[MallocVoidstar]

Yeah, I used to get stuff directly from China, then after the postage rate changes I was getting packages that had gone China -> Thailand -> Azerbaijan -> USA. Nowadays they seem to batch packages for the good shipping, from Aliexpress in China to (I assume) some US subsidiary, and then from there it gets parceled out to a shipping company seemingly at random (Maersk, Amazon, USPS).

[mrngld]

So the US had the USPS stop subsidizing Chinese postage rates... and they innovated to leverage subsidies elsewhere.

Just stop subsidizing international shipping period seems the smart play. If they want to undercut their own high-end domestic competition and destroy foreign competitors then they can at least pay fair rates.

[ssl-3]

Which part of "send a giant box of stuff to the US using regular shipping channels and pay whatever duties and/or tariffs are due, sort it out into individual destinations once it gets there, and then deliver with USPS at regular domestic rates" involves this subsidy that you speak of?

[Rebelgecko]

You used to be able to get knickknacks on AliExpress (incl shipping) for less than the cost of a US domestic postage stamp. Nowadays it seems like free shipping has a higher minimum, and most of my items use unreliable gig economy services like uniuni for the last mile delivery