Amazon denies tariff pricing plan after White House calls it "hostile/political"
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It goes further: the language often doesn’t just describe policies as harmful, but conveys them as evil or immoral, either directly or by implication.
This makes compromise almost impossible. In normal negotiation, sides might trade policy priorities—accepting cuts in one area to strengthen another. But when every issue is framed this way it’s no longer a deal making compromise. It’s compromising, moral values.
This is then especially a problem in primary races where a challenger can attack any and all bipartisanship as absolute failure.
“Language: a Key Mechanism of Control” https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
He means that if he can make someone feel something is true, then it is as true as the truth.
He said this out loud on CNN years ago
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
― Barry Goldwater
That's not political Christians.
That's a different creature altogether.
i think the core of it is tribalism mixed to unrelenting fear-mongering.
tribalism is probably unavoidable. meanwhile the world is becoming more and more complex and unknowable and "anxiogène" (anxiety inducing? i do not have a good word for this).
education is meant to fight this... and it has been under attack for a while now.
the failure to educate renders the world even more unknowable for vast and wide swathes of the population; and i am not talking about a rich/poor divide here, the "tech bro" stereotype fits right there. a "complete education" is not seen as valuable anymore.
many people will throw away a chance at a better world in exchange of a bad world that they "get", this is a natural tendency. especially when the going is bad for the common folk.
my unsubstantiated opinion is that those reasons are why you see more and more simplified speech, simplified world views, anti-intellectualism and other ills prevail.
politics being dominated by corrupt thieves, sycophants, and immoral lobbyists certainly did not help... not mentioning the state of media (social and traditional).
tldr: - people are afraid so stick to their tribes - people do not/cannot trust the institutions anymore - education and thinking itself is under attack - people are hurting so they cling to what they can
And then the supply runs out, Kona prices shoot up further, and boom, America is great again or something
A real student of American culture would know that it's only truly offensive if it's a latte. (I can't explain why)
The Republicans have most of the power right now. Its natural for the party in that situation to politicize everything as part of a fight to hang on to, and grow, their power and control.
The Democratic party had been this way for most of my adult life.
Or you came into adulthood during or near the Biden administration - which would still mean you are aware of 2016)
That still leaves Republicans controlling the Presidency 1/4 of that time. Further, you, like many Americans, mistake control of the Executive Branch as controlling the government, but "control" involved the legislature, and Republicans, or Republicans and West Virginia Democrats, have controlled both houses in much more of my recent memory.
Gay marriage, reversing don't ask don't tell, and the ACA are all policies that the Republicans were very opposed to. The overturning of Roe v Wade is the only major Republican win I can think of (maybe I missed some), though that is a decades old fight and one that in my opinion Democrats setup for failure by never pushing it passed a single supreme court ruling.
Political power follows culture, and for the recent past the majority public opinion has generally supported Democratic policies over Republican ones. That's changed.
The last time the parties flipped was in the 70s and 80s. I was only alive for the tail end of that and paying no attention to politics, but my understanding is that the pattern was generally the same. At that time they flipped names as well, many democrats of the era moved over to the republican party. Maybe we'll see that again in the near future, but for now it seems like both parties are happier to keep the same brands while switch many view points (big business vs workers, state rights issues, limits on the executive branch, etc)
I think many, if not most, Americans agree that the tariffs are excessive and are going to cause issues.
Who could've known that the tariff man would impose tariffs? Maybe his mini trade war with China in 2018--for which he had to bail out farmers--should've served as an indicator of what was to come.
So far, I haven't found many bonafide Republicans willing to say, "This is bad enough to make me regret voting for Trump", or even to have not voted for, or voted against Trump.
If you are one of these conservative/Republicans, do you fit into any of the above categories?
Studies have shown that consumers will gladly visit restaurants that don't include tips in their prices over restaurants that do, even when the prices are exactly the same.
In a country used to not seeing the total price on store goods, hiding the tariffs away as a "+145% tariff" label makes perfect sense. Just raising the total cost and hiding the tariff, what the American governments probably would prefer, would put Amazon at a disadvantage against other stores that do show the split.
On another note, Apple got very upset at Facebook when they tried to pull the same trick regarding the 30% Apple tax. In that case, Apple forbade Facebook from making it explicit how much of the transaction was a tariff raised by an external party. Same trick, but different outcome (because Apple can force Facebook's hand).
Prohibiting retailers from offering a different cash price (Visa/MC) or preventing app owners from charging 30% more than they do on their own website to cover the marketplace costs (or preventing them from allowing the app to funnel them elsewhere for subscriptions that span much farther than the app alone) are all the dark, informationless side of capitalism.
Remember back when it was controversial to apply sales tax to online shopping? The biggest lobbyist against it was Amazon, which they marketed as fighting for the market against the government. Then they got big enough to survive a reversal ... and swung the other way to weaponize the law against their smaller competitors.
They've done a lot more than this, including creating their own brands to inject into a successful niche product or segment. They did all that off of sales/product data they aggregated from all sales on their platform.
Amazon is a dirty player in the market, and everyone should remember that.
