T.J. Muscaro | The Epoch Times
President Donald Trump has suggested that the United States Postal Service (USPS) could soon be merged with the Department of Commerce.
“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money, and we’re thinking about doing that,” he said on Feb. 21, taking questions from the media in the Oval Office. “It‘ll be a form of merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better than it has been over the years.”
His comments came immediately after Howard Lutnick was sworn in as the new Secretary of Commerce.
The president has also previously suggested the agency could be privatized.
While the USPS is meant to operate on its own revenue, it has repeatedly looked to Congress for money. President Joe Biden ended up providing the postal service with around $50 billion in financial relief and signed a law in 2022 to remove some agency requirements, like no longer requiring mail to be delivered six days a week.
The agency reported a $9.5 billion loss in 2024.
Trump called the USPS “a tremendous loser for the country,” and praised Lutnick for having great business instinct, saying that he would be looking into the merger. The president made assurances that the postal service would remain intact.
“We’re leaving the Postal Service, but we’re losing so much money with the Postal Service, and we don’t want to lose that kind of money, so the Secretary and some others that have talent, that kind of talent, will be looking at it,” Trump said.
However, Democrats pushed back against any change, alleging that Trump was planning to take over the USPS.
“This will make life harder for those who rely on the USPS to get medicine, purchase home necessities, and stay connected—especially in rural communities,” the Democrat Party’s official X account stated.
The USPS is an independent agency run by a board of governors, the members of which are appointed by the president and select the postmaster generals.
The latest postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, recently announced his intention to step down and asked the board to start the process of choosing his successor.
A White House spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on Feb. 21 that currently there was no executive order in the works to dissolve the USPS Board of Governors and merge the USPS with the Commerce Department.
