President Trump on Friday called for the U.S. Postal Service to raise the shipping rates that it charges Amazon.com, the online retailer, in a deal that he said disadvantages the federal agency. 
 
 “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!” Trump tweeted Friday morning. 
 
 Moments after the opening bell, shares of Amazon fell by roughly 0.4 percent. That slide continued throughout the day, with the stock price finishing down 1.4 percent. 
 
 Trump is probably referring to a partnership between the Postal Service and Amazon in which the Postal Service carries Amazon packages in the last leg of their journeys to customers' doorsteps. It's just the latest in a series of digs by the president at Amazon, whose chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post. 
 
 In this case, Trump's tweet misses some nuances of the arrangement between Amazon and the Postal Service but underscores a real debate about whether the USPS is charging Amazon — and other retailers — enough to deliver packages. Parcel delivery has become an increasingly important part of the Postal Service's business as first-class mail has continued a long-running decline. 
 
 Spokesmen for the Postal Service and Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. In July, Amazon told Fortune magazine that the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the Postal Service, “has consistently found that Amazon's contracts with the USPS are profitable.” 
 
 Amazon defended its program in July after Josh Sandbulte, a hedge fund manager with a stake in FedEx, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed asserting that the Postal Service effectively subsidizes Amazon, losing an average of $1.46 for each shipment it delivers. The op-ed cut against a view that rising volumes of e-commerce shipping might lift the Postal Service's long-struggling finances. 
 
 Sandbulte largely based his op-ed on an April report from analysts at Citigroup arguing that the Postal Service's employee benefits were acting as a drag on the USPS's profitability. 
 
 “We contend that the USPS does not act as a rational price-setter in the parcel market,” the report said. “Remedying this could be the key to the organization regaining operating solvency. . . . To this day, price still does not cover all-in costs.” 
 
 The report said the average cost of parcel shipments might jump from $3.51 to $4.97 if the USPS appropriately priced the service. It also said that since the Postal Service pricing provides strong downward pressure on competitors UPS and FedEx, those companies also probably would increase prices. 
 
 The Postal Service recorded a net loss of $5.6 billion in 2016, which it blamed on employee health-care costs. 
 
 Although Amazon is the biggest user of the parcel delivery service, the Citigroup analysts warned that Amazon would also be best positioned to absorb any increase in shipping costs, because of its size and extensive leverage in the shipping market. Other major users of delivery services, such as Best Buy and Staples, would be more exposed. 
 
 James O'Rourke, a management professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies the Postal Service, said the USPS's essential problem is that it faces costs few other carriers do. Unlike UPS or FedEx, much of whose business revolves around moving parcels from one hub to another, the Postal Service is far more involved in delivering parcels over the “last mile” of a trip. This can be costly, especially in rural and suburban areas. 
 
 What's more, the Postal Service pays for employee health care and retirement plans, while its competitors have shifted more of that responsibility to employees. An act of Congress waiving those obligations would make the Postal Service profitable again almost overnight, O'Rourke said. 
 
 One of the Postal Service's biggest immediate obstacles to raising prices might be Trump. That's because the body that sets postal rates, the nine-member Postal Service Board of Governors, has only two serving members and lacks a quorum to make decisions. The board cannot raise rates without Trump nominating political appointees to fill the remaining slots, O'Rourke said. 
 
 “There is a level at which government operates that elected officials sometimes don't fully grasp,” O'Rourke said. “And this is true whether you're talking about USPS, the State Department or Interior. There are people four and five levels down who make the government of the United States work every day.” 
 
 In its response to the Wall Street Journal op-ed in July, Amazon said it had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in package facilities across the country that support the Postal Service’s delivery operation. 
 
 “This investment resulted in more efficient processes as well as thousands of jobs and related economic benefits in local communities,” the company said in the statement released to Fortune. 
 
 Trump has periodically criticized Amazon since before he took office. In 2016, Trump said that the company could face “a huge antitrust problem” if he was elected because “Amazon is controlling so much.” As recently as this summer, Trump twice asked a hedge fund manager whether he thought Amazon was a monopoly. (The manager, whose fund owns Amazon stock, said no, according to CNBC.) 
 
 Trump has also charged that the Internet retailer hurts competitors and local governments by failing to pay sales taxes. The company did not collect sales tax for years, but it does now. 
 
 Trump has argued that Bezos is using The Washington Post to advance his financial interests, such as by using any business losses at The Post to deduct Amazon's corporate taxes. Tax experts say such a maneuver is not possible. 
 
 “There is no way for Amazon to use The Post's tax situation to offset its taxes,” said Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at Louisiana State University. 
 
 The Post’s editors and Bezos have declared that he is not involved in any journalistic decisions. The Post is owned by Bezos personally, not by Amazon. 
 
 It was not clear what drove Trump’s interest in the shipping relationship between Amazon and the Postal Service on Friday morning. Shipping is in the news with the holiday season, and several cable networks mentioned Amazon and Bezos as part of features Friday morning, though they did not appear to mention the Postal Service issue. ||||| "Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed." 
 
 President Donald Trump took a swing at Amazon once more on April 2, blaming the digital retailer for the United States Postal Service’s financial woes. 
 
 "Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon," Trump tweeted. "THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country...not a level playing field!" 
 
 Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country...not a level playing field! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018 
 
 We addressed the closing of retailers across the country in another Amazon-USPS tweet-inspired story last week. (Trump had a point.) But for this fact-check, we wondered whether Amazon is causing the Postal Service to "lose a fortune." 
 
 The post office is losing a fortune, but Trump is wrong to blame Amazon. 
 
 Parcels are growing the Postal Service 
 
 The Postal Service reported a net loss of $2.7 billion for 2017. It has lost $65.1 billion since 2007. Much of the red ink is attributed to a 2006 law mandating that USPS pre-fund future retirees’ health benefits. 
 
 First-class mail, the USPS’ biggest source of revenue, also continued to shrink, seeing a $1.87 billion revenue loss in fiscal year 2017. 
 
 Package delivery, however, was one of the few bright spots in its latest financial statement. In 2017, parcels brought in $19.5 billion, or 28 percent of USPS’ annual revenue. At $2.1 billion, packages contributed the largest revenue increase. 
 
 Deals with private shippers like Amazon accounted for $7 billion of the $19.5 billion in revenue. While we know that Amazon is the biggest e-commerce player, we don’t know exactly how much of the $7 billion comes from Amazon, because the details of the postal service’s deals with private shippers are considered proprietary and not made public. 
 
 A good deal? 
 
 USPS ships about 40 percent of Amazon’s packages. Amazon bulk-delivers packages to a USPS distribution center, and the Postal Service brings it to your door. USPS negotiates the discounted rate for that service with Amazon, as it does all other bulk shippers. 
 
 Those rates are kept under wraps. That said, we do know the Amazon deal is at least a break-even venture. 
 
 That’s because the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act made it illegal for USPS to price parcel delivery below its cost. 
 
 "By law our competitive package products, including those that we deliver for Amazon, must cover their costs," an August 2017 USPS press release said. "Our regulator, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), looks carefully at this question every year and has determined that they do. The PRC has also noted that competitive products help fund the infrastructure of the Postal Service." 
 
 In fact, the Postal Regulatory Commission gave the green light to the USPS-Amazon deal the same day Trump began tweeting about Amazon last week. 
 
 Trump might have a point, however, in saying the USPS could be making more money off Amazon. For example, Citigroup found that on average, USPS was charging $1.46 below market rates for parcel delivery (not just to Amazon). 
 
 Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers, explained the Postal Service can offer lower prices than their private competitors because they already "go to every house, every day." 
 
 "We’re already going there to deliver mail and bills and advertising, so the marginal cost of delivering an extra package is not high, especially in the low-density areas," Sauber said. 
 
 Our ruling 
 
 Trump tweeted, "Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed." 
 
 Amazon isn’t causing the United States Postal Service to lose a fortune. In fact, it’s contributing to its biggest growth sector, package delivery. Deals like the one with Amazon brought in $7 billion in fiscal year 2017. 
 
 While we don’t know the deal USPS crafted with Amazon, we know it’s not losing money. A 2006 law codified profitability into law, and an independent regulatory commission that reviews their deals annually gave it a green light on March 29. 
 
 That said, it’s possible that the Postal Service could be charging Amazon more for package delivery and therefore get a better deal. That still doesn’t mean USPS is losing a fortune. 
 
 We rate this claim False. ||||| SEATTLE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump called on the U.S. Postal Service on Friday to charge “much more” to ship packages for Amazon (AMZN.O), picking another fight with an online retail giant he has criticized in the past. 
 
 “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!” Trump wrote on Twitter. 
 
 The president’s tweet drew fresh attention to the fragile finances of the Postal Service at a time when tens of millions of parcels have just been shipped all over the country for the holiday season. 
 
 The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. 
 
