I hear you, and it's the same going on here as well.
Used to be postal services were state owned and reasonably priced. We had our own customs station in the town too, so when I shipped something the costs were reasonable, and when I received something, I could just drive to the customs and explain the thing and maybe pay a little customs, or not.
Now the postal service is a private company, and prices have gone wayyy up, not to mention the number of their local post offices has been reduced to a tenth of what it used to be. There were something like 40 offices in my town alone, now there's four, the nearest to me in the very centre of the town where it's also hard to park the car.
Customs also reduced to a fifth what they used to have. So now I have a 'free choice' of either driving a couple hundred miles to the nearest customs, OR pay an extra 20 bucks for 'clearance service' and have it sent to my home cleared by someone else. And USA products are another matter even in that many U.S. products I'd like to buy require me to write manual (letter, fax/&email won't do) explanations and customs waivers and end use documents and request permissions from the U.S. customs end, explaining these products are not intended for terrorism and against U.S. citizens etc.
The result is, it's almost impossible for me to shop internationally (read: from the Americas), or at least it has pretty much become too expensive.
I suspect that is what they want all along though; we've seen what too much globalization and free markets are doing, and this certainly will rein it some.
Still, it's very hard for me to understand how come it costs LESS for me in transport fees to order, say a pedal direct from CHINA right accross the entire world, than to post a letter to my neighbor via the post....
Now wonder China is rising fast - I can get an american-made product cheaper if I buy it from China than if I buy and ship it from the U.S.
