President Trump appears to be ramping up his fight with Amazon.
Thursday night, he signed an executive order demanding a review of the Postal Service's finances.
It creates a task force to evaluate the agency's operations and finances. One of the areas they'll look at is the expansion and pricing of the package delivery market.
While the President's order doesn't mention Amazon by name, that line, in particular, appears to be a direct dig at the Seattle-based company.
So how did we get here?
In December the President tweeted, "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!"
So is the postal service getting ripped off?
Short answer: No.
Delivering packages has been a life raft for the postal service. As traditional mail declines, package delivery is booming: up by 589 million pieces last year. Amazon's a big part of that. The company does get a discount because of its large volume of packages. But the Postal Regulatory Commission reviews the partnership with Amazon each year and one of the requirements for renewal is that it be profitable.
But earlier this month, the president tweeted that the postal service loses a fortune to Amazon and that the company is also hurting retailers.
Is that true?
Not necessarily.
Brick-and-mortar stores are hurting, but a report from the Progressive Policy institute found the e-commerce sector is adding many more jobs than are lost in general retail. Amazon says it has created more than 200,000 jobs in the U.S.
