Trump and GOP's tax bill would sell off USPS's brand-new EVs

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Source: Washington Post

Trump and GOP's tax bill would sell off USPS's brand-new EV

Postal Service officials told lawmakers the proposal would cause "substantial harm" to "our customers, your constituents."

June 21, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDT 42 minutes ago


Then-Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, flanked by senior Biden administration officials, in 2022 unveils the U.S. Postal Service's plan to electrify its mail delivery truck fleet. (Jacob Bogage/The Washington Post)

By Jacob Bogage

A little-noticed provision of President Donald Trump and Republicans' massive tax and immigration legislation would force the government to undo billions of dollars in electric vehicle investments made by the U.S. Postal Service, undoing much of the Biden administration's climate push at the mail agency while dealing it a sharp financial setback.

The Postal Service in 2022 embarked on plans to purchase 66,000 electric mail delivery vehicles, many of them bespoke "Next Generation Delivery Vehicles" from the defense contractor Oshkosh. The agency has also purchased hundreds of E-Transit delivery vans from Ford and spent more than half a billion dollars remodeling its outdated mail and package sorting facilities to accommodate electric and low-emissions vehicles.

The agency expects to spend $9.6 billion on the project in total; $3 billion of that comes from taxpayer dollars to cover the cost difference between gas-powered vehicles and more expensive EVs. The remaining funding comes from the Postal Service's independent accounts. The agency is largely self-sufficient, financed by the sale of postage products.

The Senate's version of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill would see the General Services Administration take possession of the nearly 7,200 new postal EVs and associated infrastructure and put the assets up for auction. The proposal is unlikely to generate much revenue for the government; there is almost no private-sector interest in the mail trucks, and used EV charging equipment -- built specifically for the Postal Service and already installed in postal facilities -- generally cannot be resold. ... "The funds realized by auctioning the vehicles and infrastructure would be negligible. Much of infrastructure is literally buried under parking lots, and there is no market for used charging equipment," Peter Pastre, the Postal Service's vice president for government relations and public policy, wrote to senators this month. (1)

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By Jacob Bocage
Jacob Bogage covers economic policy in Congress for The Washington Post, where he's worked since 2015. Contact him securely on Signal: jacobbogage.87. follow on X@jacobbogage

(1) https://about.usps.com/who/government-relations/assets/senate-vehicle-letter-june-13-2025.pdf

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/06/21/trump-usps-trucks-taxes/