You know, they had a point though. California wanted a washington corporation to collect taxes for it.
They could not fight it because they were in another state.
It struck me as basically "no taxation without representation".
"Why are you making us look bad by sharing the facts of the actions we're taking?" is how you can think of this. Never assume rational and good faith behavior from bad faith actors. Watch what someone does, not what they say. The words are free and meaningless.
Personally, I think it would be pretty great if they showed all that, but I don't see that ever happening.
It would be better if they showed all of that, IMO.
No, seriously: "political neutrality" as a concept is inherently and fatally flawed.
The closest you can ever attempt to come is either
a) maintain/support the current status quo—this is obviously a big problem for anyone the status quo is not serving
b) tailor whatever you're saying/doing to try to cleave to the exact current center of the political landscape—this is obviously going to be very fraught and highly subjective; no one actually does this
Anyone who says they're "apolitical" or who tells you to make something "politically neutral" is nearly guaranteed to be just a beneficiary of the status quo advocating for preserving it, often without even realizing that's what they're doing.
Ultimately, it's much more honest and positive in the long run to be honest about your own biases and, yes, be as transparent as possible.
I can try to judge things by whether they are true or false, accurate or misleading, good or bad ideas, regardless of who said them.
Yeah, I fail sometimes - partly because I do have biases, and partly because I don't have infinite amounts of time and energy to dig in to find out the truth. Still, I don't judge what the administration says by which brand of administration it is. I prefer my news sources to be straight rather than slanted.
And I can say that without being a supporter of the current status quo. I find Trump's bullying to be reprehensible.
did this lead you to deny yourself the bigger picture of past behaviors, context, etc…?
What made you think that I was blind to what he was? I could tell what he was before he was elected the first time.
My statement says nothing about the ability of any particular reader to use their learned skills of discerning fact from falsehood to judge what is true. It says that even if you (for any value of "you", including me!) think what you are writing is "neutral", that is, at best, and with 99.9% certainty, because it conforms to the current status quo and/or your unconscious assumptions and biases.
No love for Amazon in general, they’ve been gaming the system for a long time, but it’s not hard to see why they would do this. Prices will go up, this an easy way to deflect the blame (and to be fair… it’s an accurate deflection).
The writing has been on the wall demographically for decades. Their base has been shrinking, fewer people are religious, white folk are losing status. It’s become harder and harder to win an election for turn since GW Bush, and even that went down to the courts.
Many districts are only red due to blatant gerrymandering. But even that gets harder to wield so what seems to have happened is that while they still can ostensibly win an election, they crank the wheel and destroy the rules so that they never have to compete on a level field again
Such a system could get complicated quickly, though, and showing the profit margin also wouldn't be of interest to many salespeople. Making fuel price total up to €2.09/L is easy if petrol were only taxed at €0.7891/L, but the 21% VAT being applied to the total sales price after the per liter tax (and the 9% profit margin) makes the math a tad more complex.
I don't think you could call those taxes "hidden" though. Anyone can look up how much tax they pay. It's not like taxes are sent out in secret to gas pumps every day.
It didn't last on the gas pumps, though, because ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
I don't think the intent of gas stations displaying the taxes is to convince people to use less gas. It's to create political pressure to reduce the tax.
The party of law and order for those I do not pardon.
You can’t go back to “the good ol’ days” because THEY’RE GONE!
For the year of 2024, Amazon made a 5.5% operating profit on non-AWS revenue. This is before taxes and, I think, before leases on buildings and property.
https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2024/q4/...
wah wah wah. if you don't won't people calculating the costs of your tariffs, perhaps don't introduce the world's worst tariff regime?
Dunno, something like this: https://imgur.com/a/Z2hmyou
Neither do local merchants when they collect a sales tax.
Neither does the homeowner when they rent their guest room on Airbnb.
Neither does Lady Gaga when she sells a ticket through Ticketmaster.
This isn't controversial. It's price transparency for the consumer and it helps them make better choices.
What's unusual is the White House attacking a private sector retailer for a reasonable choice that's clearly theirs to make. Seeing the "+145% tariff" on your checkout page would puncture a hole in the narrative we've heard for years from Donald Trump that "China pays the tax."
No, you and I pay the tax. And both the U.S. and China will suffer.
Facts are stubborn things.
Y’all are blind as hell to the real issues. This football version of American politics is so nonsensical. Not an ounce of material analysis even in something that could be as material as this.
But this is tariffs. Tariffs work by making imported goods more expensive, which makes them less attractive to consumers, which makes domestic goods more attractive in comparison. That's the whole fucking point of tariffs. To make imported goods more expensive.
Amazon is essentially running a free advertisement for White House, showing off how Trump's tariffs are doing their job!
Exactly what else did Trump supporters expect to happen? Ponies and rainbows? Well, probably not rainbows - it's gay.
Sales tax is different because it's on the retail price that the customer pays.
Typical gaslighting behaviour. If you have as many customers as Amazon and the price increases that noticeably, that’s them being by forced to cover their own ass versus taking the heat when they shouldn’t.
