President Trump laid out the choice for the US Post Office in stark terms Friday: Raise prices on package deliveries or forget about getting an emergency loan. “The post office is a joke,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, per the Washington Post. The Treasury Department has authorized a $10 billion loan to help the post office through the coronavirus pandemic, and Trump is using the loan as leverage to force changes. “If they don’t raise the price, I’m not signing anything,” he said. In his criticism Friday, Trump brought up a familiar target of his—Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos.
If the USPS “raised the price of a package by approximately four times, it would be a whole new ball game,” said Trump, per Politico. “But they don’t want to raise it because they don’t want to insult Amazon, and they don’t want to insult other companies, perhaps, that they like.” The decline of business mail in the pandemic has led to 30% decline in USPS revenues, according to the Post. Still, analysts worry that raising prices too much would send more customers to FedEx and UPS, and possibly result in higher prices for Amazon shoppers
