Getting rid of de minimus exemptions made it
| impossible to assess duty on the volume of packages
| coming in. So they just won't accept packages at all._
| Symmetry wrote:
| Doing an inspection is going to take a moderately well paid
| government employee a little bit of their time. I'd be
| very, very surprised if the cost of their labor is less, in
| expectation, than the tariff collected on the average de
| minimus shipment from China.
| vaccineai wrote:
| This Trump's continuation of US's disengagement and
| disentanglement from China. And full on economic attack on
| China. Between this and
|
| - Marco Rubio's first day trip ao Australia to address AUKUS,
| which is containment for China
|
| - Marco Rubio's trip to Panama, and subsequent Panama's
| quitting of China's one belt and road and investigation into
| Chinese ownership inside Panama Canal
|
| - Trump's 10% tariff on China, and 25% tariff on Mexico
| (basically targeting Chinese manufacturers in Mexico)
|
| - Trump's threat of sanctions and tariffs on Russia, which
| China is allied with on invading Europe
|
| - Israel/Hamas ceasefire, allowing US to focus more on China
|
| China is fucked. That's why Xi Jing Ping is so quiet these
| days, having to deal with lack of cooperations from Chinese
| military, deflation, mounting debt, and now full court economic
| attack from US. Wait until congress removes China's most
| preferred nation status and instant 60% tariff increase.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China has a lot going for it. The right investments in green
| energy and EVs is maturing now, allowing them dominate
| basically 75% of the world market for energy production and
| vehicles (without local competitors). They are also making
| investments right now in AI and robotics that are already
| beginning to pay off. The US as a market doesn't mean much to
| China anymore, and Trump's aggressive treatment of enemies
| and allies alike are bound to push more countries into
| China's corner.
|
| Trump is basically dismantling the world-leading US's
| influence and handing it over to China on a silver platter.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I don't buy this. They badly want into the US market for
| their EVs.
|
| As well as their solar panels.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| They wouldn't mind it, but Chinese EV & solar panel
| production volumes are already completely mind-boggling,
| they'll keep doing just fine without the US.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I don't see our protectionism as a problem given their
| own, but there are plenty of countries who don't want to
| import lots of oil and won't mind buying Chinese EVs
| along with solar panels and wind turbines to achieve
| that. American simply isn't the only consumer market
| anymore.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| From a French point of view, I feel that Trump is going for
| self-reliance of the "USA", Panama, Greenland, Canada would
| lower greatly in external reliance and control better
| several trading routes.
|
| Add that https://www.businessinsider.com/who-was-elon-musk-
| grandfathe... and you see who is actually leading today
| USA.
| ks2048 wrote:
| I don't know if China is fucked, but this reminded me of a
| map going around showing who in Latin America is trading more
| with: US or China [1]. In 2000, for everyone, it was the US.
| By 2023, for most it was China.
|
| And one of the only hold-outs in South America is Colombia -
| a country Trump has already had a fight with. And with
| Trump's erratic tariff policies, I would imagine this trend
| would continue or accelerate.
|
| [1] There's a few versions. here's one: https://www.reddit.co
| m/r/MapPorn/comments/1ibunc1/latin_amer...
| vaccineai wrote:
| all of latin America added up is only around 10% of US's
| consumer market size
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > China is fucked.
|
| China will encounter economic headwinds, yes.
|
| However china has a functioning and fairly flexible executive
| that is capable of making long term plans _and executing
| them_ (see belt and road, debt trapping most of africa 's
| ports and mines).
|
| The US has a completely non-functioning legislature and an
| executive that is not in control of the president. The
| Executive does not have a plan past personal power grabs.
| When the president realises that he's been locked out of the
| mechanisms that control the executive, then all bets are off.
| nipponese wrote:
| https://www.freightwaves.com/news/u-s-postal-service-places-...
