Donald Trump has again tweeted criticism of online retailer Amazon. this time for its use of the United States Postal Service. In a pair of tweets from March 31st, he stated that Amazon’s use of the USPS costs the USPS an average of $1.50 per shipment, which, in the end, amounts to billions of dollars. He also called for the USPS to raise the prices per shipment that the company charges Amazon to deliver its parcels. In the tweet he also condemns the Jeff Bezos-owned Washing Post, which has criticized the president’s policies and actions. He refers to a costs analytics article written by Citi Bank, and published by the New York Times, that claims that the USPS’ parcel rates appear to be under their actual economic cost and that in order to maintain profitability, the USPS would have to increase their costs by 50-percent in order to break even.
In an earlier tweet, Trump statedthat he has long had concerns about the economic impact of Amazon’s business model claiming that “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” On a number of occasions, President Trump has called out Amazon for not paying its fair share of taxes, though they reportedly have been charging sales taxes since April of 2017, and paid $957 million in federal and state income taxes last year. According to the Citi Bank analysis, while the USPS reported $2.7 billion in losses over the 2017 financial year, the losses can largely be attributed to the decreasing use of higher profit shipping methods by consumers and the company’s need to supply its retirement fund.
The series of tweets, which also called out the Washington Post, stating that the entity should register as a political lobby. Trump has claimed in the past that their reporting is so biased that they have created a “huge antitrust problem,” that such a large journalistic entity being owned by the same person that owns the world’s largest online retailer should be considered in violation of antitrust and competition laws. The Washington post has responded by stating that Amazon’s contract with the USPS is actually a profitable one, and that while they are owned by Jeff Bezos, that they act as an independent entity, separate from the retailer. The Washington Post is on the list of media companies that he has referred to as companies who share fake news.