Buying and Selling

On 2017-09-22 19:03, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 22 Sep 2017 12:36:31 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-09-19 19:44, sms wrote:
On 9/19/2017 6:52 PM, somebody wrote:

On 2017-09-19 07:06, wrote:

snip

Or the brake pads from China, $2/pair and free ship. As I have always
said the postage fees are grossly lopsided between Asia and the US and
that is one of the core reasosn for our trade deficit. Except that most
politicians (except manybe one ...) do not understand that.

It's an international reciprocal postal treaty that no one worried about
when it was mainly U.S. residents of Chinese descent sending packages to
relatives in China.


More than a decade ago tyat has changed, big time. How long does it take
for politicians to turn on their brains? Or for some of them, do they
even have one?


... The origin country gets all the postage and the
destination country gets nothing with the assumption that the volume
will be roughly equal.

The small volume of direct-to-consumer low-value items from China is not
a core reason for the trade deficit.


It is rising, big time. I know people who buy just about anything other
than groceries on EBay. When they say "Oh, it always gets here in three
to five weeks" you know what's going on. Heck, I even had stuff I bought
on Amazon come via "China Post".


... These items would still come into
the U.S. through other channels, at higher prices, were it not so cheap
to do international shipping from China, you'd just have a middleman.


Same reason. The stuff then comes in bulk but the shipping charges are
grossly lower than if a US vendor sent the same items to Asia. It isn't
just China. For example, when we needed name tags for our therapy dogs'
vests (for nursing home visits) we ordered them via Amazon. A small
package arrived from Manila, Philippines. I couldn't believe it
considering that we had paid just a few Dollars. Looked at the postage,
calculated - $0.60. Airmail! It came from a seamstress who appears to
specialize in cloth name tags. The shipping cost discrepancy alone puts
similar seamstresses in the US out of business.

Given that the cost of living, and salaries, are as much as five times
cheaper in China than in the U.S. how is changing the mailing costs
going to effect sales?


The ships and aircraft aren't going to be operable at five times less.


My wife's older sister and her son, his wife, and the grand kids
visited Thailand about six months ago. The grandson, probably 19 years
old, told me that he worked part time at "the dollar store" unloading
trucks for $10 an hour. The current minimum salary in Thailand is 300
baht, about $9 a day. At today's exchange rate the U.S. salary, for
coolie labour, is ~9 times the Thai salary.


Think international for a minute. That changes things.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/