commander-in-tweets

Trump again claims the Post Office loses money on Amazon deliveries. The Post Office says otherwise.

March 31, 2018

.polaris__post-meta--date { display: none; } .polaris__post-meta--date.no-script { display: block; padding-left: 45px } March 31, 2018

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press

President Trump reiterated his displeasure with internet retail giant Amazon in a pair of tweets early Saturday:

While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars. The Failing N.Y. Times reports that “the size of the company’s lobbying staff has ballooned,” and that...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2018

The president's first post references a recent New York Times report and a 2017 Citigroup calculation based on analysis from UPS, a Post Office competitor. His second post mentions The Washington Post because it is owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

As the Times reported Thursday, Amazon does get bulk discounts from the Post Office, but Joseph Corbett, the service's chief financial officer, has said USPS does not lose money delivering for Amazon. "By law our competitive package products, including those that we deliver for Amazon, must cover their costs," Corbett wrote at The Wall Street Journal last year. "Our regulator, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), looks carefully at this question every year and has determined that they do."