Donald Trump continues his crusade against mail-in voting, with the US Postal Service getting caught in the crossfire of this conflict most of all. Following his remarks on wanting to cut funding for the post office to discourage voters from voting by mail, Trump tries to pin the blame on online stores or e-commerce stores like Amazon for the problems being experienced by the postal service.
Speaking to Fox & Friends, Trump reiterated that Amazon and other similar e-commerce sites are costing the postal service and are to blame. Trump reasoned that the postal service is losing a substantial amount of money because of the influx of packages being dropped off by internet retailers. Trump previously made such remarks back in April and even all the way back in 2018.
“Amazon and other companies like it, they come and drop off all of their mail into a post office. They drop packages into the post office by the thousands and then they say ‘Here, you deliver them.’ We lose $3 and $4 a package on average. We lose massive amounts of money,” said Trump.
Contrary to Trump’s claim, the country’s postal service’s financial shortcomings are not caused by e-retailers. Previous analysis showed that these companies like Amazon may actually be helping keep the postal service afloat because of the growth in package shipping. Amazon also has other couriers at hand to ship goods like UPS, FedEx, and other similar delivery companies. One of the main reasons why the Postal Service is losing money is also because of the requirement that the USPS shoulder health benefits for its employees, costing $5 billion every year among other employee-expenses.
Meanwhile, The Guardian reports Trump criticized New Zealand for its response to COVID-19 along with its numbers. New Zealand recently reported nine new cases of the coronavirus on its shores. During a campaign rally at Minnesota, Trump said that the places that were often praised for its success in effectively containing or keeping COVID-19 under control have now experienced a surge in cases.
Compared to New Zealand’s nine new COVID-19 cases, the US still remains the worst-hit as on Monday, 42,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported.