Is the U.S. Postal Service, which traces its roots to the Second Continental Congress in 1775, destined for the chopping block as part of President Trump’s campaign to gut federal agencies?

Trump has had the U.S. Postal Service in his sights for some time now. He was already calling for privatization of the semi-autonomous agency in his first term. His administration said in 2018 that a privatized postal service “would have a substantially lower cost structure, be able to adapt to changing customer needs and make business decisions free from political interference, and have access to private capital markets to fund operational improvements without burdening taxpayers.” (USPS does not rely on tax revenues for its day-to-day operations.)

Trump sparked further controversy in 2020, when he appointed Louis DeJoy as postmaster general. DeJoy proceeded to enact a series of cutbacks and consolidations that critics charged were calculated to lay the groundwork for ultimate privatization.

DeJoy’s efforts, which actually brought USPS to near-breakeven status after $90 billion of losses over two decades, apparently proved insufficiently radical for Trump. He stepped down in March of this year, amid speculation that he was pushed out by the President for not moving quickly enough to dismantle the agency.

“Make no mistake, the postmaster general was forced out by a White House intent on breaking up and selling off the public United States Postal Service,” Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said at the time. “Statements by President Trump last month and recent statements from his billionaire advisor Elon Musk made it clear that the White House has been planning for a hostile takeover of the USPS.”

Last December, shortly before taking office to launch his second administration, Trump once more raised the possibility of a privatized USPS, calling the idea something “we’re looking at.”

Whether others will go along is another matter. There’s substantial opposition among lawmakers to privatization of the agency, even as the details of such a move remain unclear. Helaine Rich, vice president of strategic sales and administration with global shipping service ePost, noted discussions about developing a separate network for priority mail, and partnering with carriers around the world to serve specific regions. But if the most profitable aspects of the agency’s operations are spun off, who would take on the money-losing part?

One of the biggest questions surrounding privatization is what would happen to the USPS mandate to serve every address in America, no matter how remote, for the same price. That’s a burden that no private deliverer is required to bear. Rural locations could find themselves paying much higher postal rates if a privatized postal service were forced to set prices in line with its true cost to serve.

“USPS is built on a foundation of equal service at equal cost,” Rich says. As a private entity, “that will no longer be able to exist.”

To be sure, the USPS has faced some significant headwinds in the age of email and the internet. First-class and periodical mail, which served as strong revenue sources for so many years, have declined dramatically over the last couple of decades. An independent postal service would need to seek new business opportunities that have long been available to its private-sector rivals, such as same-day delivery.

Rural residents could go begging. Rich notes that private mail services often rely on USPS for final-mile delivery to those customers.

A privatized postal service could be an attractive target for Wall Street. A recent research report by Wells Fargo on USPS privatization called the operation “an obvious source of value.” One possibility, it said, would be to split mail and parcel into separate entities, “with the intent of maintaining mail operations as a government enterprise preserving rural community access and the universal service obligation.”

To earn a reasonable return on parcel operations, the postal service would need to raise prices by 30% to 40% across its product lines, Wells Fargo added.

With unions adamantly opposed to privatization, arguing that it would lead to huge job cuts and degradation of service, it’s unrealistic at this time for USPS to undergo the “full sweep” of independence, according to Rich. Still, she says, some change in the agency’s structure is becoming increasingly likely. “It’s really not sustainable to be able to continue to provide consistent service at a consistent price within the current structure.”

Adds Rich: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw segmentation sooner than later.”