Chris Edwards
Chris Edwards

With a bloated cost structure and falling demand for its products, the US Postal Service (USPS) is in trouble. I contend that privatizing the agency is the best way forward, and President Trump seems open to the idea. Currently, the president’s DOGE team is digging into USPS operations to find cost savings.
A recent report on foreign postal systems provides reform ideas for the president and Congress to consider. The USPS Inspector General (IG) compared the postal systems of the United States and 25 other countries. Let’s look at some report highlights.
Privatization may sound radical to US policymakers, but the IG found that of the foreign postal systems, “15 have the status of a private corporation and 10 are state-owned enterprises.” Among the former, three were fully privatized and twelve were partly privatized or structured as private corporations.
This IG figure shows that the United States is on the socialist end of international postal structures. The United States is also only one of ten postal systems with a legal monopoly over some types of mail. In other words, unlike the USPS, most postal systems are open to competition.

Congress raises USPS costs by mandating delivery six days a week. That makes little economic or environmental sense in the modern world of email, texting, and online news and banking. This next IG figure shows that most countries have less costly delivery schedules than we do.
For regular letters, Australia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have gone to delivery three days a week or delivery on alternate days. Denmark’s postal company recently announced that it will “end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025 citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century.”

Another way to reduce costs and benefit the environment is to close post offices and open postal counters within other retailers.  » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/postal-reforms-abroad