WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump targeted online retailer Amazon on Friday in a call for the country’s postal service to raise prices of shipments in order to recoup costs.

“Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging much more!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The US Postal Service is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. The organisation makes up a significant portion of the $1.4 trillion US delivery industry. Other players include Fedex Corp and United Parcel Service Inc.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who remains the chief executive officer of the retail giant. Bezos also owns the Washington Post, a newspaper that Trump has repeatedly railed against in his criticisms of the news media.

Representatives for the White House and Amazon were not immediately available for comment. Shares of Amazon were last down 0.2 per cent to $1,183.50 in premarket trading.

Meanwhile the package delivery companies that handle returns for retailers have benefited from booming delivery volumes in recent years, but also have had to invest billions of dollars to upgrade and expand their networks to cope as e-commerce purchases surge to new heights.

Delivering individual packages to shoppers - and picking up returns - is a lower margin business for delivery companies, which make more when they deliver in bulk to businesses. United Parcel Service Inc, the world’s largest package delivery company, said on Wednesday it was on track to return a record number of packages this holiday, having handled more than 1 million returns to retailers daily in December.

That pace is expected to continue into early January, UPS said, and would likely peak at 1.4 million on Jan. 3, which would be a fifth consecutive annual record, up 8 per cent from this year.

Rival FedEx Corp said it experienced another record-breaking peak shipping season, but declined to provide specifics. The company’s Chief Marketing Officer Rajesh Subramaniam told analysts last week about 15 per cent of all goods purchased online are returned, with apparel running at about 30 per cent.

UPS has worked for years to increase its ability to forecast customer shipping demands to handle major package volume spikes ahead of the holidays. It has also raised shipping rates and added 2018 peak-season surcharges.

The returns delivered in 2017 are part of the 750 million packages UPS said it expects to deliver globally during the peak shipping season from the US Thanksgiving holiday through New Year’s Eve. That is an increase of nearly 40 million over the previous year.

Reuters