Elon Musk says Postal Service, Amtrak should be privatized
Elon Musk, the close adviser to President Trump who’s running the Department of Government Efficiency, believes Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service should be privatized.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, made the comments at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom conference Wednesday.
Why does Elon Musk want to privatize Amtrak?
What they're saying:
"Amtrak is a sad situation," Musk said at the conference, according to NBC News.
Musk talked about riding bullet trains abroad, then coming back and seeing the state of Amtrak, the quasi-public passenger rail in the U.S.
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"If you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It can leave you with a very bad impression of America," Musk added.
White House Senior Advisor to the President and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk departs the U.S. Capitol Building on March 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. Musk was meeting with Republican senators at a closed door lunch. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Image
Amtrak ridership has recovered from its pandemic woes, but it’s not profitable.
Dig deeper:
Some trains in European countries are privatized, while others are government-owned and operated. Japan’s transit system is private.
The other side:
Amtrak advocates say Amtrak will never be a "successful company," but that’s because it’s not meant to be: it’s a public service.
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"As a for-profit company, Amtrak fails...spectacularly," Jim Mathews, president and CEO of the Rail Passengers Association, said in a January blog post. "As a government agency, created half a century ago to carry out a public purpose recognized in law and in Supreme Court rulings, it is a spectacular success worth celebrating, supporting, and building up."
What do Trump and Musk say about privatizing the Postal Service?
What they're saying:
Trump has been a critic of the Postal Service since his first term in office.
More recently, Trump mused in December about privatizing the service given the competition it faced from Amazon, UPS, FedEx and others.
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"It’s an idea a lot of people have had for a long time. We’re looking at it," the president said.
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"I think we should privatize anything that can be privatized, just so you’ve got a feedback loop for improvement, is what happens when something’s privatized," Musk said at the conference, per NBC. "Basically something’s got to have some chance of going bankrupt or there’s not a good feedback loop for improvement."
Dig deeper:
The Postal Service, while largely self-funded, has struggled to stay afloat. It accumulated $87 billion in losses from 2007 to 2020. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor who owned a logistics business, was appointed to lead the U.S. Postal Service during Trump’s first term in 2020. He announced on Feb. 18 that he's stepping down and that the governing board needs to find a replacement.
The other side:
Critics of privatization call the Postal Service a "national treasure" and the "anchor of a $1.2 trillion mail and shipping industry, which supports more than 7 million jobs in communities across the country."
"Efforts to privatize the Postal Service, in whole or in part, or to strip it of its independence or public service mission, would be of no benefit to the American people," American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein said in a statement last month. "Instead, it would drive up postage rates and lead to reduced service, especially to rural America."
Can Amtrak and the Postal Service be privatized?
Big picture view:
Musk acknowledged in his conference speech that "a bunch of these things require actions for Congress."
Trump talks about DOGE emails, Musk from Oval Office
President Trump answered questions on a range of topics after signing more executive order from the Oval Office. The president was asked about the DOGE emails, which requested federal workers to detail what they did in the past week using five bullet points. "It's somewhat voluntary," Trump said. "But it's also I guess if you don't answer, you get fired."
But Trump said in late February that he’s considering taking control of the Postal Service. Currently, the Postal Service is an independent, self-financing agency, but Trump wants to see it moved under the umbrella of the Commerce Department, bringing control back to the executive branch.
The Source: This report includes information from NBC News, The Associated Press, the U.S. Postal Service, The World website, the American Postal Workers Union and the Rail Passengers Association.