The Mug that Stood Up to the Mailman
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donald Trump has threatened to pull the US out of the global postal system, after receiving a letter from the inventor of the "Mighty Mug".
Jayme Smaldone tells Manuela Saragosa how he was prompted to write the letter by the inexplicably low prices that Chinese knock-offs of his product were able to charge on online retail platforms in the US.
It all boiled down to the arcane system of international postal charges set by the Universal Postal Union way back in the 1800s, as Washington DC-based lawyer Jim Campbell explains. And according to Gary Huang of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, some Chinese businesses are profiting enormously.
(Picture: Mighty Mugs; Credit: Mighty Mug)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Manuel Zaragoza, and this is Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:05.9 | Coming up, how postage costs for a humble mug kicked off a storm in the global postal system. |
| 0:12.1 | Like, this was so ridiculous that I figured it doesn't matter if it's a Democrat or Republican sitting in the highest seat in the country, I knew that this was going |
| 0:23.0 | to fall. Like, this was way too stupid to survive. Why President Trump is now threatening a |
| 0:28.8 | global postal war. That's coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:36.8 | The risk of a trade war between the world's two largest economies, China and the US, looms large. |
| 0:43.7 | Stock markets globally lost value last week as a result. |
| 0:46.8 | So you'd be forgiven for missing an equally bitter battle raging between the US and China over the global postal system. |
| 0:54.1 | But don't worry, we have all the details here on Business Daily. |
| 0:56.5 | And it could be a story that sees America under President Trump |
| 0:59.8 | uniting the world rather than dividing it, as he's often been accused of doing. |
| 1:04.9 | The story starts with a mug and not just any old mug. |
| 1:08.7 | What we did was we came up with a new type of technology called smart grip, |
| 1:13.4 | which allows the mug to grip to your table or desk, |
| 1:17.6 | but lift 100% naturally. |
| 1:19.4 | So it's like suction 2.0 and it will never wear out. |
| 1:23.5 | That's American James Smaldon. |
| 1:25.6 | He's the founder and CEO of Mighty Mug, a mug that never spills. |
| 1:30.3 | He developed it, patented it, and sells it to customers in the US. |
| 1:34.4 | A couple of years ago, James started to notice that Chinese sellers were making illegal copies of his mug and selling them in the US too. |
| 1:41.8 | That wasn't too much of a surprise. |
| 1:45.8 | What was a surprise, though, |
... |
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