Last week the Washington Post reports that Donald Trump actively made requests for e-commerce giant Amazon to be charged twice as much by the US Postal Service for its package delivery.

As well as blasting the retailer in public, it now seems that President Trump has been taking private action to attempt to curb its operations on its home turf, according to the Independent.

The postal service itself did not accept the attempted persuasion by the head of state, instead choosing to focus on the benefits that Amazon in particular and shopping online in general is bringing to its operations.

Trump’s complaints about Amazon’s operations are twofold; in addition to claiming that it is causing problems for the postal service, he has used Twitter to argue that its tax affairs are problematic.

In the UK there have been persistent criticisms of Amazon for the tiny amount of tax it pays against the billions of pounds in sales it makes each year. But both here and in the US there is no evidence that it has been creating issues for postal infrastructures.

Indeed the rise in e-commerce in recent years has resulted in a boom for the delivery sector in Britain. This has created subsequent issues, including those associated with congestion on the roads, but the shipping firms themselves are reaping the benefits.

There has even been a marked increase in van sales over the past few years as a direct result of how many people are ordering items online for home delivery, rather than heading to stores to make purchases. This makes Trump’s attacks on Amazon’s US operations harder to swallow, while these new revelations of a personal, behind the scenes intervention are being treated as a misuse of power.