Demand delivers posthaste reversal of USPS decision

The US Postal Service having decided to no longer accept parcels from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on Tuesday, reversed the decision on Wednesday, giving an apt demonstration of the Chinese idiom "issue an order in the morning and reverse it in the evening".

The brief suspension came after the new US administration changed the rules on import taxes and ended a policy that allowed small packages worth $800 or less to be sent to the United States without paying taxes or fees.

According to US Customs and Border Protection, the number of packages that entered the US under the so-called de minimis exemption had grown from 139 million in Fiscal Year 2015 to 1.36 billion in Fiscal Year 2024.

The surge in the number of parcels from Chinese retailers, such as e-commerce giants Shein and Temu, has prompted increased scrutiny in recent years as it has raised concerns that domestic retailers are being undercut and governments are missing out on potential tax income.

But it would be wrong for certain US politicians to believe that by curbing Chinese e-commerce flow of goods into the US they are protecting their own industry. On the contrary, they are harming the interests of US consumers. According to a survey done by e-commerce marketing company Omnisend in June 2024, about 70 percent of those surveyed had shopped in a Chinese online marketplace in the past year, and 46 percent shopped in more than one Chinese online marketplace.

It is ridiculous that such a decision violating the interests of many US consumers was made and announced in such a haste, without soliciting public opinions or holding any public hearings.

That's why the USPS suspension survived less than 24 hours and had to be reversed. That's a cautionary tale for US entities that any decision made in haste will only end in awkwardness.