|
| > _The Trump administration this week imposed a 10% tariff on
| all goods from China and banned all low-value, e-commerce
| parcels from receiving duty-free benefits under the de minimis
| entry program. The administration said the emergency order is
| part of its strategy to stop the illegal shipment of fentanyl
| and precursor chemicals into the United States. "_
| cma wrote:
| > The administration said the emergency order is part of its
| strategy to stop the illegal shipment of fentanyl and
| precursor chemicals into the United States."
|
| Lol said out of their mouth while he was pardoning the head
| of the Silk Road underground/darkweb drug distribution
| organization to pump his crypto.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Never accuse this regime of hypocrisy, you'll run into
| apologists real quick on this platform.
| nipponese wrote:
| The illegal Fentanyl precursor industry didn't donate
| enough to his PAC. /s
| hnburnsy wrote:
| From Reuters...
|
| >"In our view, the USPS would require some time to sort out how
| to execute the new taxes before allowing Chinese packages to
| arrive in the U.S. again," said Chelsey Tam, a senior equity
| analyst at Morningstar.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| DHL/FedEx do lots of declaration/tax work for imported
| packages. More often than not, they inspects the package before
| sealing.
|
| USPS don't -- they simply forward from HongKongPost or
| ChinaPost. If the local post office in HK or CN does not
| cooperation, they can't do anything.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| So, they don't check for fentanyl? Might explain the move. I
| remember ordering some prescription drugs from India, which
| is, I think, illegal. It arrived to local post office, so I
| guess, USPS.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Here in Norway, customs works tightly with the courier
| companies and postal service. They even have their own
| booth at the major postal hub, which processes all postal
| shipments from abroad.
| cma wrote:
| I am doubtful that would explain it, though it may be
| offered as an explanation: don't you remember Trump just
| pardoned the founder of the drugs by mail organization silk
| road to pump his crypto?
| pieix wrote:
| A huge portion of USPS international package volume is
| "ePackets" from China. These are a special service provided by
| USPS since 2011 for Chinese/HK goods that are cheaper and
| faster than normal USPS international shipping.
|
| These ePackets are then bundled up into big sacks that are
| basically not inspected at all at US international mail
| facilities due to the de minimis exemption, which was just
| rolled back. The special status granted to ePackets meant that
| the volume shipped grew far beyond the processing capacity for
| normal packages at US IMFs. This pause (and subsequent unpause)
| from USPS on packages from China is because they don't know how
| they're going to handle that volume if it isn't given special
| status.
|
| Source: I worked on a project adjacent to this a couple of
| years ago. Close enough to pick up the basics but this isn't
| quite what I was working on, so take my comment with a grain of
| salt.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| This is a terrible time to be working for a hardware startup
|
| JFC
| davesque wrote:
| Does anyone know why this is happening? A result of some
| initiative by the Trump administration probably?
| gnabgib wrote:
| It's because of an executive order:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942619
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Fentanyl is the likely reason behind this order:
|
| https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO24/20230517/115956/HHRG...
|
| USPS is the preferred carrier for illicit drug distribution.
| mindslight wrote:
| Really? I would think these orders are due to some combination
| of cocaine, Viagra, and Ambien.
| jrflowers wrote:
| I don't think cocaine comes from China
| mindslight wrote:
| I assume by this point they're getting it direct from that
| one factory that supplies Coca-Cola.
| hansvm wrote:
| Wait, we're opposed to illegal drugs and letting _who_ exactly
| inject his own code into the treasury?
| almaight wrote:
| This is like when Mexico imports synthetic ammonia from China,
| but synthesizes TNT in Mexico and smuggles it to the United
| States, but American politicians say that China exports TNT.
| The funny thing is that TNT is a seriously illegal product in
| China.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Chinese know very well what they are doing when exporting
| certain chemicals, and to whom. They just don't care.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| 1. Current administration are wholly unfit for purpose; they have
| no clue about running a Government.
|
| 2. A dictator is now in place, with a subverted democratic system
| underneath (by subverted I mean deceived - enough people have
| bought into the lies that elections are now democratic in
| appearance only).
