Elon Musk wants to privatize the United States’ Postal Service and Amtrak, he said on Wednesday.
It’s “kind of embarrassing” how other countries have “way better passenger rail than we do,” like China’s bullet trains, Musk said during a virtual appearance at a Morgan Stanley tech conference.
“Amtrak is a sad situation,” he said. “It’s like, if you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It can leave you with a very bad impression of America.”
The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire, who is also the face of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting agency, said “we should privatize anything that can be privatized.”
“You’ve got a feedback loop for improvement, is what happens when something’s privatized,” Musk said. “Basically something’s got to have some chance of going bankrupt or there’s not a good feedback loop for improvement.”
Yet he acknowledged that “a bunch of these things require actions for Congress.”
Musk did not provide details on if or when these actions would be taken.
His comments echo President Trump’s own calls to take the USPS private, first floating the idea during a December press conference.
Trump told reporters that privatizing the Postal Service was “not the worst idea I’ve ever heard” and that “we’re looking” into it.
He doubled down last month, saying that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick would “look into” folding the Postal Service into the Commerce Department.
“We think we can turn it around, but it’s — it’s the Postal Service,” the president said.
“We’re losing so much money with the Postal Service, and we don’t want to lose that kind of money. So the secretary and some others that have talent, that kind of talent, we’ll be looking at it,” he added.
The USPS is notorious for losing money, routinely posting annual losses linked to retiree pensions.
During its most recent fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the Postal Service reported a $1.4 billion increase in operating revenue to $79.54 billion thanks to price increases as volume declined.
It also suffered a net loss of $9.5 billion – a $3 billion increase from the year before due to “factors that are outside of management’s control, specifically, the amortization of unfunded retiree pension liabilities,” the USPS said in an earnings release.
Those who oppose taking the Postal Service private have argued it is an essential service for Americans living in rural or inaccessible areas where companies like UPS and FedEx do not deliver.
Musk’s disdain for America’s national railway systems, meanwhile, is nothing new.
His futuristic, high-speed transportation pitch “Hyperloop” was apparently borne out of his “hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” since it would supposedly be the slowest yet at the highest cost per mile, reporter Ashlee Vance claimed in his 2015 biography of Musk.
A representative for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
