WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump won’t let up on Amazon. He’s been assailing the online retailer for days, zeroing in on a “scam” contract with the US Postal Service that’s actually been judged profitable for the post office.

Trump’s latest flurry of tweets also slammed Mexico for lax border enforcement, using as his example a caravan of Central Americans who have been moving north after crossing Mexico’s southern border.

But the caravan’s destination is a conference in central Mexico, not the US, though many from the group may split off and ask for asylum either in Mexico or the US.

Trump’s fired veterans affairs secretary, meantime, sidestepped the truth when he asserted on the weekend that his ethics problems at the agency were all about politics.

Misrepresentation

Trump is misrepresenting the contract that has the post office deliver some Amazon orders. Federal regulators have found that contract to be profitable for the Postal Service.

As well, people who buy products sold by Amazon pay sales tax in all states that have a sales tax. Not all third-party vendors using Amazon collect it, however.

As for the post office, package delivery has been a bright spot for a service that’s lost money for 11 straight years. The losses are mostly due to pension and health care costs not the business deal for the Postal Service to deliver packages for Amazon.

Boosted by e-commerce, the Postal Service has enjoyed double-digit increases in revenue from delivering packages, but that hasn’t been enough to offset declines in first-class letters and marketing mail, which together make up more than two-thirds of postal revenue.

While the Postal Service’s losses can’t be attributed to its package business, Trump’s claim that it could get more bang for its buck may not be entirely far-fetched. A 2017 analysis by Citigroup concluded that the Postal Service was charging below-market rates as a whole for parcels. The post office does not use taxpayer money for its operations.

Trump is upset about Amazon because its owner, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, one of the targets of his “fake news” tweets.

Caravan from Mexico

Trump is twisting the purpose of the procession of some 1,100 migrants, many from Honduras, who have been marching in a caravan along roadsides and train tracks in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca. They are not moving en masse to the U.S. border to sneak in.

These “Stations of the Cross” migrant caravans have been held in southern Mexico for at least the last five years. They began as short processions of migrants, some dressed in biblical garb and carrying crosses, as an Easter-season protest against the kidnappings, extortion, beatings and killings suffered by many Central American migrants as they cross Mexico.

The caravans usually don’t proceed much farther north than the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

The current march is scheduled to end this month with a conference on migration issues in the central Mexican state of Puebla, east of Mexico City. That’s some 650 miles by road (1,050 km) from the US After the formal caravans end, some migrants do try to reach the US border, but often just to turn themselves in and request asylum.

A Mexican government official said the caravans are tolerated because migrants have a right under Mexican law to request asylum in Mexico or to request a humanitarian visa to ask for asylum at the US border.

The understanding is that most participants in the caravan will do one or the other.

“Mexico is not allowing people to massively travel across the country without documents to reach the United States,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to be identified.

Mexico routinely stops and deports undocumented Central Americans, sometimes in numbers that rival those of the United States. Deportations of foreigners dropped from 176,726 in 2015 to 76,433 in 2017, in part because fewer were believed to have come to Mexico, and more were requesting asylum in Mexico.

As for migrants trying to “take advantage of DACA,” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is closed to new entrants, so it’s not clear how new migrants could benefit from it.

The Obama-era programme has provided temporary protection and work permits to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are living in the US illegally after being brought into the country as children. Trump ended the programme.

Absent a deal with Congress to renew it under law, the US is not issuing new permits, though existing ones can be renewed.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2018