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Trump Wants Postal Service To Charge 'Much More' For Amazon Shipments (reuters.com)
President Donald Trump said the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon more to deliver packages, the latest in a series of public criticisms of the online retailer and its billionaire founder. From a report: "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? Should be charging MUCH MORE!" Trump wrote on Twitter. The president's tweet drew fresh attention to the fragile finances of the postal service at a time when tens of millions of parcels have been shipped all over the country for the holiday season. The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. The U.S. president does not determine postal rates. They are set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent government agency with commissioners selected by the president from both political parties. That panel raised prices on packages by almost 2 percent in November.
While they probably should, Trump feels this way because Jeff Bozo, who owns Amazon, also owns the NYT - or as Trump says "Fake News"...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
First, Amazon does use UPS. UPS, FedEx and DHL outsource the non-profitable part of their deliveries to the USPS. Honestly, that's the subsidy Trump ought be railing against. (From a technical point of view. It may be better politically/rhetorically to choose one high profile customer like Amazon).
Second, subsidizing some things (like roads), even for megacorps like Amazon, is important. It makes it easier for those megacorps to start up, and their competitors to start up as well. However, the typical payoff for that is supposed to be corporate tax dollars over and above the subsidy from the successful megacorps.
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that the Post office should charge more, but it's irresponsible for the President to call out a specific company. It would be one thing if Amazon had done something egregious. I could get behind him calling out the various military contractors in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the oil companies who are already spilling oil with the Keystone pipeline or the pharmaceuticals (who he got strangely silent about after the election). Hell, I could get behind him calling Amazon out for their anti-worker practices. But this is just petty politics.
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You might. National postal services are often expensive to run because they have a mandate to offer comparable service everywhere, not just on profitable runs. For example, the private courier services will not bring a package nearer than 100 km to my parents' home, but the national postal service delivers within walking distance.
Decreasing the price of to capture more of the market and fill underused capacity can improve profit.
Without subsidy the USPS will need to scale down massively, they can't compete in a free market environment.
Even then, they'll always run losses because the international treaties rapes every western postal service. If Trump wants to do something useful he should unilaterally get the US out of the treaty of Bern.
I'm baffled as to how many people could have forgotten what the US Post looked like 10 years ago (pre-Amazon-boom).
It was failing and they were talking about reducing their delivery days even more than they already had. They were hemorrhaging money and could not find a way to bring themselves back from the brink. Why? Because they don't receive Government Funding and people had stopped sending letters.
Amazon made them relevant again, although I'm not terribly surprised that our current Drumpfster Fire is glad to bite the hand that feeds us.