David Steiner, member of the Board of Directors of Fedex and former CEO of Waste Management, seen here in 2013, was selected to be the next general post office by the board of directors of the US Postal Service.
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Joshua Roberts / Bloomberg via Getty Images
David Steiner will direct the American postal service as the next general post office, because the Federal Messaging Agency faces an uncertain future under the Trump administration.
Amber McREYNOLDS, Chairman of the Governors’ Council of the USPS, announced the appointment of the board of directors during an open session of a meeting of the board of directors on Friday. She said Steiner should start in July.
Steiner, a former CEO of waste, sat on the Fedex board of directors, a first competitor of the USPS which had collaborated with the postal service for deliveries of “last mile” in rural areas difficult to access and on air transport. However, these partnerships have ended in recent years.
Steiner is now preparing to take the lead of a besieged government agency on which millions of people in the United States count to send and receive medication, payments, ballots and other letters.
The appointment of the board of directors comes in the midst of concerns that Trump officials remain determined to exercise more control over an agency that the congress established to be independent decades ago.
After the Oath of the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, in February, the President Trump suggested a “form of merger” between the trade department and the postal service, causing a series of demonstrations organized by the USPS employees’ unions.
Trump has also announced his intention to appoint Anthony Lamangino, a republican donor, to join the USPS board of directors, which currently has four postal governors appointed by former president Joe Biden and a governor nominated to Trump who is expected to leave by December. With four current vacant posts, Trump has the possibility of dominating the board of directors with more of his own candidates. (A complete council consists of nine governors, as well as the post office and the deputy post office.)
In a USPS press release announcing his post, Steiner said: “I deeply admire the public service and the commercial mission of this incredible institution, and I firmly believe in the maintenance of its role as an independent establishment of the executive power.”
The appointment already has some criticisms, however.
In response to a Washington Post Report of the Council’s plans to appoint Steiner de Fedex with the support of Trump, the representative Gerry Connolly de Virginie, the best democrat of the Chamber’s supervisory committee, said in a statement that this decision is “a blatant conflict of interest and an attempt by President Trump to install a hand -sorted loyalist who, according to him, will put his interests on what could be best for postal service and
Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Transporters of Letters, the union representing carriers in cities, also opposes the appointment of Steiner.
“His selection is not only a conflict of interest – it is an aggressive step towards the delivery of the American messaging system to the interests of companies,” said Renfroe in a statement. “Private shippers have been waiting to withdraw USPS from the delivery of packages for years. Steiner selection is an open invitation to do exactly that.”
At the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, President Don Maston said in a statement that the union is “ready to work” with Steiner.
“But we will watch closely, especially since Mr. Steiner is currently on the board of directors of Fedex, one of the competitors largely and aggressively un syndicated from the postal service,” added Maston. “The challenges – for rural communities, for workers’ families and for the future of our darling public postal service – could not be higher.”
The Congress set up USPS, previously an agency of the cabinet level, to be independent of the White House through the 1970 law of postal reorganization. The messaging service has since been managed by a politically appointed board of directors, which has the authority under the federal law to appoint and withdraw the post office.
Louis Dejoy left this first post position in March, while the USPS continues to make a 10 -year reorganization plan which he created in 2021. His resignation intervened shortly after entering USPS in an agreement that allows the DOGE team of the billionaire councilor of Trump, Elon Musk
Since 1982, the agency has generally not received any tax to finance its operations, based rather on stamp sales and other service costs. Although he posted a surplus in the first quarter of the financial year, he posted a net loss of $ 3.3 billion in the second quarter, Luke Grossmann, USPS financial director, said on the open session of the board of directors on Friday. The email service has struggled to balance their books for years, losing $ 9.5 billion last year.
As President, Trump has been a vocal critic of postal service in the first administration, when the USPS has also broken into its unspoken allegations of generalized fraud involving voting by mail.
At a December press conference, Trump said that privatizing the USPS was “not the worst idea” that he ever heard. Such a decision would probably further reduce messaging service in rural communities and faces the bipartite opposition among the members of the Congress.
Publisher’s note: USPS is an NPR financial supporter.
Edited by Benjamin Swasey
