This is not the first time this has happened. On Tuesday President Trump locks horn with Amazon and briefly sends their stock tumbling.
Trump has made no secret that he absolutely despises Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who also happens to own the Washington Post. He rips the company for keeping brick and mortar shops from getting the economic success they could potentially have.
Today Trump tweeted this:
I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy. Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018
As we stated earlier, this is nothing new for President Trump:
Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017
According to Ben Shapiro, Trump is wrong on all counts here. Per Daily Wire:
Technically, he isn’t right about anything here. First off, the Post Office's literal job is to be a "delivery boy." It's what they do. What's Amazon supposed to use the Post Office for, buying ice cream?
Furthermore, Amazon isn’t costing the post office massive amounts of money — Amazon is charged the same as anyone else using bulk mail. And the Post Office makes money from Amazon shipping packages — as Vox.com notes, “The revenue from package increased $2.1 billion, and was up 11.8 percent for fiscal year 2017.” The real problem with the Post Office is that its unionized employees cost an arm and a leg to compensate. The Postal Service is legally forbidden from losing money on package deliveries. Perhaps they could reset their rates higher. But if they did, Amazon could always shift carriers or pass costs on to consumers.
The big problem here is that President Trump doesn’t like the service industry. It’s the reason he’s obsessed with tariffs in order to preserve American manufacturing jobs. Trump sees companies like Amazons as leeches rather than job creators. And it doesn’t help that he hates Bezos.
But regardless of his rationale, it’s utterly unacceptable for the president of the United States to be bullying individual companies. If a Democrat did it, Republicans would be shouting about incipient anti-market fascism. Trump’s doing it, so we’re all supposed to pretend that shouting about the evils of one of the largest employers in the country for political reasons is just “populism.”
While Shapiro's stance is backed up with facts and is very logical, there is another side to this argument. President Trump is going to bat for the American manufacturing workers. The same reason he implemented tariffs. While it isn't popular with many, he is doing all he can to preserve manufacturing jobs in America.
?Hey Jeff Bezos, has President Trump got your attention yet ?
It just might behoove you and your company board the Trump Train !#AmericaFirst #TheDashRiprock https://t.co/BGevHXQzgY
— Dash Riprock (@PhilMcCrackin44) April 3, 2018
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