[T]he Postmaster General, by and with the advice and consent of the President of the United States, shall be, and he hereby is, authorized to reduce or enlarge, from time to time, the rates of postage upon all letters and other mailable matter conveyed between the United States and any foreign country, for the purpose of making better postal arrangements with other governments, or counteracting any adverse measures affecting our postal intercourse with foreign countries....
The Postal Service, with the consent of the President, may negotiate and conclude postal treaties or conventions, and may establish the rates of postage or other charges on mail matter conveyed between the United States and other countries.
Until relatively recently, the most significant components of the costs incurred by the Postal Service in connection with its international operations, namely transportation expenses and the charges imposed by foreign postal administrations to deliver U.S.-origin mail (terminal dues), were based exclusively on weight. Although transportation expenses are still a function of weight, the postal administrations of countries to which much U.S. mail is sent have implemented terminal dues arrangements that recognize that mail processing costs vary by volume as well as by weight. Moreover, the Postal Service currently is charged terminal dues by foreign postal administrations using four different methods of calculation. Consequently, the Postal Service incurs substantially different costs for delivering mail to different countries. Due to uniform pricing, however, the Postal Service's rates do not reflect country-specific costs to the extent possible. Similarly, uniform rates do not generally take into account differences in how mail is prepared or where it is tendered, both of which can significantly affect costs.
This flexibility enables the Postal Service's competitors to tailor service features to individual customers and to price those features on a partially or completely disaggregated basis. In contrast, traditional Postal Service pricing policies and practices, whereby the Postal Service generally treats all current and potential customers identically and uses averaged costs when setting rates, are not designed to deal with a competitive environment. The expanded alternatives available to customers and the improved attractiveness of those alternatives have made it increasingly difficult for the Postal Service to sell its services to a varied group of customers using a single published schedule of rates. To the extent that uniform pricing prevents the Postal Service from attracting new customers and keeping existing customers, all of the Postal Service's other users suffer by having to pay more for their postal services.
In providing services and in establishing classifications, rates, and fees under this title, the Postal Service shall not, except as specifically authorized in this title, make any undue or unreasonable discrimination among users of the mails, nor shall it grant any undue or unreasonable preferences to any such user.
Under the ICM system, small-volume mailers who are not able to meet the threshold capacity requirements of the ICM agreements are not able to gain the benefit of an individually negotiated, lower rate. The costs are not apportioned fairly, because under the ICM, there is no requirement that the large-volume mailer actually deliver more than the small-volume mailer.
*635 The question, then, is whether the Commission was arbitrary in its ultimate trade-off between the cost considerations that pointed toward zoning, and the competing values that it ultimately favored. Any such arbitrariness would presumably violate 39 U.S.C. § 403(c)'s prohibition of “undue or unreasonable preferences.”
[T]he Government argues that the explicit consent of the President is not required. In the view of the Government, to the extent that 39 U.S.C. 407(a) does require the President to consent, it does not require that consent be given in any particular manner. The Government's position is that the failure of the President to object to the establishment of international postage rates and other charges is consent to the establishment of such rates and other charges. This has been the practice of the Government for the past 120 years.
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