The US Postal Service, which lost $9 billion in 2025, has warned it could exhaust its available funds within 12 months. The warning is not hypothetical — it’s the agency’s own projection, based on current revenue trends and cost structures.

USPS is in a structural bind that has no obvious exit. Mail volume has been declining for two decades as digital communication replaced physical correspondence. Package delivery, which was supposed to compensate, has become intensely competitive with UPS, FedEx, and Amazon’s own logistics network. Meanwhile, USPS is legally required to deliver to every address in the country six days a week — a universal service obligation that its competitors do not share.