I know the article shows some pictures of USPS trucks, but is USPS the primary delivery service in other countries? I also believe the USPS does not receive tax dollars to support its operations.
Also, if you now go buy something across the street, wont it also be at a higher price since they are likely also shipping it in from abroad?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2019/08/23/fen...
It'll make you and your cohort feel good about finally sticking it to China, but after a few years/months, it'll be abandoned. It's not a viable long-term strategy prohibiting trade with the rest of the world or inspecting every package. After all, didn't America have a severe drug problem even before normalizing trade with China?
But what do I know?
Other nations with low thresholds (Canada, EU, etc) forced traffickers into bulk smuggling channels, which are riskier and more expensive.
Fentanyl is incredibly potent - ~2 mg is a lethal dosage. 1 kilogram can produce 500,000 doses. With a $800 exemption, traffickers could legally send parcels far above what other countries allow, maximizing the value per shipment while still looking like ordinary e-commerce.
All this is VERY well-known. I would strongly suggest doing some basic research instead of making "nativist crowd" allegations.
These countries still have issues with narcotics trafficking. Business has continued as usual. The impact of lower de minimis thresholds is a rounding error.
Drug cartels are sophisticated multinational corporations. They won't abandon a business channel that yields tens of billions of dollars' worth of annual profits because of a few lame obstacles on their path. If you factor in street value, you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of merchandise. This business isn't going anywhere.
>Fentanyl is incredibly potent - ~2 mg is a lethal dosage. 1 kilogram can produce 500,000 doses.
I'm not making a moral judgement here. Fentanyl is obviously bad. How much friction are you willing to inflict on tens of millions of everyday Americans, individuals and businesses to stem this tide? How about ending all trade with the rest of the world? Where does the cost-benefit ratio stop/start making sense?
For the most part, Chinese syndicates don't even sell fentanyl to America directly. They ship to Mexico, American mules (sometimes hired on Instagram) drive across the border, and their cars are retrofitted with hidden drug compartments, then they drive back with it across the border. Will you also shut down vehicular traffic into the US?
These cartels hire Pakistani engineers to build them multi-million-dollar submarines that carry drugs across the oceans, to Europe, Africa, and America's coasts. And they're just going to stop because they can't ship tiny packages for free?
>I would strongly suggest doing some basic research instead of making "nativist crowd" allegations.
I'm calling out the nativist crowd because they support tariffs & other trade disruptions for inconsistent reasons. They can't even stick to a reason, so they're guaranteed to fail because of the showbiz nature of US politics. First, it was trade deficits. Then Fentanyl. Taiwan. American debt. Raising revenue. Getting Mexico and Canada to do something about the border. Something, something Golden Age of America. Then the tariffs were dialed back significantly across the board.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not fighting the War on Drugs on the side of drugs. I think narcotics destroy the fabric of society. But the only realistic way to combat it is Singapore-style death penalties for possession exceeding certain amounts. HN's libertarian crowd may dislike this, but it's how Singapore has become one of the world's wealthiest countries by gdppc without a pronounced drug problem.
Stop chasing around small fish, wasting time pandering to American nativists who love showbiz-style politics. Or maybe I'm wrong. The problem isn't even supposed to be solved. It's designed to rile people up and it's working as intended.
(not OP) I'm no libertarian, but there's another way... monitored legalization! Admittedly, the locations of legalization success stories haven't generally had to contend with fentanyl. But I'm also not convinced by the argument that we should hang anyone with drugs on them. The fact that Singapore continues to execute prisoners shows that the fabric of Singaporean society is still being destroyed by drugs, or alternatively that the fabric of society is damaged enough by other causes that people are being driven to deal in drugs.
As someone living in a country where executions are illegal, I do not wish to see the impact of substance abuse exploited to justify the reintroduction of a practice that many of my fellow citizens consider barbaric.
I assumed they just paid a fixed price for a container and waited for enough orders to fill it. (Which is why it would sometimes take 2-8 weeks to get an order)
Valid question.
> Do words have no meaning to your cohort anymore?
Don't comment like that here. Site guidelines call for assuming good faith on the part of other posters. They also call for avoiding personal attacks. You violated both in one sentence.
Express carriers (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.) were already compliant and unaffected. This article is about the UPU network (read: USPS, national carriers) parcels carrying goods, not ordinary letters or documents.
The UPU is building new duty-collection modules and working with CBP to certify intermediaries. Once those pipelines exist, traffic volumes will rise again, but under a much heavier compliance burden. Chat G knows what's up, it helped me understand.
[1] https://www.upu.int/DDP [2] https://www.upu.int/en/postal-solutions/technical-solutions/...
stevage•5mo ago
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