They've been in the toilet for years. I'm surprised that they survive in any meaningful way to be honest.

I'm hopeful that we as a country return to more localized production and distribution. The supply chain is entirely too vulnerable to both international and national events.

The internet showed the power of being able to do business anywhere. The pandemic showed that the system doesn't have enough resiliance.

I have a couple of thoughts on this.

1. Amazon needs to be broken up into at least 5 or 6 smaller companies with unrelated owners and boards.
2. This year might be one of those rare situations where Chapter 11 bankruptcy actually means something, and isn't just a trial separation on the way to Chapter 7. Since the economy is merely switched off rather than broken right now, bankrupt companies who had strong positive revenue before we shut it down, are likely to have it again. Bankruptcy protection could actually do something useful here.
3. Yes, the supply chain needs to be moved onshore, bigly. 100% tariffs on everything from China. If asked why, point out the massive and punitive tariffs that China is now leveraging upon Australia as an example to the world of what they're willing to do when someone dares investigate their dishonesty and corruption.

Market power becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer companies is what socialists mockingly refer to as "late stage capitalism." This will sound odd coming from me, but there *is* some merit to this argument. I'd prefer to see it fixed with a non-Keynesian solution, though.

I have it on good authority that the JCP / Amazon thing is real, but it's more likely about helping them relieve some debt, taking on their online presence, and some of the locations they want to unload to use for Amazon distribution.

I avoid Amazon too. My first stop for online shopping used to be eBay, but eventually it became almost unusable because everything was either cheap chinese counterfeits, or sellers doing all of their fulfillment through Amazon anyway.

Nowadays I do a lot of my online shopping at Walmart. This is ironic because I hate going into their stores. But they are the underdog here (about 6% of the online retail market vs. almost 50% for Amazonopoly, if memory serves) and y'all know how much I want to avoid doing business with "too big" companies.

Back in 2018 there was an announcement that the United States intended to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union. Did that ever happen?

Wow, that really hertz.
<rimshot>

Yes, he was running too fast through the airport, creating a safety hazard.