- President Donald Trump is back at accusing online retailers - specifically Amazon - for killing the US Postal Service.
- During a daily briefing on the coronavirus on April 7, Trump highlighted "internet companies" for contributing to the "demise" of the USPS.
- Democratic lawmakers said in March that the USPS is set to run out of money by the summer.
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During a daily briefing on the coronavirus on April 7, President Donald Trump revisited one of his biggest gripes from years past - that Amazon was killing the US Postal Service.
At the briefing, a reporter asked Trump about claims that the president had tried to slash aid to the USPS from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) act. The USPS will receive "at least $25 billion," per the historic $2 trillion stimulus bill, which Trump signed into law on March 27.
Last month, a group of Democratic lawmakers said the coronavirus outbreak could shutter the USPS by June.
"This is the new one. I'm the demise of the Postal Service," Trump said on April 7. "I'll tell you who's the demise of the Postal Service, are these internet companies that give their stuff to the Postal Service."
He went on, "They drop everything in the post office and they say, 'You deliver it.' And if they'd raise the prices by, actually, a lot, then you'd find out that the post office could make money or break even, but they don't do that, and I'm trying to figure out why."
With cumulative losses nearing $70 billion as of 2018, the USPS' financial woes are nothing new. And neither are Trump's claims that Amazon is the company that brought the post office to its knees.
While Trump did not single out Amazon on Tuesday, he's long targeted the company and its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, who he's referred to as "Jeff Bozo."
For much of 2018, Trump took to Twitter and the press to wage a war on Amazon - and its relationship with the USPS. He said the rates USPS charges Amazon are far below market value, cutting key transportation costs for the $1 trillion online retailer.
"Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?" Trump said on Twitter on December 29, 2017.
He added in a follow-up tweet: "Should be charging MUCH MORE!"
Trump suggested the USPS should recoup its losses, which totaled $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2018, by upping rates on Amazon. In December 2018, a Trump-created task force that studied the USPS for months urged the quasi-governmental agency to take on an entirely "new business model." One suggested tactic: franchising Americans' mailboxes to turn a profit.
More recently, the feud has leaked outside of the delivery realm and into Amazon Web Services, the Seattle-based company's cloud computing arm. Amazon said Trump's vendetta against the company cost it a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon, and is pushing for Trump to testify on his dislike of Bezos.
Trump may not be completely off base; logistics analysts have concluded that Amazon is able to build a transportation network, in which Amazon can save money delivering its own packages, with significant help from the USPS.
A December report from Morgan Stanley found that Amazon's in-house delivery network is "cherry-picking" America's densest ZIP codes. The USPS is then charged with delivering Amazon packages in rural areas. Servicing rural areas, where homes are more spread out, is more expensive - and the USPS isn't able to recoup those losses by servicing urban areas.
