Trump reportedly tried to personally demand the Postal Service to double how much it charges Amazon

Associated Press/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump has pushed the USPS to raise its rates on Amazon.

• President Donald Trump personally pushed the United States Postmaster General to double how much Amazon and other companies pay to ship packages through the service, The Washington Post reports.
• Trump has been waging a public war on Amazon's deal with the Postal Service for months, arguing that the struggling USPS is subsidizing Amazon.
• As the largest e-commerce company in the US, Amazon would likely have to pay billions of dollars if the Postal Service increased how much it costs to ship packages.

President Donald Trump has personally pressured the United States Postal Service to raise the rate it charges Amazon to deliver packages, according to a report from The Washington Post.

Trump asked Megan Brennan, the US Postmaster General, to double the rate that the Postal Service charges Amazon and other companies to deliver packages, The Washington Post reports, citing three people familiar with the conversations.

"Brennan has so far resisted Trump's demand, explaining in multiple conversations occurring this year and last that these arrangements are bound by contracts and must be reviewed by a regulatory commission, the three people said," The Post reports. "She has told the president that the Amazon relationship is beneficial for the Postal Service and gave him slides that showed the variety of companies, in addition to Amazon, that also partner for deliveries."

The personal demands began in 2017, with Brennan and Trump meeting several times. The most recent meeting was reportedly four months ago - after Trump began waging a war on Amazon's deal with the USPS.

"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?" Trump tweeted in December.

Trump doubled down with more tweets in April, saying Amazon is "costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy."

The USPS reported a net loss of $2.7 billion on $69.6 billion in revenue in 2017. Critics like Trump argue that Amazon should increase the prices of package delivery to cover these loses. Since Amazon is one of the USPS' biggest customers in the package-shipping business, Citi estimates that raising prices could cost the e-commerce giant billions of dollars.

According to The Post, Trump's aides are split internally on whether Amazon should be paying the USPS more money. Outside of the White House, many people - including former postmaster general Patrick Donahoe - have argued that Trump's logic is flawed.

In a conversation with UBS analysts in April, Donahoe broke down the fact that the USPS' business is split between mail - like letters and magazines - that only the government service could deliver, and "competitive products," or packages that rivals like FedEx or UPS could deliver. Package delivery legally needs to cover operating costs and 5.5% of the USPS' fixed costs.

According to Donahoe, package products are covering "meaningfully more" than the 5.5% allocation. Last year, shipping-and-package revenue jumped by $2.1 billion, an increase of 11.8% over the previous year. According to the USPS, much of that growth was thanks to e-commerce - meaning Amazon is helping save the USPS, not kill it.