The Postal Service is losing millions a year to help you buy cheap stuff from China

The Postal Service is losing millions a year to help you buy cheap stuff from China – The Washington Post.

The USPS offers this service, called “ePacket,” to foreign postal operators looking to increase global trade with the United States, spokeswoman Darlene S. Casey said in an e-mail. It has proven popular. Between fiscal years 2011 and 2012, China nearly tripled the number of packages sent under this program, from 9.5 million to 26.8 million. Revenues quadrupled. Casey also noted that the USPS relies on business income, not tax dollars, to fund its operations. (It lost another $5 billion last fiscal year.)

But this has still been a money sink for the Postal Service. In 2012, USPS was paid only 94 cents on average for each piece of Chinese ePacket mail, according to a February report from the Postal Service’s inspector general’s office. That report estimated that the Postal Service was losing about a dollar on each incoming item, adding up to a $29.4 million net loss in 2012.