 Package delivery has become an increasingly important part of its business as the Internet has led to a sharp decline in the amount of first-class letters. 
 
 The president does not determine postal rates. They are set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent government agency with commissioners selected by the president from both political parties. That panel raised prices on packages by almost 2 percent in November. 
 
 Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who remains the chief executive officer of the retail company and is the richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg News. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, a newspaper Trump has repeatedly railed against in his criticisms of the news media. 
 
 In tweets over the past year, Trump has said the “Amazon Washington Post” fabricated stories. He has said Amazon does not pay sales tax, which is not true, and so hurts other retailers, part of a pattern by the former businessman and reality television host of periodically turning his ire on big American companies since he took office in January. 
 
 Daniel Ives, a research analyst at GBH Insights, said Trump’s comment could be taken as a warning to the retail giant. However, he said he was not concerned for Amazon. 
 
 “We do not see any price hikes in the future. However, that is a risk that Amazon is clearly aware of and (it) is building out its distribution (system) aggressively,” he said. 
 
 Amazon has shown interest in the past in shifting into its own delivery service, including testing drones for deliveries. In 2015, the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping, 46 percent of its total operating expenses that year. 
 
 Amazon shares were down 0.86 percent to $1,175.90 by early afternoon. Overall, U.S. stock prices were down slightly on Friday. 
 
 MILLIONS OF PARCELS 
 
 Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix Inc, which analyzes shipping data, disputed the idea that the Postal Service charges less than United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) and FedEx Corp (FDX.N), the other biggest players in the parcel delivery business in the United States. 
 
 Many customers get lower rates from UPS and FedEx than they would get from the post office for comparable services, he said. 
 
 The Postal Service delivers about 62 percent of Amazon packages, for about 3.5 to 4 million a day during the current peak year-end holiday shipping season, Jindel said. The Seattle-based company and the post office have an agreement in which mail carriers take Amazon packages on the last leg of their journeys, from post offices to customers’ doorsteps. 
 
 Amazon’s No. 2 carrier is UPS, at 21 percent, and FedEx is third, with 8 percent or so, according to Jindel. 
 
 Trump’s comment tapped into a debate over whether Postal Service pricing has kept pace with the rise of e-commerce, which has flooded the mail with small packages.Private companies like UPS have long claimed the current system unfairly undercuts their business. 
 
 Steve Gaut, a spokesman for UPS, noted that the company values its “productive relationship” with the postal service, but that it has filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission its concerns about the postal service’s methods for covering costs. 
 
 Representatives for Amazon, the White House, the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx declined comment or were not immediately available for comment on Trump’s tweet. 
 
 According to its annual report, the Postal Service lost $2.74 billion this year, and its deficit has ballooned to $61.86 billion. 
 
 While the Postal Service’s revenue for first class mail, marketing mail and periodicals is flat or declining, revenue from package delivery is up 44 percent since 2014 to $19.5 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2017. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: A combination photo shows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (L) in New York and U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. on December 14, 2016 and on December 20, 2017 respectively. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (L) Jonathan Ernst (R)/Files 
 
 But it also lost about $2 billion in revenue when a temporary surcharge expired in April 2016. 
 
 According to a Government Accountability Office report in February, the service is facing growing personnel expenses, particularly $73.4 billion in unfunded pension and benefits liabilities. The Postal Service has not announced any plans to cut costs. 
 
 By law, the Postal Service has to set prices for package delivery to cover the costs attributable to that service. But the postal service allocates only 5.5 percent of its total costs to its business of shipping packages even though that line of business is 28 percent of its total revenue.
– President Trump trotted out a familiar whipping boy on Saturday, tweeting that Amazon was screwing over none other than the United States Postal Service. "The U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon," he tweeted, adding that "That amounts to Billions of Dollars." Trump says the USPS should jack its parcel rates, hitting Amazon with a $2.6 billion hike. "This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!" he tweeted. Trump's criticism has hit Amazon in the wallet, notes CNBC, with its stock taking a 6% slide in the last five trading days. Trump also took a swipe at another favorite Jeff Bezos-owned punching bag: The Washington Post, which he says "is used as a 'lobbyist' and should so REGISTER." The AP fact-checks Trump's claims and finds that "Trump is misrepresenting Amazon's record on taxes, the U.S. Postal Service's financial situation and the contract that has the post office deliver some Amazon orders. Federal regulators have found that contract to be profitable for the Postal Service." Though it acknowledges that a 2017 study found that USPS parcel rates were below market rates.