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"Postal customers should trust their gut when it comes to schemes to sell off or transfer the USPS," said the head of the American Postal Workers Union.
As the Trump administration signaled a potential step toward privatizing the U.S. Postal Service with the reported selection of a FedEx board member to serve as postmaster general, new polling on Thursday showed just how strongly the American public would oppose such a move.
The survey by Hart Research Associates and North Star Opinion Research, which was commissioned by the American Postal Workers Union, found that 60% of respondents were opposed to privatizing the postal service, while just 26% were in favor.
The opposition cut across ideological, geographic, and demographic divides, with people in all regions of the country saying they wanted to maintain the USPS as a public service by a margin of at least 29 points—and as many as 40 points in western states.
While rural voters supported President Donald Trump by a 23-point margin in the 2024 election, the research firms posited that the heavy reliance people in far-flung areas have on the USPS helped push rural respondents to say they oppose privatization, with 58% saying they were against it.
As Common Dreams reported last month, an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies found that private mail carriers like FedEx and UPS already charge "remote surcharges" to 8% of all U.S. ZIP Codes—home to nearly 4 million people—because they are in mountain communities and other remote areas. While USPS has a universal service obligation, people in rural areas pay up to $15.50 for deliveries from private companies.
Fifty-six percent of Americans said privatization would result in higher prices for mailing packages and letters, while 17% said prices were likely to improve.
Without competition from USPS, private companies could impose additional charges for weekend deliveries, fuel, residential deliveries, and more.
"Postal customers should trust their gut when it comes to schemes to sell off or transfer the USPS," said APWU president Mark Dimondstein. "Plans to privatize the Post Office are about enriching Wall Street and not serving Main Street. Evidence shows that selling off the USPS would lead to higher prices for postal services as well as higher prices for shipping packages at FedEx and UPS."
On the House floor recently, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) warned that "corporations won't serve what isn't profitable."
"This isn't about efficiency," she said. "This is about dismantling public services so they can prove government doesn't work."
The poll was released two months after Wells Fargo presented a five-step plan for privatizing USPS to Wall Street investors, including raising USPS prices by as much as 140%, selling postal real estate to commercial bidders, and imposing mass layoffs on the service's 600,000 employees.
The bank said privatization would lead to the "harvesting," or closing, of neighborhood post offices across the country—something 72% of respondents opposed in Thursday's poll.
Trump ally Elon Musk also said in March that Amtrak and USPS were top targets for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which the president selected him to lead and which has pushed to dismantle numerous government agencies and laid off nearly 300,000 federal employees.
"I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized," Musk said. Trump has also expressed support for privatization.
Respondents to Thursday's poll expressed support for a number of steps that could strengthen the U.S. Postal Service's finances, including 77% who backed making office supplies available for purchase in post offices, 72% who supported the selling of hunting and fishing licenses, and 60% who supported making magazines and newspapers available for purchase.
"The survey results indicate that the outlook is good in our ongoing fight against privatizers trying to sell off our public Postal Service for profit," said the APWU. "We should remain steady in our message—the U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale!"
Rather than selling this public treasure off to the highest bidder, we should explore opportunities for strengthening the Postal Service to deliver even better services in the 21st century.
Unlike the for-profit carriers, the Postal Service has a universal service obligation to provide affordable deliveries to all Americans, regardless of where they live or work. Currently, USPS parcel rates are about 25% to 60% below FedEx and UPS prices.
Would we want for-profit corporations handling our ballots?
Without competition from this public service, for-profit firms would jack up delivery fees on as many customers as possible. Who would be hit hardest? Most likely those who live or work in ZIP codes where private carriers already impose surcharges because deliveries to these addresses are less profitable.
A new Institute for Policy Studies report finds that UPS and FedEx area surcharges now apply to retail customers sending parcels using their own packaging to addresses in ZIP codes where 102 million Americans live. Not surprisingly, these include addresses in Hawaii, Alaska, and rural and remote areas. But they also cover many small towns and neighborhoods just outside major cities.
UPS and FedEx charge around $43 extra for shipments to Alaska and about $15 extra for deliveries to Hawaii and remote areas where nearly 4 million Americans live. The private carriers slap “extended area surcharges” of $8.30 on home deliveries in rural ZIP codes with a combined population of 35 million. Residential delivery surcharges run a little over $6 in suburban and small-town ZIP codes where 19 million people live.
Unlike the public Postal Service, the private carriers also impose extra charges for Saturday delivery, for fuel (based on distance), for package pickup, and for residential delivery. These charges reflect the higher costs for companies that, unlike USPS, aren’t already visiting every address six days a week.
Today’s higher FedEx and UPS delivery rates are just a taste of what would come if the Trump administration succeeds in privatizing USPS. In fact, Wells Fargo recently published a postal privatization plan that recommends hiking USPS parcel delivery rates by 30% to 140%. Their aim: to fatten up the hog before selling off this lucrative part of the postal business. Private carriers could also flat out refuse to deliver to far-flung addresses.