|
| 3. The judicial system is now in the way.
|
| 4. The judicial system is now going to be attacked.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Good. I'm glad to see moves that reduce market access for China,
| given there is little reciprocity. It's also worth hurting the
| Chinese economy for numerous other geopolitical reasons,
| including that the American economy can absorb disruptions like
| this a lot more easily at this time.
| thesaintlives wrote:
| Maybe he is going to take a hard look at why this service is
| subsidised bu the US tax payer...
| Animats wrote:
| You can still ship stuff from China to the US via FedEx, UPS, or
| DHL. You just have to do all the standard customs clearance data
| entry and pay.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/business/china-us-usps-
| de...
| nosianu wrote:
| Maybe not any more? The situation still seems to be developing.
|
| 5 Feb 2025: https://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-
| news/section/4/22675...
|
| > DHL Hong Kong has announced that it will no longer accept
| individual shipments directed to the United States.
|
| ...
|
| > As for UPS Hong Kong, FedEx Hong Kong and SF Express, the
| companies stated that their headquarters have not informed them
| to stop accepting parcels from Hong Kong for delivery to the
| United States.
|
| > However, FedEx Hong Kong's customer service reminded senders
| that they might need to pay additional duties for the
| deliveries while the shipping costs remain unchanged.
|
| > UPS mentioned that the company is currently discussing the
| duties arrangement, but no updates have been announced yet.
| tempeler wrote:
| I know this movie very well from somewhere, but the ending is
| both unhappy and bad. But you are lucky, it does not last longer
| than 4 years.
| throwfgtpwd234 wrote:
| This is complete crap. There was no warning given. And isn't this
| illegal?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Unless I've missed a thread, no one seems to be saying what
| counts.
|
| Changing duties, taxes, and rules is fine. It's how a society
| adjusts. Changing them _instantly_ is literally the most anti-
| consumer, anti-business concept ever.
|
| No 30 days? 90 days? Nope, block it all now! That's sheer stupid
| on a caliber almost unheard of. It sends a signal "Don't do
| business with the US, the rules change on a whim". Don't do
| business IN the US, the same!
|
| Set up a company anywhere else, any other nation, else you'll
| wake up tomorrow and your entire business model is invalidated,
| without even a day to adjust.
|
| This is how children behave. How over emotional, non-rational
| people behave.
|
| Unfortunate.
|
| I personally support this, but not _immediately_. Nutty.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| For what it's worth, the Project 2025 documents with all of
| these measures written down as bullet points has been up for a
| while. Getting rid of China's de minimis exemption is listed on
| page 789.
|
| Americans, American businesses, and businesses with American
| clients would be wise to read through the document to see what
| they can expect the coming year(s). The current executive
| branch sure won't give you a heads up, but the plans are out in
| the open.
| chiengineer wrote:
| I just use chatgpt to summarize it months ago. It legit said
| it will cause a recession
| qwertox wrote:
| EU should do the same. They're essentially performing a
| Bureaucratic Denial-of-Service attack on customs and tax
| authorities.
| sureIy wrote:
| How so? Just hire more people and be better at logistics.
| Duties will pay for the extra people.
| guerrilla wrote:
| We already have in Sweden, years ago. I thought that was all of
| the EU. Really fucked up my electronics hobby.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It was indeed the EU, it was the end of the low-value goods
| exemption if you want to search for it.
|
| I avoid shopping from China on principle, but if ordering
| from Ali Express or similar you shouldn't have any problems.
| Of course, you pay 25% VAT on your purchases.
| guerrilla wrote:
| It was a big problem for a while before most vendors added
| VAT because in Sweden they hold the package for ransom
| against lenalty fees and the VAT, which often means you
| have to go get the package at a service point instead of
| having it dropped in your mailbox. Things are better now
| but that was a disaster for a while.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The EU has enforced a new system that ensures VAT is being paid
| over imported goods.
