Longtime Trump ally and fundraiser Louis DeJoy will serve as the new postmaster general for the US Postal Service, the USPS Board of Governors announced Wednesday.
The board unanimously appointed DeJoy on Wednesday to helm the agency effective June 15, the group said in a statement.
The move gives President Donald Trump a staunch backer in a government agency that the President has derided as recently as last month for losing money due to prices he has deemed too low.
DeJoy was a potential pick to become the Republican National Committee finance chairman in 2018 after serving as a deputy finance chairman, and he is the former CEO of New Breed Logistics. The President attended a fundraiser DeJoy hosted at his North Carolina home in October 2017 to benefit Trump and the RNC.
“Having worked closely with the Postal Service for many years, I have a great appreciation for this institution and the dedicated workers who faithfully execute its mission,” DeJoy said in a statement Wednesday, which noted that New Breed Logistics was a contractor to USPS for over 25 years.
“I look forward to working with the supporters of the Postal Service in Congress and the Administration to ensure the Postal Service remains an integral part of the United States government,” DeJoy continued, adding that “I commit myself to upholding the Postal Service’s cherished role in our nation.”
The new leadership comes on the heels of the Postal Service warning lawmakers in a video briefing in April that the agency would “run out of cash” by the end of September if Congress did not step in with financial assistance. The agency, which operates as an independent business without direct taxpayer support, has lost $65 billion over the last 11 fiscal years.
Reforming the agency’s finances and leadership came up during an Oval Office bill signing ceremony late last month, with Trump repeatedly attacking the US Postal Service as “a joke” and threatening to cut off future government support.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said during the ceremony that “certain criteria for our postal reform program” would be part of the over $10 billion loan to the USPS included in the CARES ACT coronavirus stimulus package, adding that “the board is recruiting a new post master general.”
“Well, I’ll go a step further,” Trump chimed in, adding that “if they don’t raise the price, I’m not signing anything.”
Trump said earlier during the ceremony that the USPS had to raise the price of a package “approximately four times.”
“The Postal Service is a joke, because they are handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies, and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it,” Trump said.
Trump asserted that the Postal Service won’t raise the price on packages because it is “very cozy with some of these companies.”
“But they don’t want to raise, because they don’t want to insult Amazon and they don’t want to insult other companies, perhaps, that they like,” Trump said. “The Post Office should raise the price of the packages to the companies, not to the people, to the companies and if they did that, it would be a whole different story.”
However, Trump tweeted later that day that he would “never let our Post Office fail.”
“It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology,” Trump wrote, before noting that “the people that work there are great, and we’re going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!”
CNN’s Nikki Carvajal, Jason Hoffman and Rebecca Berg contributed to this report.