Trump has called the US postal service a joke'. But don't expect Amazon to replace it | Niamh Rowe

"In towns where Washington DC is an abstraction, the post office is the front desk of American democracy sometimes the only public space at all. Here, postmasters are the human side of government, as the senator Jennings Randolph put it in 1976. When such offices are closed, he warned, the American flag really comes down. Championed by Benjamin Franklin in 1775, the roots of the US postal service whose mandate is to bind the nation together are older than the republic itself."

"The USPS has lost about $114bn since 2007, according to financial reports, amid declining letter volume, competition from private carriers and rising employee costs. Meanwhile, the specter of privatization looms larger than ever. The postal service is a joke, Donald Trump told reporters in 2020. A reform plan during his previous administration called for restructuring it to return it to a sustainable business model or prepare it for future conversion from a Government agency into a privately-held corporation."

"Given this historical scorn, it was no surprise when reports broke in February that Trump was considering dissolving the agency's leadership and absorbing it into the Department of Commerce. The fate of the USPS is no longer financial or managerial, but political, James O'Rourke, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame, recently told me. Putting the post office up for an IPO would not be much of a stretch in the current climate. The checks and balances are gone."

Post offices function as the front desk of American democracy in many towns and sometimes the only public space. Postmasters serve as the human side of government and closures symbolize the lowering of the American flag. The US postal system traces roots to 1775 with a constitutional mandate to provide post offices and post roads and a legal obligation to deliver a basic service nationwide. The USPS has lost about $114bn since 2007 from falling letter volume, private competition, and rising employee costs. Political pressures, hostility from the Trump administration, and privatization proposals have intensified uncertainty about the service's future.

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