President-elect Donald Trump is considering overhauling the U.S. Postal Service, including, The Post reports, possibly privatizing it. Condemned by progressives as “extreme” or “truly awful,” postal privatization is actually a mainstream public policy idea. Countries such as Germany, Japan, Britain and the Netherlands have already pursued it at least partially.
To be clear, we are agnostic on privatization for the United States. But with the Postal Service losing another $9.5 billion in fiscal 2024, and headed for $80 billion more in losses over the next decade (despite $50 billion in relief from Congress in 2022), this is no time to think incrementally, much less to impose taboos. Indeed, postal reform is one issue on which Mr. Trump’s disruptive instincts might serve the public interest.
No doubt current arrangements favor certain entrenched interests with influence in Congress, such as postal unions, direct mail advertisers and, yes, the greeting-card lobby. Some defenders of the status quo have gotten very good at influencing public opinion, and they are cranking up old narratives about how this popular institution knits together a far-flung nation.
