WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — At Friday’s swearing in of Howard Lutnick, President Trump hinted at handing the United States Postal Service over to the new Secretary of Commerce.
“He’s going to look at it,” said President Trump of Lutnick. “He’s got a great business instinct which is what we need, and he’ll be looking at it and we think we can turn it around.”
Brian Renfroe is the President of the National Association of Letter Carriers, the largest postal union that represents more than 200,000 letter carriers.
“It’s an attack on working people, it’s an attack on public service,” said Renfroe. “It’s literally an attack on the Constitution.”
Renfroe says he caught wind of a report by The Washington Post Thursday that says President Trump is planning on signing an executive order that would drastically change USPS leadership.
“The Trump administration’s intention to, essentially, dismantle the Postal Service by getting rid of the governance, getting rid of the regulatory authority. Moving it from its status as an independent federal agency, that it’s been for 55 years, and moving it under the commerce department,” said Renfroe.
According to a report posted by the USPS in November, the agency recorded net losses of $9.5 billion dollars in fiscal year 2024 and recorded net losses of $6.5 billion dollars the year before that.
“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, and it will be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better than it has been over the years,” said President Trump.
“The Postal Service has lost money, but 90% of their losses are due to mandates by Congress, due to unfair calculations of all the money they set aside for things like pensions,” said Renfroe. “Congress can fix their financial situation, the administration can fix their financial situation. This is not the way to do it.”
Renfroe says if this were to happen, people in rural areas would be affected most.
“What would ultimately happen for every American is if you live someplace where it was efficient, you would probably get delivery. If you lived someplace where it was not efficient, you would either have no delivery at all or it would be so expensive it was unaffordable,” said Renfroe. “Regardless of their political persuasion, regardless of who they voted for, I guarantee what they did not vote for is destruction of a public service like the Postal Service.”
In response to the possible changes with the United States Postal Service, the NALC is planning a rally at 1 o’clock Monday afternoon at the Robert Taft Memorial, across from the Capitol.