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Trump Personally Pushed Postmaster General To Double Rates on Amazon, Other Firms: Report (washingtonpost.com)
President Trump personally urged the leader of the U.S. Postal Service to double the rates the agency charges Amazon and other firms for delivery packages in several private conversations in 2017 and 2018, The Washington Post reported Friday (alternative source). From the report: Postmaster General Megan Brennan has so far resisted Trump's demand, explaining in multiple conversations occurring this year and last that these arrangements are bound by contracts and must be reviewed by a regulatory commission, the three people said. She has told the president that the Amazon relationship is beneficial for the Postal Service and gave him a set of slides that showed the variety of companies, in addition to Amazon, that also partner for deliveries.
Despite these presentations, Trump has continued to level criticism at Amazon. And last month, his critiques culminated in the signing of an executive order mandating a government review of the financially strapped Postal Service that could lead to major changes in the way it charges Amazon and others for package delivery. Few U.S. companies have drawn Trump's ire as much as Amazon, which has rapidly grown to be the second-largest U.S. company in terms of market capitalization. For more than three years, Trump has fumed publicly and privately about the giant commerce and services company and its founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, who is also the owner of The Washington Post.
Despite these presentations, Trump has continued to level criticism at Amazon. And last month, his critiques culminated in the signing of an executive order mandating a government review of the financially strapped Postal Service that could lead to major changes in the way it charges Amazon and others for package delivery. Few U.S. companies have drawn Trump's ire as much as Amazon, which has rapidly grown to be the second-largest U.S. company in terms of market capitalization. For more than three years, Trump has fumed publicly and privately about the giant commerce and services company and its founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, who is also the owner of The Washington Post.
Won't that just push Amazon to set up their own private courier services? Not that I feel sympathy for either side of this fight.
I am sorry the company CEO is hurting the Presidents fragile Ego. But shouldn't he be Mr. Business man? Who looks at the big picture and works to make profitable deals no matter what your personal feelings are to the other person? Just as long as Amazon and like companies are not being charged at a loss at such bulk rates this is money to the USPS system, that isn't going to its competitors of FedEx and UPS. Doubling the Rates will not hurt Amazon that much, It will just hurt the USPS because Amazon will just move to the next cheapest shipping method.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You'd think that as a self-professed "businessman", Trump would understand how demand curves work -- if you double the price of a product, demand decreases, if other suppliers (UPS, Fedex, Ontrac, Amazon's own service, etc) can deliver for less, then the postoffice loses out on income for a business that costs very little to provide when they are already sending workers out to every address.
Though I'd be happy to see Amazon stop using the USPS -- they are the least reliable of all of the other services Amazon uses, packages sometimes show up days after they were marked "delivered", or don't show up at all. I fairly often get packages meant for neighbors, I assume this is the source of the delayed packages.
Fedex and UPS are the best, packages show up on time. Amazon's own delivery service has been ok, but seem to have a high number of rescheduled deliveries when they've run out of time to deliver. Maybe I'm on the end of the route.
Congrats, USA. You have elected a petulant child to run the executive branch.
Donald is going to prison, the question is how deep is Pence's dick in the dirty business of Trump's backside deals?
The USPS is bringing in tons of money through their deals with companies like Amazon. They're not somehow getting screwed. Like in a lot of cases, if you're going to buy a large amount of a product or service, you can generally negotiate to get it at a lower bulk rate. That's not somehow unusual.
It's essentially guaranteed business for USPS. If they double the rate, I'm sure FedEx, UPS, etc., will be quite happy to carry Amazon's packages instead, and the USPS will wind up being the one that loses.
But, what's that matter when you've got an ego to feed? This never was about postal rates. This is about Trump not liking Jeff Bezos, because the Washington Post has the gall to call people's attention to it when Trump says something stupid.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Stopped? USPS is still honoring their contract that still makes them money.
This is NOT news.
Wake me up when he does something not boneheaded.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
They're not subsidizing Amazon. They were turning a mild profit until they were forced to pre-pay pensions by law instead of acting like any other government or private entity.
Did you miss the part where the postmaster general said that these arrangements are beneficial to the post office?
Is there any data to back up your claim that they're losing money on the deal?
It's less about "fond of multi-bazillionaire captains of industry" and more about understanding how businesses and demand curves work. It's not Amazon that needs protection from Trump here but the USPS which are about to be forced to loose major contracts if Trump will have his way.
The whole issue here is that the USPS is subsidizing Amazon delivery, by charging rates lower than what it actually costs to ship things. Other mail fees are subsidizing Amazon, how is that right???
That is a lie.
