FedEx fed up playing box cop, sues Uncle Sam to make it stop: 'We do transportation, not law enforcement' FedEx is suing the US government to escape the burden of policing packages (cough, cough, tech materials) sent abroad (ahem, ahem, China). The lawsuit, filed yesterday in US federal district court in Washington DC, seeks to prevent the Department of Commerce from enforcing prohibitions contained in the Export Administration …
This will, of course, and inevitably, end up with the shipper signing a meaningless form declaring that the package is legal and contains no forbidden content. For EVERY DAMN BOX shipped from the US to anywhere outside the US. And that nonsense will be caused by the same people who complain endlessly about government red tape.
Perhaps letting people who believe that government can't do anything right run the government is a flawed strategy.
Wish, for no apparent reason, currently thinks I want to buy myself a gift of bondage apparatus. And it's slowly becoming more and more hardcore. There must be something I've bought that triggered a keyword. Either that or people who buy knock-off Lego are statistically more likely to be perverts...?
Youtube has recently taken to showing me adverts for period apps for Android so I can track my menstrual cycle.
Not /entirely/ sure how that's relevant to me, partly since I don't recall searching for anything even vaguely related to the tracking of one's periods, but also because I lack all of the necessary internal plumbing.
Bit of a long shot as ads go, I thought.
similar to the US chain who noted that a large proportion of those who bought a certain brand of lotion soon after started buying baby clothes, so it sent out emails and letters offering pregnancy tests, fertility tests, baby clothes etc, which then caused no end of grief for teenage girls who just happened to like the lotion.....
Oh, did the US Congress declare war? Because they are the only ones in the US Government with the power to declare war. Anything else isn't war. It's politics, fear mongering, doublespeak, FUD, the tail wagging the dog, or **anything besides war**. Period.
Again. Period.
If you have any logical arguments to make please do so. If not create a second account so you can down vote this civics lesson twice.
FedEx already police shipments for other countries. For example, just looking at China, FedEx will not ship a total of over 50 items JUST for china - including to quote "Banned chemicals as listed in the List of Toxic Chemicals Banned or Severely Restricted in the P.R.C. (The First Group) published by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)" as well as "Printed matter, films, photos, records, audio and video tapes, VCDs, computer storage media and other commodities which are harmful to China's politics, economy, culture and/or ethics"
FedEx are expected to do same for a large list of countries according to their website, some with more. So, if it's ok for China to have political based restrictions, why is it not ok for the US, which is basically home office to FedEx?
https://crossborder.fedex.com/us/assets/prohibited-restricted/
My point is that they already comply happily with laws EVERYWHERE. Every country has a set of both laws and rules - some based on nothing more than political gambits - that FedEx are required to comply with, some of those are political as my example suggests, some are fascist - again, as my example suggests. What I'm saying is that FedEx are actually doing this already, for other countries, on their demand. So what's new with the US demanding same?
At least they only refuse to take stuff on the official list, and dont make up their own entries, like the old hag at our local Post Office.
She has refused so many parcels, and reported so many more as being over size when they weren't that the PO actually issued us an unasked for refund last year.
BTW, dont ever send Chinese bank notes in the post to China, even small amounts ($/£20-£30), will cause the package to vanish.
Completely different - the original packages were not transitting through the US. at LEAST THAT WAS THE INTENTION.
A courier has to comply with the local laws within which you transfer the goods - you cant post living things in most countries, for example. Or banned substances in most countries - including China. The choice of what is banned is the country the package is going to and from - not the transit countries (even if that is a 'accidental reroute' through the US.
What is the problem for fedex is that they are handling post (in this case from Japan to China) and are still potentially going to get 'done' if they were to handle say an engineering sample between the same 2 contries.
That's because it was cheap PR with no downside: it didn't really have to do anything. This is about reducing its potential liability. In practice, it's kind of difficult to see how the US can stop shipments that can easily be routed through other countries. This is why the US is prepared to abuse the banking system to enforce sanctions extra-territorially. The logical consequence of this, of course, is that at some point parallel banking systems will appear.
Really, what does our wonderful government expect from a shipper? To open every box and inspect it? If they find some sort of "computery-looking gadget" to either refuse it or perform some expensive check to see if this particular gadget is on the "forbidden" list? (Like your average person would know one from another.) Obviously, FedEx can not check every box any more than the customs people do. But then the government wants to fine FedEx if they somehow fail to intercept something forbidden (and got caught on some random check of some kind)? Sounds more like some kind of gambling game instead of a sensible policy.
Vtcodger is right, unless the courts make the government see sense (good luck with that), then we'll end up with everyone who ships anything having to sign a paper of some kind so FedEx can at least say "We tried." Of course, nobody would ever LIE on that paperwork.
Our government keeps making more and more stupid, unenforceable laws. Then reality comes along and shows that these laws can't be enforced. Then our rulers wonder why people have so little respect for government anymore.
It's worse than that. You already sign a bit of paper to say what you're shipping isn't illegal. The problem for FedEx is that they still have to check! They can't say, "but we didn't know, that guy lied, take it up with him". Or they can, but it makes no difference, they still get prosecuted.
what does our wonderful government expect from a shipper?
If they have an actual plan, it would seem to be to drive up the cost of shipping to such an extent that it's uneconomic to send goods to China. But it's more likely they just haven't thought very hard. Or at all.
"If they have an actual plan, it would seem to be to drive up the cost of shipping to such an extent that it's uneconomic to send goods to China."
Hmmm. I thought that the US govt's whole objective in all of this (security being the sideshow) was to ensure that *MORE* goods would be shipped from the US to China (and less goods shipped to the US from China.)
The US Govt has a plan? Thats a good one! Its not really a real government, with thousands of positions having gone unfilled. The only semblance of a plan is to destroy government as we know it and to sow as much chaos as possible - and the citizens and companies trying to make a living will pay the price, as this example shows.
well, it's 2010s and the age of outsourcing. This includes excluding your work to make someone else do it and pay for it. That said, fedex shouldn't blame free market for coming up with this "cost optimization", and I'm pretty sure they have used outsourcing themselves, generously. The governments only copy the best solutions! ;)
there are strange BGP reroutes going-on too at the document level, https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/27/huawei-fedex-diverting-documents-accusation/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=5VEY_HUAWEI_IS_MORDOR
it is only 2% of FedEx business (1B$) going down the pan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-25/china-considers-blacklisting-fedex-after-huawei-delivery-errors
Russia is stirring it up, as usual! https://www.rt.com/business/462553-china-fedex-blacklist-huawei/
"PC Magazine ... tried to send a Huawei P30 smartphone from Britain to the United States. Tracking services revealed the shipment was returned to London after it spent several hours in Indianapolis"
That's a relief - I assumed it was an evil plot to start a trade war to destroy American business. initially farmers and gas exporters but then any US technology monopolies, once China is forced create their own versions - and sell them to the world for cheap.
If we are lucky tarrifs are really just a stealth VAT on stuff poor people buy from Walmart to fund tax cuts for billionaires
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