President Trump says he won’t approve a $10-billion loan for the U.S. Postal Service unless the agency raises charges for Amazon and other big shippers to four to five times current rates.
A 2006 law requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund future retirees’ health benefits has accelerated the agency’s financial decline.
Looking at Mnuchin, who was with him in the Oval Office, the president said, “If they don’t raise the price of the service they give ... I’m not signing anything and I’m not authorizing you to do anything.” Mnuchin told reporters that he had Treasury officials working with the Postal Service on the terms of the loan if postal officials decide they need more money.“We are going to post certain criteria for [a] postal reform program as part of the loan,” Mnuchin said. He said the Postal Service board is already conducting a search for a new postmaster general to run the agency and undertaking operational changes.
The Washington Post, which first to report about the administration’s push for changes at the Postal Service, quoted unnamed officials as saying that senior Postal Service officials have been told the administration wants to use the $10-billion loan as leverage to influence how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances.
Trump has complained for years that the Postal Service was being exploited by Amazon and other shippers and that was the reason the agency was losing so much money. But analysts have said that efforts to sharply boost charges on big shippers such as Amazon could backfire by raising prices above those being charged by competitors such as UPS and FedEx.
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