President Donald Trump on Monday reiterated his belief that Amazon is to blame for the death of the US Postal Service.
“Amazon and other companies love it, they come and they throw all their mail in a post office,” Trump said in an interview with “Fox & Friends.” “They drop packages in the post office by the thousands and then they say, ‘Here, you deliver them.’ We lose an average of $ 3 and $ 4 a package. We lose massive amounts of money.”
Trump’s remarks sparked similar comments by him in April and launched a series of attacks in 2018, when he claimed that Amazon “cost the post office” billions.
Trump is right that the Postal Service is losing money, but Amazon and other e-commerce Internet companies are not necessarily to blame for that. Earlier analysis by CNBC found that Amazon could save the post office from financial death, due to growth in parcel shipping from online retailers such as Amazon. Amazon also relies on a range of carriers to deliver packages, such as UPS and FedEx, and is increasingly building its own network of contracted delivery partners, which now total 1,300 companies.
A major factor behind the post office’s persistent shortfall is a requirement that the USPS fund health benefits for its workers, which cost more than $ 5 billion annually. Other employee-related expenditures, such as workers’ compensation, fluctuate from year to year based on “changes in actuarial assumptions, such as interest rates and inflation rates, and demographics of workers and pensions,” as the USPS said in its 2019 annual report.
The postal service has benefited from an increase in parcel deliveries to Americans staying indoors due to the pandemic, but it has experienced continuous decline in first-class and business mail, according to the latest financial results.
The president was asked on Fox News about concerns that the Trump administration is trying to influence the post office to influence the vote in the November presidential election. The Postal Service has removed hundreds of mail processing machines across the country and warned dozens of states that it may not be able to process postal votes in time to count in the November 3 presidential election. At the same time, it has been dealing with widespread mail delays and has seen its financial woes increase as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Chamber member Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Calls the House back in session, cutting the summer recess of lawmakers briefly as concerns grow among Democrats over whether the Trump White House is trying to undermine the Postal Service before the election.
Trump said the post office could solve its financial problems by increasing delivery figures to offset lower delivery costs, driven by online retailers. “This guy is meant to be so rich, so let’s pay for it,” Trump added, referring to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.
Amazon declined to comment on Trump’s comments.
– Jordan Novet from CNBC contributed to this story.
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