Will privatizing the USPS be on the table in Trump’s second term?

The United States Constitution does not go into much detail about the specific benefits the federal government is intended to provide to citizens – the document tends to rely on generalities such as promoting “the general welfare” – but Article I, Section 8 expressly authorizes officials to “To set up post offices”.

In other words, as long as there was a United States government, a domestic postal system was a pillar of the American experience. However, there is new reason to worry about the future of this system. The Washington Post reported:

According to The Post’s reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the Republican has broached the subject of an “overhaul” of the Postal Service with several members of his team, including Howard Lutnick, his nominee for Commerce Secretary, and co- Chairman of his presidential transition.

The article added that Trump had told his staff that he did not believe the federal government should subsidize the USPS.

The report follows a similar article from Reuters that said the president-elect’s transition team is “considering terminating the United States Postal Service’s contracts to electrify its delivery fleet.”

Such a move would put 1,000 manufacturing jobs at risk, although Trump and his team could certainly do it anyway.

If this all sounds a little familiar, it’s not your imagination. During the Republican’s first term, he made little effort to hide his hostility toward the USPS, and in the spring of 2020 — as officials struggled to deal with the worsening Covid crisis — the then-president made it clear he was ready To reject the entire CARES program if it includes federal funds to save the Postal Service.

When asked about his blatant disregard for the USPS during a White House press conference, Trump responded with a long, convoluted and difficult-to-understand diatribe in which he appeared to argue that the USPS’s finances would be fine if Amazon.com simply charged higher fees (a company that Trump didn’t like because its owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post, which he also didn’t like).

His complaints were quickly discredited, although his disdain for the Postal Service appears to have continued.

In theory, it’s easy to imagine members of Congress having a problem with privatization plans, but in practice, let’s not forget that many Republicans in Congress have a record of supporting abolishing the USPS. In other words, if Trump is serious about such a plan, it may not face much opposition on Capitol Hill, at least not among Republican Party officials.

Should such a move come to fruition, I suspect many Americans will say they didn’t know they were voting for such a plan when they supported Republican candidates in the 2024 election, but it could well end up being a dramatic reversal come anyway.

This post updates our relevant previous reporting.