Donald Trump says privatizing the United States Postal Service — an idea Republicans have been circling for years in a crusade to kill one of America’s most popular public agencies — is “not the worst idea” he’s ever heard.
It’s the clearest signal yet that his incoming administration is reviving plans to gut the agency, which is empowered by the Constitution and older than the nation itself.
His remarks on Monday followed reporting in The Washington Post that Trump and his billionaire nominee for commerce secretary Howard Lutnick are mulling plans to overhaul the agency, including whether to privatize it entirely.
Trump and Republicans have argued that taxpayers should not be “subsidizing” an agency that has reported billions of dollars in financial losses, and Trump has publicly lamented that the Postal Service is not a “profitable” service.
But the agency is not a for-profit enterprise; it’s “literally in the Constitution,” as Democratic Senator Tina Smith said this week.
“There is talk about the Postal Service being taken private, you do know that — not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Monday.
“It’s a lot different today between Amazon and UPS and FedEx, and all the things you didn’t have,” he said. “But there is talk about that. It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time. We’re looking at that.”
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said in a statement that privatizing the USPS is the “last thing we should be considering as a country.”
“Privatization would end universal service,” he said. “Right now, the USPS delivers to every address, regardless of who we are or where we live. Universal service is especially important to rural America. Privatization also would lead to price-gouging by private companies.”
The nation’s postal service was founded in 1775 with Benjamin Franklin as its chief, and later written into the Constitution to grant Congress authority to “establish Post Offices and post Roads,” empowering the agency’s authority to carry, deliver and regulate the mail.
Broader cuts to the USPS would upend the e-commerce industry as well as the delivery of medications and other critical mail for rural Americans who rely on the agency’s “universal service obligation,” which mandates USPS to deliver mail regardless of how far it needs to go or how much it costs to do so — meaning that the agency is often the only carrier that can deliver to hard-to-reach Americans across the country.
Amazon, the agency’s largest customer, relies on postal workers for “last-mile” delivery between its warehouses and homes and businesses.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — who has remained in the role throughout President Joe Biden’s administration after Trump supported his appointment in 2020 — has faced intense scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdog groups, including calls for his removal, letters to the agency’s board of governors demanding that its members fire him, protests outside his home, and investigations probing his time before and after he entered office.
He is the first postmaster general in US history in decades without any prior history with the agency, and the first ever to come from a private company that directly competes with USPS. He was confirmed to lead the USPS by a board made up entirely of Trump appointees, and his companies still hold active contracts with the agency he is leading.
DeJoy implemented significant cuts and service changes to the agency during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a surge in demand for the mail’s critical lifeline during the public health crisis, and as 2020 elections saw a massive increase in vote-by-mail options that critics have argued were undermined by DeJoy’s plans.
His 10-year plan — “Delivering for America,” unveiled in 2021 — proposed longer first-class mail delivery, shorter office hours and higher postage prices.
Last week, he literally covered his ears during a congressional hearing while a Republican representative grilled him for giving himself an “A” grade.
Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy covers his ears with his hands today while Republican Rep. Rich McCormick yells at him for destroying the Post Office. pic.twitter.com/0S4UrY4VE1
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 10, 2024
In 2020, Trump threatened to block the agency from receiving $10 billion in pandemic aid, unless it agreed to raise prices. While he explored how to privatize the agency, he created a task force to look into restructuring the USPS entirely, including hiring private contractors to process and sort mail.
House Republicans are also promoting the idea to hand over control of the nation’s mail to private companies.
“There are private companies that are interested, which is where I think a lot of the problems are,” House Oversight Committee chair James Comer said last month.
“The problem with that is nobody wants to deliver the mail to every house in America six days a week, and to operate all those retail postal facilities,” he added. “There’s no private company in the world that wants that.”
A quasi-government advisory board led by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are proposing drastic cuts to the federal budget, is also exploring cuts to the agency. The Department of Government Efficiencty’s congressional counterpart is asking for DeJoy to assign a point of contact for members of Congress to work with.
“The Post Office is in our constitution,” Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan said on Saturday.
“There is no way we let Donald Trump privatize it,” he added. “Fire his former pick for postmaster, DeJoy, and let a real professional run it like it should be run. The first priority is delivering mail. Cut the Pentagon’s bloat if you want to save money.”
Hell no, @RepMTG!
— Mark Pocan (@MarkPocan) December 17, 2024
I’m going to fight privatizing the @USPS with all I’ve got.
Maybe we should just replace a certain grandstanding rep with AI instead. Trump speaks, you repeat. No thought in that. https://t.co/hnnMWrZ1lE
While Trump mocked the agency as a “joke” and Amazon’s “delivery boy,” his White House budget office wrote in 2018 that the USPS is “caught between a mandate to operate like a business, but with the expenses and political oversight of a public agency.”
A 2018 report from the Office of Management and Budget argued that a privately-run USPS would have more flexibility to raise prices, but it would still face oversight from Congress and other agencies.
Despite Republican-led threats, the USPS ranks only behind the National Park Service as the most popular federal agency; more than 70 percent of Americans, including 68 percent of Republicans, have a “favorable” view of the USPS, according to a 2024 survey from Pew Research Center.
