PHILADELPHIA — President Donald Trump on Friday said he may put the U.S. Postal Service under the control of the Commerce Department in what would be an executive branch takeover of the agency, which has operated as an independent entity since 1970.
“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money,” Trump said. “We’re thinking about doing that. And it’ll be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better.”
Trump made the remarks at the swearing-in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He called the move a way to stop losses at the $78 billion-a-year agency, which has struggled to balance the books with the decline of first-class mail.
“He’s got a great business instinct, which is what we need, and we’re looking at it, and we think we can turn it around,” Trump said of Lutnick. “It’s been just a tremendous loser for this country, tremendous amounts of money that they’ve lost.”
Here are some things to know about U.S. Postal Service operations:
What’s the history of the USPS?
The Post Office was created during the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775, when Benjamin Franklin became the first postmaster general. In 1872, Congress named it an executive branch department. But that changed after an eight-day postal strike over wages and benefits in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act, which made it an independent, self-financing agency called the U.S. Postal Service.
In recent years, as it’s sometimes struggled to stay afloat, the Postal Service has fought calls from Trump and others that it be privatized.
Who works for the USPS?
The 1970 reorganization gave workers pay raises and the right to collective bargaining, helping generations of Americans, especially Blacks and other minorities, move into the middle class. Today, the USPS employs about 640,000 workers tasked with delivering mail, medicine, election ballots and packages across the country, from inner cities to rural areas and even far-flung islands. They remained on duty during the coronavirus pandemic, when the American Postal Workers Union says more than 200 postal workers died.
Who runs the USPS?
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor who owned a logistics business, was appointed to lead the U.S. Postal Service during Trump’s first term in 2020. He has faced repeated challenges during his tenure, including the pandemic, surges in mail-in election ballots and efforts to stem losses through cost and service cuts. He announced a 10-year turnaround plan last year, but earlier this week said he plans to step down and asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to begin looking for his successor.
Who serves on the U.S. postal board and how are they selected?
The board is made up of up to nine members, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. No more than five members can come from the same political party.
The current chair is Amber F. McReynolds, a former election official from Colorado. The vice chair, Derek Kan, worked in the first Trump administration. Both were appointed by President Joe Biden.
Three vacancies on the board remain after the Senate failed to vote on Biden’s nominees to fill those seats. Biden appointed four of the current six governors and Trump two.
The board has the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. Both that person and a deputy postmaster also serve on the board.
How is the USPS funded?
Since the 1970 reorganization, the USPS has been largely self-funded. The bulk of its annual $78.5 billion budget comes from customer fees, according to the Congressional Research Service. Congress provides a relatively small annual appropriation — about $50 million in fiscal year 2023 –- to subsidize free and reduced-cost mail services.
Amid challenges that include the decline in profitable first-class mail and the cost of retiree benefits, the Postal Service accumulated $87 billion in losses from 2007 to 2020.
Last year, DeJoy announced a 10-year plan to modernize operations and stem losses, warning customers to expect “uncomfortable” rate hikes as the Postal Service seeks to stabilize its finances.
Critics, including members of Congress from several states, have said that the first consolidations slowed service and that further consolidations could particularly hurt rural mail delivery.
How does President Trump view the USPS?
Trump has been a critic of the Postal Service since his first term in office. In 2020, he threatened to block it from COVID-19 relief funding unless it quadrupled the package rates it charges large customers like Amazon, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose coverage rankled Trump.
More recently, Trump mused in December about privatizing the service given the competition it faced from Amazon, UPS, FedEx and others.
“It’s an idea a lot of people have had for a long time. We’re looking at it,” the president said.
