By Julianna Frieman, Daily Caller News Foundation | December 15, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly looking to privatize the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), three people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post in a report published Sunday.
Trump has made known his desire to detach the USPS from the federal government in conversations at his Mar-a-Lago estate, sources informed the outlet, including with Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary pick and co-chair of his presidential transition team.
In early December, Trump also talked with a group of transition team officials to feel out their opinions on privatizing the agency, one person told the outlet.
As mail volume declines for the Postal Service, the agency has reportedly lost $9.5 billion in the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, The Washington Post reported.
The outlet expressed concern regarding the potential effect on e-commerce of privatizing the Postal Service, naming Amazon, whose executive chairman Jeff Bezos reportedly plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
As the Christmas season of mailing cards and packages approaches, the USPS, which many view as inefficient, has become a potential target of the incoming president’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Although DOGE co-leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have yet to publicly call for the privatization of the agency, it falls in line with their mission.
Members of the DOGE panel have reportedly “held preliminary conversations about major changes to the Postal Service,” according to the Washington Post.
Privatization of the USPS has become a “prominent target” of federal cost-cutting as Republican lawmakers and Trump allies plan major reforms, the outlet noted.
Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the incoming chair of the DOGE subcommittee, said Friday on X that the USPS wasting money “has to stop.”
The Postal Service only received 93 Oshkosh trucks as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s multibillion dollar plan to give 60,000 electric vehicles to the federal agency in the name of climate change, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
The Postal Service was established roughly one year before the country in 1775. Benjamin Franklin was appointed as the first U.S. Postmaster General.
Julianna Frieman is a contributor at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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