Trump confirms reports that he'll withhold a loan to the Post Office if the agency doesn't hike its shipping rates

President Trump threatened the U.S. Postal Service on Friday, claiming that if it didn't raise its shipping prices then he wouldn't approve of the $10 billion loan currently in the works for the struggling agency. "The Post Office is a joke," Trump said, as reported by The Washington Post. "The Post Office should raise the price [of package delivery] four times … If they don't raise the price, I'm not signing anything."

As part of the $2 trillion CARES pandemic stimulus act that Trump signed into law last month, the Post Office was due to receive a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Treasury, which Trump now says he will ask Secretary Steve Mnuchin to refuse to sign if the agency does not implement the changes desired by the administration. The Post Office is currently struggling from a plunge in revenues of about 30 percent due to the decline of business mail, stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump has frequently targeted the USPS for not charging Amazon higher packaging rates, The Washington Post notes, although "higher package rates could hurt the agency by artificially raising its prices above those of United Parcel Service and FedEx, analysts say." Read why The Week's Jeff Spross does not believe the USPS should be a business here.

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