|
| For some Chinese stores, that essentially blocked off all of
| the EU because they don't want to raise prices to pay tax for
| EU customers. The lack of taxes or import fees together with
| enough stickers and stamps that say "GIFT" are the whole reason
| many shops have western customers in the first place.
|
| Customs takes forever to clear a Chinese packages now, they're
| not letting themselves get rushed beyond doing their job. Not
| every package gets checked, but a lot more do, and drop
| shippers are not very happy.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I am paying less attention to minor day to day news drama during
| the orange mans second reign, but even then it feels more chaotic
| this time.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I sincerely hope US and Canada can regrow some manufacturing
| capacity. I think the only way to do it is by a one-two punch,
| and middle class like me are going to seriously get hurt, but I
| still want it done, for the sake of later generations and for a
| better, safer, more competitive humanity. Safer because a
| successful reform removes the need of a world war.
|
| The one-two punch is:
|
| 1) A massive devaluation of housing, stocks and other similar
| items. The reason for this is we need to introduce local, more
| affordable merchandises, which can only be brought by cheaper
| lands, cheaper labor -- but no one is going to work $6 an hour
| (about 45 Yuan per hour, more or less on par with the better paid
| Chinese manufacturers I think) unless, unless housing and renting
| costs a fraction, like, 20%. That's why I said we are going to
| get seriously hurt. This is basically a wealth transfer from the
| richer to the poorer.
|
| 2) Educate a whole generation that labor is honorable, so that
| engineers, scientists, technicians and such get more respect (I
| mean real respect, not the superficial one nowadays) than lawyers
| and bankers. It's a social change that takes at least one
| generation, perhaps two. Maybe I didn't put it right, but by
| saying getting more respect I'm basically saying getting an equal
| pay and equal say.
|
| But I'm seeing is that US is taking another darker road.
| gruez wrote:
| >1) A massive devaluation of housing, stocks and other similar
| items.
|
| I get how cheap housing can contribute to domestic
| manufacturing, but cheaper stocks? How does lower NVDA prices
| help domestic manufacturing? Is it just there to hose the rich?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think they just drop at the same time. Maybe I'm wrong.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I was expecting a how-to, not preconditions.
|
| It is very hard to devalue assets and jobs that are valuable in
| fact.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah I think it's very hard. Wealth redistribution is
| essentially a revolution, and successful revolutions rarely
| occur before a war with external states.
| huijzer wrote:
| > Educate a whole generation that labor is honorable, so that
| engineers, scientists, technicians and such get more respect (I
| mean real respect, not the superficial one nowadays) than
| lawyers and bankers.
|
| And people who do real work with their hands around physical
| objects? What task can a scientist do if you need to build a
| factory and get lines humming? Scientists are great at
| optimizing complex processes, but what if there is no process
| yet?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| They are in the same group ("and such").
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'd love to see it too, but as someone who does hardware for a
| living and software sometimes for fun, I just don't see how
| this is going to happen.
|
| Hardware is a money pit endeavor with low margins and high
| overhead. Software is a money printer with high margins and low
| overhead.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| TBH, I don't see it either. It's a hell lot of changes that
| can only be achieved by some dramatic political movements.
| anothercoup wrote:
| > I sincerely hope US and Canada can regrow some manufacturing
| capacity.
|
| What does canada have anything to do with anything. When was
| canada a manufacturing power? Why do canadians love to
| interject themselves into topics that don't involve them?
|
| > 1) A massive devaluation of housing, stocks and other similar
| items.
|
| You want wealth destruction? Most of americans' wealth is tied
| to home equity and 401k.
|
| > That's why I said we are going to get seriously hurt.
|
| Who is we? Are you even american?
|
| > 2) Educate a whole generation that labor is honorable, so
| that engineers, scientists, technicians and such get more
| respect (I mean real respect, not the superficial one nowadays)
| than lawyers and bankers.
|
| What are you talking about? You think lawyers and bankers get
| more respect than engineers and scientists?
