STORY: Elon Musk may have a new target.
The billionaire leading Donald Trump’s cost-cutting efforts says it’s time to sell off Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service.
Speaking Wednesday at a conference run by Morgan Stanley, he said the government should privatize everything that can be privatized.
Musk said he thought such moves would need congressional approval.
Last month, Trump said he was thinking about merging the postal service – a government agency – with the Commerce Department.
“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money and we’re thinking about doing that, and it’ll be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal service.”
That’s a move Democrats say would violate federal law.
The USPS has lost some $100 billion since 2007, though this month it did report a profit for the latest quarter.
It has suffered as email and messaging systems drove a big decline in first-class mail volumes, now at their lowest level since 1968.
As for Amtrak, its ridership topped pre-COVID levels last year with a record 32.8 million customer trips.
But it still posted an operating loss of over $700 million for the 12 months to the end of September.
And Musk says compared to something like high-speed rail in China, Amtrak is “a sad situation… it will leave you with a very bad impression of America”.
Asked about the comments, the rail operator said its business was strong.
It said it was on track to reach operational profitability for the first time under the new administration.
The network is boosting services on the East Coast as part of a bid to double usage nationwide by 2040.
During his first term, Trump repeatedly sought to cut funding for Amtrak, which received about $2.4 billion in federal support last year.
