With a little more than a month to go before Inauguration Day, President-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden both took steps Monday that could affect the future of the U.S. Postal Service.
Trump nodded toward a possible move to privatize the Postal Service at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Asked about the agency, Trump said privatization was “not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” adding that “we’re looking” at it.
“There is talk about that. It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time,” he said.
Privatizing the Postal Service would affect hundreds of thousands of jobs and risk upending a system that, founded in 1775, is older than the U.S. itself.
Though the Postal Service is a government agency with federal employees, it relies primarily on its own commercial activities for funding, like selling postage, products and services.
The Postal Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
Any effort to privatize the agency would require approval from its Board of Governors, made up of 11 members and led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whom Trump appointed during his first term in office. Members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.
Biden on Monday announced his intent to renominate Anton Hajjar to the Board of Governors — a move that would require quick action by Democrats to confirm him before Republicans take control of the Senate in the first week of January.
Hajjar previously served on the Postal Service board. Biden nominated him in 2021, and the Senate confirmed him in a voice vote, indicating little to no opposition. Hajjar served out the rest of a term that expired last December. If the Senate confirms his renomination, his new term would last seven years.
Hajjar is a former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union, representing unions and union workers.
Biden’s intention to nominate Hajjar is an attempt to leverage control over the highly popular agency, which has not been profitable since 2006. The Postal Service ranks second only to the National Park Service in popularity among government entities, according to a survey this year by the Pew Research Center.
Trump has been openly critical of the agency, calling it a “joke” that “loses massive amounts of money.” While he was in office during the Covid pandemic, Trump opposed extending help to the agency and threatened to veto congressional measures that included aid for it.
His appointment of DeJoy in 2020 resulted in an unveiling of a 10-year plan to overhaul the post office to address financial hardship and “modernize the Postal Service.”
Republicans more broadly have expressed discontent with the Postal Service, calling it “bloated, mismanaged and unaccountable.” GOP lawmakers grilled DeJoy at a House Oversight Committee hearing this month, saying that people in the U.S. are enduring poor service and that the Postal Service is “hemorrhaging red ink.”
Democrats have opposed privatization, with Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., recently telling The Washington Post that privatization “is our big fear.”
Ultimately, the Board of Governors, Biden’s pick, Hajjar, among them if he is confirmed, would decide the fate of the agency and whether the service — which provides private companies such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS with “last-mile” service in rural areas — is privatized or not.
