Trump Calls For Amazon To Cover Post Office Costs With Higher Rates

President Donald Trump said Tuesday (Aug. 18) that Amazon should pay more in shipping to cover the lagging finances of the U.S. Postal Service, Bloomberg reported.

Trump repeated a false claim that the Postal Service loses money on delivering Amazon packages because of the way the shipments are negotiated. He said it is “part of their model. They think the post office is stupid,” Bloomberg reported.

Trump’s critiques of Amazon date back years now, as he has targeted the eCommerce giant in a 2018 tweet with accusations that it costs the Postal Service “massive amounts of money.”

In May, the Postal Service was considering its package delivery contracts, seeking bids from consulting firms to reassess how much it charges companies like UPS, FedEx and Amazon to deliver packages in the “last mile” of their journeys. Trump said the Postal Service isn’t charging these companies enough.

“The Postal Service is a joke because they’re handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies, and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it,” Trump said at the time.

The Postal Service has been in U.S. politics for the past week as Trump stated that his rejection of $25 billion in financial aid for the service was directly tied to his opposition to mail-in ballots being used to vote during the upcoming November election.

And Louis DeJoy, the postmaster appointed by Trump, said earlier on Tuesday that he’d be rolling back any changes he’d made to Postal Service operations that could be construed as being able to influence the election or prevent voting.

In separate news, Amazon announced in December that it would be charging around 3 percent more for merchants to ship items for fulfillment fees, including warehousing and shipping goods. The higher costs come from infrastructure and services, such as one-day delivery, which are key to why people sign up for Amazon Prime.