President Donald Trump is preparing to solve the management of the American postal service and the absorption of an independent postal agency to his administration, potentially throwing a 250-year-old post supplier and trillion dollars of e-commerce transactions in confusion.
Trump is expected to issue an ordinance as soon as he releases members of the Postal Service Managing Council this week and place the agency under the control of the Secretary of Trade and Secretary Howard Lutnicka, according to six people familiar with the plans that spoke provided anonymity in fear of repression.
The management plans to fight Trump’s order, three of these people said in Washington Post. During the Thursday emergency meeting, the management board detained an external adviser and gave the instructions for suing the White House if the president was to remove board members or try to change the independent status of the agency. According to postal experts, Trump’s order to place the trade department responsible for postal service would probably violate federal law.
Another executive ordinance at the beginning of this week instructed independent agencies so that they will be more precise to the White House, although this decision will probably cause court challenges, and the postal service is generally released from the law.
Members of the Bilateral Postal Service Council are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Trump, at the peasants of Lutnicka, wondered about the privatization of the postal service, and Trump’s presidential team checked the candidates to replace General Postmaster Louis Dejoy, a retired logistics director and GOP fundraising, who took office in 2020 during Trump’s first term.
“There is a lot of talk about the postal service, which is private,” said Trump in December. “Today is completely different, between Amazon and UPS and Fedex and all the things you didn’t have. But this is talked about. This is an idea that many people like for a long time. “
At the beginning of this week, Dejoy announced plans to resign.
“This is a slightly royal approach that says that the king knows better than his subjects, and he will do everything in his power for them. But it also removes the feeling that there is supervision, impartiality and honesty and that some states would not be treated better than other states or cities better than other cities, “said James O’Rourke, who studies postal service at the University of Notre Dame Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “Anxiety related to the postal service is not only three -quarters of a million employees. The point is that he does not belong to the president or the White House. It belongs to the American nation. “
Representatives of the Trump administration and the postal service did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since its foundation in 1775–1970, the American postal system has been a political body of the White House. It is known that the presidents appointed their political allies or campaign leaders to the general position, and the head of the post office was often a key negotiator of the White House with Congress.
But the Act on postal reorganization of 1970, a product of a nationwide postal strike, prompted the Congress to divide the agency into a free -standing organization, deliberately withdrawing it from political DIY.
Trump’s first administration tried to test this division. Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of Treasury Trump, tried to control the employment process of 2020, which led Doboy to the postal service, and the task group will run out of Mnuchin’s department recommended a dramatically reduction of the agency’s scope and preparing him for privatization through the initial public offer.
The president’s expecting movements caused immediate criticism from the Democrats Congress.
“The privatization of the postal service is an attack on Americans’ access to critical information, benefits and life -saving medical care,” said The Post Rep. Gerry Connolly (Virginia), the highest democrat at the Committee on Supervision of the Chamber and Government. “It is obvious that Trump and his buddies value their own pockets more than the life and relationship of American public opinion.”
Trump has long has been tense relations with the postal agency. He once laughed at him from the oval office as a “joke”, and in a post in social media as “Boy providing” Amazon. In the early days of Coronavirus Pandemic, Trump threatened to suspend the emergency assistance of the postal service, unless there is four times packet prices, and Mnuchin authorized a loan for a postal agency only in exchange for access to its confidential contracts with the best customers. (Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is the owner of this post.)
Before the election in 2020, Trump said that the postal service was not able to facilitate post voting, because the agency could not gain access to emergency financing it blocked. The postal service finally provided 97.9 percent of votes from voters to electoral officials within three days. The successful delivery of voting cards changed the opinion of Trump about Dejoy, the post informed earlier.
Postmaster is in the process of a 10-year plan to reduce the cost and modernization of the agency, which had the most promising results last month. He gained profit – excluding expenditure on retirement and health care – in a quarter ended on December 31, the first profitable period from the peak of the pandemic.
But the delivery service on time fought under the term Dejoy, and the rocky implementation of his plan “delivering to America” ​​cost him and allies of postal services at Capitol Hill. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has committed himself to “doing everything I can to kill” Dejoy’s plan during the December interrogation.
In the same month, the chairman of the House Committee of House James Comer (R-Kentucky) warned Dyjoy against “significant changes” on the postal service. “There are many ideas – I don’t know if they will be beneficial or not for the postal service,” said Comer.
Republicans carefully approached Dejoy and close connections of the postal service with the Biden administration. They both collaborated on the delivery of almost 1 billion of Coronirus test sets, the largest expansion of postal capabilities during the generation, and to finance the fleet of over 60,000 electric vehicles to provide electric mail, although they were harassed by delays.
