President Donald Trump has announced plans to merge the U.S. Postal Service into the Commerce Department, calling the Postal Service “a tremendous loser for this country.”
He’s not wrong. Over the past four years, the service has gone in a disastrous direction, racking up dramatic losses and bleeding customers.
With Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s resignation, the moment is right to start fixing what has gone wrong.
The first and most important cost-cutting action the Trump administration and U.S. DOGE Service should take is to release Americans from the burden of DeJoy’s policies.
Still following DeJoy’s 2021 “Delivering for America” plan, the Postal Service’s board of directors is plotting another gut punch to the service and Americans who depend on it: a huge July postage increase that could be as high as 11.6 percent for some mail products.
There’s no doubt that DeJoy and his plan have been a total failure.
The plan’s excessive and unprecedented twice-a-year rate increases — plus horrible customer service and delivery delays — have unsurprisingly caused the Postal Service to hemorrhage first-class, residential and business mail customers, the service’s main source of revenue.
Blatantly ignoring the bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which introduced smart fiscal reforms to save billions of dollars while avoiding postage increases and preserving service, DeJoy plowed ahead with his Delivering for America plan, which included both rate hikes exceeding inflation and service reductions.
Instead of delivering mail for America, DeJoy prioritized package delivery — a service already well covered by the private sector. He also went on a spending spree, converting tens of thousands of part-time jobs into costly full-time positions and bringing previously contracted transportation services in-house.
It’s no surprise that the agency posted a $6.5 billion loss for fiscal 2023 — the very year it was projected to break even under Delivering for America — as well as a $9.5 billion loss for fiscal 2024.
As Trump considers moving the Postal Service into the Commerce Department, the first order of business should be to freeze postage rates — and stop the July hike, which will be approved next month if there is no intervention.
Policymakers and economists alike have criticized the increases. And last May, the Postal Regulatory Commission, which regulates the agency, issued an order questioning the prudence of DeJoy’s biannual hikes and their negative effect on mail volume, mail-reliant businesses and the public. Yet the regulator stated it had no power to stop him.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, if the Postal Service continues down this road, it will face bankruptcy as early as 2028 — and that means it would have to go to Congress, and American taxpayers, for a bailout.
Smarter fiscal decisions need to be made. If nothing changes, DeJoy’s decisions will continue to cast a long shadow and hurt everyday Americans, especially those in rural communities who depend on the mail but have faced consistent rate rises, delivery delays and more frequently lost mail.
Both Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have a great deal of business experience. They know that no company can increase costs for consumers while at the same time degrading service and overspending and expect to achieve success.
The administration must freeze the rates to save the mail. Only then can we work to build a Postal Service that really delivers for America.
