Speaking to reporters, Trump just unloaded on the Postal Service, threatening not to support $10 billion in loans to the agency — agreed to in one of the financial rescue packages — unless it quadruples prices.

“The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump said, launching into a sneering list of complaints, including his common and false contention that it loses money by delivering for Amazon.com.

“If they don’t raise the price, I’m not signing anything,” Trump said, asserting that the USPS should raise the price of package delivery “four times.”

Among the many perversities here is that this move could harm people in rural areas the most — many of whom supported him for president.

Trump has had his sights on the USPS for some time.

When the Cares Act was negotiated, Democrats sought to include help for the Postal Service. The White House threatened to veto the $2 trillion rescue package if it included a penny in assistance.

Congressional negotiators got the White House to agree to up to $10 billion in loans to keep the Postal Service from going insolvent. But that was a trap laid by Trump and Treasury Steven Mnuchin.

That $10 billion, which the Postal Service hasn’t yet requested, was included subject to the approval of Treasury — meaning subject to conditions Mnuchin and Trump insisted upon.

As The Post reports, the administration wants to use the $10 billion as leverage, not releasing it unless the Postal Service meets demands. Those include raising package rates and turning over control of some decisions — like setting major contracts and the collective bargaining strategy — to the Treasury Department.

This could lead to an effort to crush postal workers’ unions, and possibly to install Trump cronies in the agency.

But, when it comes to the claims Trump is using to justify this effort, let’s establish some context.

Package delivery is the only significant aspect of Postal Service business that’s increasing as mail volume in general drops. In 2019 it had $22.8 billion in revenue from packages, nearly a third of what it brings in. While Amazon, like other bulk mailers, gets a discount on package delivery, Trump’s claim that the Postal Service loses money on that arrangement is false.

It’s true that the agency has a financial problem. In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS — unlike any other government agency or private company — to prepay 75 years’ worth of employee retirement benefits, which costs billions every year. Without this, its operating losses would be a fraction.

Not only that, the Postal Service is the only government agency that we demand turn a profit.

But despite its losses, the Postal Service remains America’s most beloved federal agency, with overwhelming majorities viewing it favorably and believing it does a good or excellent job.

One key reason for this is that the Postal Service serves every American and treats everyone equally. Which brings us to the impact this will have on rural areas.

Whether you live in Manhattan or in a remote stretch of North Dakota, the Postal Service will deliver your mail — not for the $25 or $30 UPS or FedEx will charge for a letter, but for 55 cents.

This is crucial, because the Postal Service is structured precisely so that it can do things like treat people in rural areas (where mail is more expensive to deliver) equally to people who are closer to metropolitan areas and/or who benefit from more options such as UPS or FedEx.

📌We talked to Evan Kalish, who is one of the most renowned post office bloggers (yes, there is such a thing) in the country, having visited thousands of post offices, many in rural areas.

📌Kalish told us higher prices on packages would hurt people more in rural areas, because they rely more on the Postal Service for essential package deliveries, such as medicines.

📌“Particularly people in rural areas need the Postal Service to deliver supplies,” Kalish said.

📌Kalish noted that the Postal Service’s financial challenges are partly by design — it is supposed to eat the higher costs of delivery to rural areas, so people in those areas pay the same rates.

As always, we can have no idea what’s really motivating Trump, since the public interest is perpetually very far from his mind. Notably, whenever the Postal Service comes up, Trump always mentions Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Post.

Trump might also associate the Postal Service with vote-by-mail, which he surely hates because it might make voting easier during the fall elections should the pandemic still be with us.

Either way, it’s interesting that Trump, who campaigned on the idea that left-behind rural areas were getting badly treated by cosmopolitan, elitist America, is threatening a service designed to deliver equal treatment to rural America.

📌“The Postal Service treats everybody equally,” Kalish told us, adding that Trump’s proposed changes would “hurt people in rural areas,” which is “exactly antithetical to the promise that rural Americans matter as much as Blue Staters.”

This is one of many reasons the Postal Service should get a more comprehensive bailout, which Democrats support.

There’s a backstory here that illustrates the point.

In 2011, the Postal Service tried to address its problems with a proposal to close 3,700 of its more than 30,000 post offices, including many in rural areas. It faced a bipartisan revolt, and a letter signed by 12 rural Republicans blasted the proposal’s threats to rural service. The idea was dropped.

One wonders what Republicans will say now.