President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was going to launch a task force to investigate the viability and operations of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) following his tweets where he accused Amazon of abusing the organization.
Trump, in an executive order, stated that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is going to chair the panel, whose function will be to assess in which way the Postal Service is affected by the package delivery company and the declining use of mail as well as research its business model and role in the U.S. economy.
“The USPS is on an unstable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout,” Trump stated in the executive order released by the White House.
According to The New York Times, Trump’s order directs Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ office to advise the task force on the issue of commercial monopolies in the delivery sector.
Recommendations from the task force are to be delivered within 120 days on how to reform the USPS “without shifting additional costs to taxpayers,” according to the executive order.
The creation of the task force comes after a series of tweets by the President where he accused Amazon of costing the Postal Service “billions.”
“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money-losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax-paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field,” one of Trump’s tweets said.
But when the fact-checkers and experts confronted the President that this was not the case, Trump doubled down on his attacks, saying that the Postal Service was losing “a fortune” because of Amazon.
Although USPS gives Amazon a shipping discount because of the volume of packages it ships, experts dismissed Trump’s argument that Amazon is hurting the Postal Service, saying that the USPS’ lack of profitability goes beyond its relationship with Amazon, adding that Amazon might be the only thing keeping the postal service alive.
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