White House says Universal Postal Union unfairly benefits Chinese groups shipping to US
The Trump administration will begin withdrawing from a United Nations treaty that offered low rates for foreign postal deliveries of small packages in the US – the latest move to challenge practices it sees as unfairly advantageous to China.
White House officials said on Wednesday the US would start the process of leaving the Universal Postal Union (UPU), a Switzerland-based organisation that connects postal services worldwide.
The White House said the UPU enabled foreign postal services to take advantage of cheap shipments to the US, creating an unfair cost advantage over US companies that shipped goods, and hurting the US Postal Service .
Shares of internet-based mailing and shipping provider Stamps.com fell nearly 9% after the announcement. Online shoppers in the US have often benefited from the arrangement, gaining access to foreign goods at little cost.
Donald Trump is distancing the US from international multilateral organisations and accompanying policies that he says hurt US interests.
Trump has made a point of cutting America’s international ties. In his first week in office he pulled the US out of a trade pact with 11 Pacific Rim countries, a move followed by the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement to mitigate climate change and an international deal with Iran to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.
