Donald Trump ‘personally asked to raise Amazon’s shipping rates’

President has issued a series of public attacks against the company, whose CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post

Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Amazon (Reuters)

Donald Trump reportedly sought personally to double postal fees paid by Amazon, a longtime target of the president’s wrath.

The president personally asked the US postmaster general to double the shipping rate on packages purchased via a number of companies that includes amazon.com, according to the Washington Post, an extraordinary effort by a president to target a private company he has publicly lambasted.

Postmaster general Megan Brennan was said to have rebuffed those requests and sought to demonstrate that the US Postal Service benefits from its ties to Amazon.

Representatives of Amazon and the US Postal Service declined to comment.

Since entering the White House, Mr Trump has issued tweets attacking the retail giant over a dozen times, accusing it of not paying enough in taxes and charging that it is a financial drag on the Postal Service despite evidence to the contrary.

He has also explicitly framed his attacks by linking Amazon to the Post, a paper that regularly publishes damaging articles on the Trump administration and is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Mr Trump has at times derided the publication as the “Amazon Washington Post”.

There are signs the negative attention has affected Amazon’s bottom line. Its stock briefly plunged this year after Mr Trump again lobbed criticism on Twitter.

It is unusual for a president to make such public pronouncements about private businesses, but it has become something of a habit for Mr Trump.

He has lauded or critiqued specific businesses on Twitter numerous times, slamming manufacturing companies that he said planned to move operations to Mexico and assailing

Before becoming president Mr Trump showed fewer qualms about Amazon’s business model, repeatedly urging Twitter followers to use Amazon to purchase his book.