USPS financial report
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
This story about the U.S. Postal Service, Amazon/Jeff Bezos, and Donald Trump, is case-in-point as to why he never was Presidential material, why he is not a good President now, and why he never will be a good President, ever: Donald Trump is incapable of de-coupling his ego from his personality when it comes to his duty as President of the United States. The lies, the staffing choices based on personal loyalty and not personal integrity and aptitude, the grandstanding (attention whoring, basically), the temper-tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and decision-making based on personal grudges and personal vendettas (as is the case here specifically) are all anyone with two eyes and a functioning brain need to see that he is not now and won't ever be someone who should have been allowed to be elected in the first place. Never mind that he may well be at least as crooked as Tricky Dick or not (we may never really know, but boy oh boy does it look likely), or that he's flat-out incompetent politically (vis-a-vis Israel/Jerusalem), what we've seen since January 2017 is so far as I and so many others are concerned more than enough evidence that Donald J. Trump as POTUS was one of the worst electoral mistakes in the history of the United States, one that this country will spend decades living down with the rest of the world.
The USPS has publish information multiple times debunking this statement.
The primary reason that the USPS makes a profit on Amazon even though the indivitual package price is very low is that Amazon fills the shipment.
An analogy would be a standby ticket. They need to charge passengers $200 for the flight but there are often empty seats so charging someone $50 for those IS profitable because those were unsold tickets and the new passenger costs only a little bit extra.
The USPS has obligations for certain delivery times mandated by congress, so they have a ton of empty space on the airplane or freight truck. Unlike the airlines that schedule fewer flights when a route is slow, the USPS still has to drive it every single day.
USPS items get loaded first, then other shippers like Amazon. If the truck fills, Amazon waits for the next truck but that's such a rare occurrence that it isn't a concern for Amazon.
Yes, it's a complaint - no one else needs to pre-fund pension plans. Your second sentence about them going broke doesn't make sense.
...then he should get the states to increase their diesel taxes and weight-mile taxes on trucks. But this would harm the oil industry which pays big money to politicians and so it will never happen.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
It's fitting that the story comes from the Washington Post since this has nothing to do with Amazon and EVERYTHING to do with the smear job WAPO has been doing to Trump.
So you are claiming that a story about how Trump is pushing the Postmaster General to significantly increase the rates it charges Amazon... has nothing to do with Amazon? Are you saying Trump did not, in fact, press for Amazon's postal rates to increase? Because the Postmaster General has specifically and rather publicly stated why she cannot do that - which would be an odd and random thing for her to say if Trump hadn't asked for it.
How about a similar story from Fox News? Is this one a smear job too? Did Bezos buy Fox News? http://www.foxnews.com/politic...
#DeleteChrome
Even if everyone agrees with you that forcing the USPS to prefund pensions is a good idea, bitching about their finances when they have to go through this huge change is dumb, if anything we should be expanding their services so that they are more profitable. Including lost cost banking services would be a good place to start.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
They are being forced to pre-fund pension plans FAR in advance of their obligation. That is singularly different than ANY other company or entity. It is literally starving them of resources. They can't adequately keep their facilities updated, clean, or expand services. The Post Office is one of the few things specifically mentioned in the Constitution as a service the Government is expected to provide.
If it were not for companies like Amazon and others, the Post Office would have gone bankrupt.
Despite your disingenuous "heartening" comment, actually most of us want EVERYONE to succeed,including our political rivals, heck, even the "evil" large business owners, as long as they play the game by the rules, and don't SCREW the people or the environment to make their profits.
Of course, there are exceptions and outliers on either side of the aisle, and there are the psychopathic types that just want to see the world burn, but for the most part, most of us want everybody to succeed in life. As long as it's not at someone else's expense.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
True. The way they are supposed to work is the money disappears up some executives ass when the majority of the workers that paid into it their entire career reach retirement age.
They are required to pre-fund for employees 75 years out per the interpretation of the government on the law congress passed. This means prefunding retirement for employees that have not been born yet.
It's absurd and anyone that can't see that is a shill or a partisan troll.
figure out how much they are going to have to pay out over the next 50-70 years, and put away enough money to cover it
Funding the pensions of employees who have not been born yet is really, really stupid.
True. The way they are supposed to work is the money disappears up some executives ass when the majority of the workers that paid into it their entire career reach retirement age.
I'd mod the AC insightful if I had points.
The relevant bit of history is Nixon's enemies list, in which he ordered IRS audits to "screw" his political enemies. In that case, the IRS commissioner Donald Alexander also refused to follow the order to perform the audits, and stored the order in the sealed envelope in his safe until the enemies list was outed by WH Counsel John Dean.
As an aside: there are other bits of that article of impeachment that Trump's folks have been accusing his political enemies of violating, particularly with the FBI and surveillance. That's a neat trick of acting Nixonian whist accusing your enemies of acting Nixonian, I don't know if that counts as projection or muddying the waters, or if it even reaches the heights of Orwellianism. Or perhaps it is simply a childish "no, you are!"
Funding the [educations of students] who have not been born yet is really, really stupid.
This is what you'll be telling your kids when they're ready for college?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That's been the GOP plan all along. They'll use that to "prove" that private enterprise is always better, smarter and cost-effective, they'll find a way to screw the workers out of their pensions and amend the constitution to either get rid of $govt_svc or to allow its functions to fulfilled by corporations entirely.
Combine that with Drumpf's hate-boner for anything associated with Jeff Bezos plus his belief that he should be able to run the government to the benefit of his business interests, and...
And there you have it in a nutshell. We're done here.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Extensive firearms training.