Trump's silence about post-office report suggests his pricing claims proved false

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President Trump has been mum about the task-force report on the U.S. Postal Service he ordered in April and received last month, which J.P. Morgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck interprets as a sign that Trump wasn’t very happy with the outcome:

‘Moreover, after key Congressional committees recently viewed contracts with Amazon, FedEx and UPS we believe Trump’s loss-per-package talking points [were] clearly a hazardous guess.’
J.P. Morgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck

Trump had issued an executive order on the night of April 12, calling for an evaluation of the USPS’s finances, after some analysts, a former Postmaster General and some news-service reports said Trump’s claim that the USPS lost $1.50 on every package it delivered for Amazon was not accurate.

The due date for the task force’s report was Aug. 10. The fact that Trump has stayed “uncharacteristically quiet” on the post office since that date “suggests the recommendations were unsatisfactory to the administration,” Ossenbeck said.

Ossenbeck pointed out that shortly after the U.S. Senate confirmed two nominations to the Postal Service’s board of governors, the House Oversight Committee asked for and obtained the Amazon, UPS and FedEx negotiated service agreements. He said a subsequent letter to Trump from committee members noted that Amazon’s rates are comparable with the rates charged to UPS and FedEx, and all contracts were renegotiated within the last year.

Amazon’s stock AMZN, -1.23% closed Tuesday up 1.3%, paring an earlier gain that carried it to an intraday high of $2,050.50, which briefly lifted the e-commerce giant’s market capitalization above $1 trillion. It has run up 42% since Trump tweeted that he had “concerns” that Amazon was hurting the USPS, while the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.35% has gained 11% over the same time. UPS shares UPS, +0.08% have rallied 21% over the same time, while FedEx’s stock FDX, +0.32% has tacked on 2.8%.

Further details on the task force’s report are likely to be delayed, Ossenbeck said, potentially until after the midterm elections, considering a Senate committee recently canceled a hearing on the report that had been scheduled for this week.

“During our time in D.C., many people we spoke with were shocked a copy had not yet been leaked ahead or after the initial due date of August 10,” Ossenbeck wrote. “Additionally, we wonder if the findings of the report had supported President Trump’s claims about Amazon and others paying a below-market rate and abusing the USPS’s rate structure that we would have heard of the findings by this point.”