{"id":70550,"date":"2018-10-19T10:06:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T08:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=70550"},"modified":"2018-10-19T10:06:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T08:06:32","slug":"trump-moves-to-quit-postal-treaty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/10\/19\/trump-moves-to-quit-postal-treaty\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump moves to quit postal treaty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The United States (US) has announced plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty, which the White House says lets China ship goods at unfairly low prices.<\/p>\n

Under the treaty, a United Nations body sets lower international rates for packages from certain countries, a move originally designed to support poorer nations.<\/p>\n

But the US said the discounts put American businesses at a disadvantage.<\/p>\n

Officials said they hoped the notice of withdrawal would set the stage to agree a better deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for a fair system,\u201d<\/em> a senior administration official told reporters. \u201cWe do hope that ultimately we achieve a negotiated outcome.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The BBC\u2019s Asia Business Correspondent, Karishma Vaswani, said the move to pull out of the treaty is aimed at forcing the Chinese to give up the developing nation status they had when they first entered the pact back in 1969.<\/p>\n

International mailing rates are governed by the Universal Postal Union, a unit of the United Nations that traces its roots back to the 1870s.<\/p>\n

It subsidises shipments from developing countries while setting higher rates for wealthier nations, including the US.<\/p>\n

But the White House said China\u2014a major global exporter \u2014was now the biggest beneficiary of that system.<\/p>\n

The US wants changes to the postal treaty to allow countries to set their own rates for parcels weighing under 2kg (4.4lbs). They are already allowed to do so for bigger packages.<\/p>\n

The rise of international online shopping has led to a huge increase in the number of small parcels being sent via the postal system.<\/p>\n

American firms say it can cost significantly more to post an item within the US than it does to send the same item to the US from China.<\/p>\n

The bid to overhaul the treaty is part of US President Donald Trump\u2019s combative \u201cAmerica First\u201d approach to trade, which has led to tariffs on billions of dollars in goods, attacks on existing trade treaties and criticism of multilateral agreements.\u2014BBC <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States (US) has announced plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty, which the White House says lets China ship goods at unfairly low prices. Under the treaty, a United Nations body sets lower international rates for packages from certain countries, a move originally designed to support poorer nations. But the US said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70555,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70550\/revisions\/70555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}