Before that, I had never even heard of the United Postal Union. Totally clueless, but like many people, wondered at the disparity (which back in 2020, was completely opposite of what it is now, thanks to President Trump’s insistence on this.
I believe he saw how important it was, how we were simply taking in the behind because nobody was paying attention to it.
What made me look at this was when I had some Chinese equipment, probably about $75 worth, and they agreed to refund me. However, they told me just to keep the underperforming gear even though they were giving me my money back.
That struck me as odd. Few American companies do that, I cannot think of even one. So I wondered “Gee. It must cost too much to ship it back. Sure enough, when I looked it up in 2020, it would have cost me $1064.29 to ship that box back to China, but it cost them only $154.37 to send it to ME. (that happened to be a high priority shipping method, but even with the lower priority one of “International Economy” there was still that crazy disparity in shipping costs.!)
That seemed absolutely insane. I thought there was no way that was correct. That is when I started digging, and found out that not only WAS it correct, I found out WHY it was correct, and also that the Trump Administration thought it was important enough to play hardball with Communist China.
I knew it was some Universal postal union nonsense but didn’t realize it impacted express mail as well. i have seen the epxress mail disparity between usa and central europe though. it is about 3 times more expensive to ship to central europe from usa than the reverse.