This is self-defense by Amazon. "Don't blame us that things got more expensive." But yes, it's also political (that's kind of inevitable when politics is the source of the additional cost).
As long as they pretend the US is the sole country that does tariffs, it is both political and an insult to intelligence.
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2025/04/cant-make-dumb-joke-any...
Because the inflation under Biden was itself an accident. Trump is doing this on purpose.
Furthermore, if you buy the idea that the inflation was caused solely by handing out stimulus checks during a pandemic, then it's at least partially Trump's fault, too. Remember that Trump's the one who pushed for all this stimulus, because he was worried about his re-election prospects in 2020.
If you want a real criticism of this policy, it's that Bezos was spending $$$ to be at the Trump inauguration just a few months ago. Big Tech put their muscle behind Trump despite being the industry most reliant on foreign immigration and trade - the things Trump desperately wants to shut down. They did this because they're so shit scared of antitrust legislation that they're willing to break up America before America can break up them.
Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all, and Bezos didn't realize this. So instead of owning a broken-up business empire he's going to own no empire at all. Welcome to the bust-out.
It this is true (it might be, it might not be), there's no particular reason why it needs to be the USA. Bezos and the current management structure and employees of Amazon in the USA might prefer if it was that way, but there's little about the company that requires it, other than its biggest market also being the USA.
Also: Bezos doesn't really own Amazon any more in any meaningful sense. He owns less than 10% of the stock.
However, Amazon does need to be in the USA, even if it's not their host country, because they're a retailer. They make their money by buying goods and selling them to the people who want them.
Remember when Amazon used to only have one warehouse in one state, and relied on being able to ship things to get around sales tax? That didn't last - and not just because the law caught up with the loophole. They wanted to do next-day or same-day shipping that basically required them to have a warehouse in every city, and thus pay sales tax everywhere.
Amazon moving out of the US would make them equivalent to Temu or Wish in terms of convenience, and their sales would crater. Not to mention Trump is closing off the loophole those companies used, too.
What I was responding to:
> Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all
(emphasis mine)
The man had the first batch of checks from the treasury redesigned/printed just so he could put his big sharpie signature on the check, for self promotion purposes.
Edit: people are downvoting me because of the first sentence. All I’m saying is that if I’m the Whitehouse, I’d be furious too. I never said I think the tariffs are a good idea.
Furious that Amazon is highlighting the WH's bullshit line that consumers won't pay for the tariffs?
In European countries with VAT, the price on the item / shelf tag / whatever includes the VAT. You don't need to remember what jurisdiction you're in and thus what percentage of sales tax you need to add on to the displayed price to know how much you'll be asked to pay when you check out. If the tag says 12 euro, 12 euro is exactly what you're paying at the register.
Sure, in the US, your receipt will tell you how much sales tax you paid. But that is information you're not given until the point of checkout. Additionally you may not have the explicit tax amount presented to you til you receive that post-sale receipt, you may have to do your own subtraction of the listed price(s) from the total price to determine how much tax you're paying before you commit to the purchase.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1223385/amazon-prime-sub...
But I think people got too angry too fast to understand my point.
Reasonable in what sense?
Reasonable in the sense that a con-man doesn't want his con revealed?
Or reasonable in the sense that they have a principled position against the proposed action by AMZN?
I get the feeling that you're being too clever by half with your phrasing.
My other big prediction for years has been that it’ll be MAGA that will do mass gun confiscation in defiance of the second amendment. Let’s see how that one does. Of course all the MAGA folks would be fine with it because it's not mass gun confiscation by the "new world order" if Trump does it.
Then why didn't you write that? 'Should be' reads to most people as conforming with some objective legal or moral standard.
Again, I'm against the tariffs.
Like, one can't have it both ways. "These tariffs are a brilliant idea and will make everything wonderful... HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT THE TARIFFS" is an utterly incoherent position.
If you buy something from not your local amazon and there are import taxes - yeah they show that too.
Tariffs are paid by the importer and I would think that they would put that into the price of the good itself based on their desired profit margins etc. How would Amazon even know what to put for the tariff amount? It's not a % of the retail price, it's a % of the import price which the seller doesn't typically share with the end customer.
The math is not perfect, but to a good approximation (certainly a far better approximation than the administration's insane computation of international "tariffs") that will indicate the cost to the consumer of Trump's tariff policies.
So yes, if the importer eats a significant chunk of the tariff cost and doesn't pass it on to Amazon/the consumer, the computation will reflect that (as it should). And if they don't, it will reflect that too (as it should).
So it's not political?
Chaotic: one might disagree on the magnitude of flip-flopping that can be labelled "chaotic", but the unpredictable on-again, off-again nature of the policies is well-described by "chaotic" I think.
Ill-conceived: if you can find me one serious economist who agrees with the Trump tariff policy (i.e. agrees on the goal, the means and the ends, and the match between them), I'll consider retracting this. Otherwise, yep, ill-conceived describes imposing tariffs without any apparent understanding of how they work or their likely effects.
Also, did I say it's not political at any point?
Then we agree!
Also yes, taxes are listed as a separate line item.