US government wants to turn tail on electrification of US postal service

Two high-ranking members of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are preparing a bill to reclaim the approximately 3 billion dollars earmarked for the electrification of the United States Postal Service (USPS).

This was reported by the right-wing media outlet Fox News with reference to the two politicians involved in DOGE. According to the report, Republican Senator Joni Ernst and Congressman Michael Cloud want to present a bill called the ‘Return to Sender Act,’ which would demand the return of around 3 billion dollars from a measure in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Specifically, it is about stopping the expansion of the electric vehicle fleet for the United States Postal Service (USPS).

Even before Donald Trump took office, the news agency Reuters reported that the US President-elect wanted to cancel the US Postal Service’s contracts to electrify its delivery fleet, which his predecessor had helped set up. The postal service currently has a budget of billions, some of which has already been contractually committed, to purchase 66,000 new electric vehicles and chargers.

As Reuters reported in December, citing three insiders, Trump’s team was already looking into how the postal service’s existing contracts for the purchase of tens of thousands of electric delivery vans and charging stations could be cancelled. The OEM contract partners are primarily the Oshkosh and Ford brands. The USPS is currently aiming to purchase around 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028, with Oshkosh alone supplying 45,000 units. An initial batch of 14,000 chargers has been ordered in parallel from Siemens, ChargePoint and Blink.

Congress has made three billion dollars available to the USPS for the 2023 e-offensive from the 430 billion dollar Climate Change Act. During his time in office, US President Joe Biden instructed not only the USPS but also various federal authorities to issue new emission and fuel standards in order to accelerate the introduction of electric vehicles. Industry experts assume that the orders cannot simply be cancelled. This is because the USPS is an autonomous federal agency with its own board of directors. The fear is that Trump will use this case to test the limits of his executive power. This might not result in a complete cancellation, but a changed mix to the disadvantage of electric vehicles.

foxnews.com