President Donald Trump, a few days after ratcheting up his attacks on Amazon, has issued an executive order Thursday (April 12) that will create a task force to look at how to improve the U.S. Postal Service.
According to the report in The Wall Street Journal, the president said the United States Postal Service is “on an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout,” in the executive order. While the order didn’t mention its contracts with Amazon, the order did say part of the review will be to look at pricing in the delivery of packages markets. He said the Postal Service has to “compete fairly in commercial markets.” In recent days Trump has been upping his criticism of Amazon, calling the U.S. Postal Service Amazon’s “delivery boy” and dismissing those who think the Postal Service makes money from Amazon as “fools.” He has also wondered if the White House could go after the eCommerce giant from antitrust and anti-competition grounds and has called The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a lobbying arm of the company. Amazon has chosen to stay silent in the wake of the Presidential tweets.
The Wall Street Journal noted in the report that the Postal Service has been losing money for years and that revenue from delivering packages has been increasing during the past few years. The Postal Service, noted the report, is prohibited from signing a contract that would result in it losing money. While some analysts think the Postal Service could charge Amazon and others more to make up for its pension liabilities and health costs, not many analysts agree that the Postal Service is losing money because of Amazon, noted the report.
The executive order also calls on the task force to look at pension liability and medical costs, as well as give it more flexibility to deal with pricing.
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