The Verge – no paywall: “Amazon is going on the defensive after a report from The Wall Street Journal revealed that the ecommerce giant plans to slash shipments with the United States Postal Service, which said this week that it’s running out of money. In a lengthy statement published on Wednesday, Amazon says it didn’t want to reduce shipments with the USPS, and that negotiations only stalled after the USPS “abruptly walked away” from negotiations for a new contract.As reported by the WSJ, Amazon plans to cut packages sent through the USPS by at least two-thirds by this fall, around the same time its contract with the independent federal agency is set to expire. Amazon claims it’s been working with the USPS for over a year on a deal “that would bring them billions in revenue,” but the agency walked away at the “eleventh hour” during negotiations last December. Even as Amazon invests billions in building out a sprawling network of delivery and logistics services, it still works with the USPS for last-mile deliveries — or the final leg of a shipment — especially in rural areas. The WSJ says the USPS currently handles around 30 to 40 percent of Amazon deliveries in more remote locations, where shipping costs are higher, and where the USPS has a mandate to deliver six days per week. But big businesses like Amazon reportedly get discounted rates on shipping with the USPS, something the agency is no longer negotiating with businesses individually, according to the WSJ. The delivery mandate, coupled with discounted rates for large shippers, has dealt a blow to the USPS’s finances.As part of efforts to shore up revenue, the USPS implemented a new bidding process for last-mile deliveries. “There’s only one thing I am absolutely certain of — if we continue to do things the way we’re doing it today, we’re dead in about a year, and so I have got to go out and test the market on this price to find out if it’s a fair price,” Postmaster General David Steiner told Reuters last year.”