Selling the public Postal Service to private corporations is not in the public interest and would be nothing more than a raid by corporate pirates on our treasured public Postal Service.
The second Trump White House has signaled its interest in privatizing the Postal Service since its first days. Speaking at a swearing-in ceremony for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the president prepared the ground for an illegal takeover of the independent, congressionally-created USPS, saying: “We’re thinking about doing that. And it’ll be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better.”
When later asked about a corporate sell-off, the president said, “we’re looking at it”.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, one of the White House’s most senior figures, stated that: “I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized, … I think we should privatize the Post Office and Amtrak for example… We should privatize everything we possibly can.”
Banking and investment giant, Wells Fargo has set out a likely model for Wall Street veteran, secretary Lutnick, to follow.
The Wells Fargo Equity Research report dated Feb. 27, 2025 outlined a plan that involved selling off the money-making package operation for corporate profit, cashing in on property assets, such as main street post offices, cutting delivery days and increasing delivery times, while leaving taxpayers on the hook for expensive rural letter delivery and other “legacy” costs.
The risk to our public Postal Service is greater than ever, but we have faced the threat of privatization under multiple presidential administrations before now.
On Nov. 10, 2013, the Postal Service attempted to partially privatize the service by putting postal retail units in Staples stores, staffed with low-wage Staples employees.
On June 21, 2018, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a restructuring proposal for the federal government, stating “Like many European nations the United States could privatize its postal operator.”
The White House USPS Task Force Report, released on Dec. 4, outlined the first step of the OMB’s privatization proposal – restructuring the USPS to fatten it up for sale.
But despite the best efforts of corporate extremists, the people stood up and won out against postal privatization. With that momentum, we organized to win monumental postal reform legislation in 2022.
We have beaten the privatizers before and we can win again if we campaign together to insist that the U.S. Mail is not for sale!