|
| > But I'm seeing is that US is taking another darker road.
|
| What road is that?
| ndom91 wrote:
| Looks like they've flip flopped already:
|
| > Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue
| accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China
| and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection
| are working closely together to implement an efficient collection
| mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least
| disruption to package delivery.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| John Kerry style
| alistairSH wrote:
| And they've already walked that back...
| https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
|
| What a dumpster fire. Hard to believe ~half the electorate
| thought electing Trump, Musk, and army brocoll-topped tech-bros
| was a good idea.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| It's so ridiculous. From an outside perspective the US starts
| cackling wildly and making threats (and they do seem to delight
| particularly in trying to humiliate their targets), then when
| people think they won't actually do it they start implementing
| them to remove any doubt. Then the final step is to say "oops,
| give us a second, like maybe a month."
|
| Like, they've played their hand already, do you think
| everyone's just going to assume everything is fine? Any
| competent world leader, include "The West" which the US seems
| to think it owns completely, should now be scrambling to cut
| the US out as much as possible and they've got good company to
| go to with all the other countries being bullied. It's
| practically a matter of pride at this point to cut the US off
| as much as possible.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This appears to be the end of my hobbies as there are just so
| many small parts I can't possibly get in the US but are available
| for $6 on AliExpress
| neom wrote:
| Climate change is out of control and you're buying $6 plastic
| from China. Thank god it's the end of your hobbies.
| dmd wrote:
| https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
|
| Restored already. It's all about chaos.
| therealpygon wrote:
| Create the chaos, then be the solution.
| floatrock wrote:
| Or it's about not knowing how any of this works and quickly
| backing down when you're told how much your race-baiting is
| actually gumming up the wheels of the economy.
|
| But yes, it's a "throw a bunch of shit against the wall and see
| what sticks" chaos strategy.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| Chaos is exhausting. This also shows the risks of moving fast,
| the USA is so big that any small change is going to have huge
| unforeseen consequences. We've seen several examples of this in
| the last few weeks already.
| adultSwim wrote:
| Seems like negotiating.
| daveguy wrote:
| Trump couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag. All a
| despot has to do is compliment him and he will repeat
| whatever they want. It's pathetic.
| adultSwim wrote:
| US presidents since WWII have consistently overthrown
| democracies and replaced them with dictators. Trump
| accomplished a ceasefire, presumably in exchange for openly
| supporting a campaign of ethnic cleansing, something that
| Biden and Harris failed to do despite supposedly "working
| tirelessly" for it. On the other hand, he welcomed a leader
| who has an open warrant for crimes against humanity...
| cma wrote:
| Could also be valuable for Trump allies to trade on these quick
| reversals and there are basically no rules around it.
| jerlam wrote:
| It also helps sway low-information voters, who either:
|
| - never hear about the rollback, and thus think the problem has
| been fixed
|
| - believe that the rollback is caused by "enemies" instead of
| incompetence, thus focusing on perceived attacks
| gorbachev wrote:
| And now they reversed it:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/business/usps-china-de-mi...
|
| What a flustercuck.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| > Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue
| accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China
| and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection
| are working closely together to implement an efficient collection
| mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least
| disruption to package delivery.
|
| Looks like its changed since posting
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's good that people are making dumb decisions like this,
| presumably out of spite. Makes it easy to know who to fire.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Updated Feb 5, 2025:
|
| > _Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue
| accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China
| and Hong Kong Posts._
| keuoa_ wrote:
| I had several small packages in transit from china, now that the
| CBP considers ALL packages from China "formal" I have to pay
| $32.71 PER PACKAGE. I'm freaking screwed, I can't really afford
| to drop several hundred dollars just on bullshit fees
| nkurz wrote:
| The suspension has already been suspended. Packages are again
| being accepted for delivery:
|
| "Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue
| accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China
| and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection
| are working closely together to implement an efficient collection
| mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least
| disruption to package delivery."
|
| https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
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