USPS Racks Up $3.1B Quarterly Loss, Faces Calls To Abandon Delivering For America Plan
USPS posted a $3.1 Billion net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2025, prompting calls for new Postmaster General David Steiner to abandon his predecessor Louis DeJoy's Delivering For America plan.
A press release from the US Postal Service about its latest financial results showed losses ballooning compared to $2.5 Billion in the same quarter of the previous year, but Steiner and Chief Financial Officer Luke Grossmann say they believe USPS is on the right path and they are committed to continuing down it.
“The strategy is sound. Now we have to execute,” Steiner said during a public meeting of the USPS Board of Governors on Thursday. “But we can’t execute unless all of our team is working together. We all need to be rowing the oars in the same direction.”
Grossmann said, “While the Postal Service continues to face financial challenges, we are an organization pursuing continuous improvements and innovation. We remain focused on moving toward financial sustainability through operational efficiency, product strategies that will generate growth, and pricing adjustments.”
But nonprofit advocacy group Keep Us Posted doesn't share these rosey views about the Delivering For America strategy and is calling on Steiner to turn away from the legacy of losses under DeJoy's tenure, saying:
For 250 years, the U.S. Postal Service has been a cornerstone of our nation's infrastructure, providing reliable and affordable mail service to every American, including those in the most remote and underserved areas which private couriers cannot, or will not, reach.
Louis DeJoy blatantly ignored relief provided in the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which, among other changes aimed at stabilizing USPS, eradicated the requirement for USPS to fund retiree health benefits 70 years in advance. Instead, DeJoy plowed ahead with his Delivering for America plan and its often twice-annual postage hikes far above inflation rates, as well as service delays, and a foolish focus on packages over mail, even though mail is still the largest revenue generator for USPS.
While the Delivering for America plan promised to grow parcel volumes, lower costs, and allow the Postal Service to break even by 2023, it lost $6.5 billion that fiscal year, and it continues to hemorrhage money.”
Today’s financial results, which bring 2025 losses to $6.2 billion, provide even more proof that new Postmaster General David Steiner needs to lead the U.S. Postal Service away from DeJoy’s ‘tax and spend’ strategy.
Steiner should take the losses as an opportunity for meaningful change, and discard massive and frequent rate hikes, service reductions and the prioritization of packages over mail. Steiner should free the American public from DeJoy’s disastrous decisions and pursue his own strategy to help USPS recover so that it can keep delivering to every American six-days per-week.
With last month’s massive rate hikes, including a five-cent increase in the cost of forever stamps, the situation will no doubt worsen and push even more mail from the system.
In addition to advocating for regulatory reform of the Delivering for America plan, Keep US Posted is urging support for the “USPS Services Enhancement and Regulatory Viability Expansion and Sustainability for the U.S. Act” (or USPS SERVES US Act).
The bill, introduced by Congressman Sam Graves (R-Mo.), would give the Postal Regulatory Commission the power to stop onerous stamp hikes and mail delays, limit price increases to once per-year, and institute other reforms aimed at accountability, efficiency and success like creating an autonomous Office of Customer Advocate to hear Americans’ concerns and protect the public.
While that bill is still far from being enacted into law, the Postal Regulatory Commission is also considering a proposed rule, filed in June, which would limit USPS to only raising prices once per year.
Under this proposal, USPS would be limited to no more than one price adjustment of general applicability for market dominant products “per fiscal year from October 1, 2025, through October 1, 2030, unless such rate adjustment filings only include rate decreases or are de minimis [minimal] increases.”
However, it's important to note that would only affect market dominant products (which would include First Class Mail, Marketing Mail, Periodicals, Media Mail and Bound Printed Matter) but it would not apply to competitive products like Ground Advantage, Priority, or Priority Express services.
So while that rule change would be a welcome reprieve for many Postal Service customers across the country, it likely wouldn't make much difference to the majority of online sellers who are more likely to be using one of those competitive offerings - and it won't help with the recently announced "temporary" holiday rate hike either.
Liz Morton
Should USPS only be allowed one rate hike per year for market dominant products and do you think the Delivering For America Plan is the right strategy for new Postmaster General David Steiner to continue pursuing? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