On top of higher delivery costs, rural communities would suffer the most from other impacts of a for-profit model. For instance, they would likely face the shuttering of many post offices and the related loss of postal jobs that pay decent wages with benefits.
Rural residents also rely heavily on USPS to deliver prescriptions, since many small-town pharmacies have shut down. The Postal Service also handles mail order prescriptions for military veterans, more than a quarter of whom live in rural areas.
During the 2024 general election, the Postal Service delivered more than 99 million ballots to or from voters. Rural voters rely particularly heavily on the mail-in option because physical polling sites are often long distances from their homes. Nationwide, half of rural county polling sites serve an area greater than 62 square miles, compared to just 2 square miles for urban sites. Would we want for-profit corporations handling our ballots?
Over its 250-year history, our public Postal Service has continually reinvented itself in response to changes in technology and the evolving needs of our society. Rather than selling this public treasure off to the highest bidder, we should explore opportunities for strengthening the Postal Service to deliver even better services in the 21st century.
In addition to the growing package delivery market, there are many opportunities for generating new revenue. For example, USPS could provide additional financial services, such as low-fee ATMs and check cashing. It could work with state and local governments to gather data on public safety and environmental risks through monitors on delivery vehicles. It could follow the models of some foreign postal services by providing check-in services for elderly and disabled residents.
With its extensive and valuable human resources and infrastructure, USPS has a strong foundation on which to continue providing a vital public service for all Americans for generations to come.
"Without competition from our public Postal Service, for-profit firms would jack up delivery fees on as many customers as possible."
As U.S. President Donald Trump and his centi-billionaire ally Elon Musk revive the right-wing dream to privatize the public mail system, an analysis released Tuesday details how the pain already inflicted on over 100 million Americans by the for-profit delivery industry will only get worse if Trump's plan succeeds.
Americans already have the option of using private companies like FedEx and UPS to mail packages, and in about 25,000 ZIP codes where 102 million people live—about a third of the U.S. population—the corporations already pile on extra charges for deliveries, according to the report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
Some of the ZIP codes lie in Alaska and Hawaii, where sending mail from the contiguous U.S. is predictably more expensive.
But private carriers also charge "remote surcharges" to about 8% of all U.S. ZIP codes because they are in mountain communities, ranchlands, and other remote areas that are home to nearly 4 million people. According to IPS, people pay up to $15.50 for deliveries in these regions when they use FedEx or UPS, but with the USPS universal service obligation, they pay nothing if they use the public mail carrier.
Thirty-five percent of U.S. ZIP codes are in rural areas where 35 million people pay up to $8.30 in "extended area surcharges" when they use a private delivery company. The companies also charge up to $6.20 for deliveries to certain suburban areas and smaller towns that are home to 19 million.
"Today's higher FedEx and UPS delivery rates are just a taste of what would come if the Trump administration succeeds in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service," said report author Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at IPS. "Without competition from our public Postal Service, for-profit firms would jack up delivery fees on as many customers as possible."
Without USPS, the companies could also add to the various extra charges they already impose on customers for Saturday deliveries, fuel, and residential deliveries.
The rural communities that are currently served by USPS at no cost to residents would face a wide range of impacts if Trump moves forward with a reported plan to disband the Postal Board of Governors and place the service under the control of the Department of Commerce—a likely first step toward privatizing the agency.
"Today's higher FedEx and UPS delivery rates are just a taste of what would come if the Trump administration succeeds in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service."
On top of higher costs, these communities would lose postal jobs that pay decent wages with benefits as rural post offices would close. Military veterans, who use USPS to get 84% of their prescriptions and more than 25% of whom live in rural areas, would face potential disruption of essential services, and rural residents would could lose the ability to vote by mail.
Small businesses could face higher shipping costs, leading to lower profits or higher prices for their customers.
Privatizing USPS "could jeopardize our entire system of universal postal service," said Anderson.
The report was published weeks after Musk told a group of Wall Street bankers that USPS is a top target as he seeks to privatize the federal government "as much as possible," and after a Wells Fargo report laid out a five-step plan for privatizing the service.
The bank included in its framework raising USPS parcel service prices by as much as 30%-140%, to "generate economic parcel profits on a standalone basis," selling the service's parcel business to private investors, selling postal real estate to commercial bidders, imposing mass layoffs on USPS' 600,000 workforce, and repealing the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which converted the USPS into an independent agency.
IPS warned that postal privatization would "destroy a vital and truly democratic public service."
"This extensive, centuries-old network helped build up America's democracy and economy by spreading information and goods to every corner of the country," said IPS. "Over its 250-year history, USPS has continually reinvented itself in response to changes in technology and the evolving needs of our society. Rather than selling this public treasure off to the highest bidder, we should explore opportunities for strengthening the Postal Service to deliver even better services to the American public in the 21st century."