A new CEO statement from Amazon suggests it could be angling to take over the US Postal Service.
It would have been easy to miss. Buried deep within Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s annual letter to company shareholders — a glowing, energetic 5,000-word essay released in April — was a foreshadowing of the company’s keen interest in capitalizing on the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
Postal service workers and those who value public mail delivery ought to take this threat seriously: The company, which started out 30 years ago selling books online, has an insatiable appetite for capturing and squeezing profits out of any part of economic life that it can monetize. Today, with Donald Trump angling to dismantle and privatize USPS, Amazon executives have their privatization dance partner, and they are salivating at this potential prize. As Jassy’s letter suggests, the company is taking steps to put itself first in line when Trump puts our U.S. Postal Service on the auction block.
