These days, the news changes daily, and people are trying to keep up with the various updates. In this update, it seems the White House and giant e-commerce business Amazon might be at odds with one another.
The White House is not too thrilled with Amazon’s plans to display the tariff cost for each item on their website.
There have been reports that the e-commerce giant is planning on introducing a feature that allows customers to see how much tariffs have added to the overall price of the product they are buying.The news of this update is not welcomed by the Trump administration, with Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that she has talked to Trump about the situation and has also called the move by Amazon ‘a hostile and political act’.
She shared, “I just got off the phone with the president about this, about Amazon’s announcement. This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.” She then showed a printout of a headline from a Reuters report in 2021 which read, “Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has previously supported President Donald Trump, even donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, in which he was in attendance.
The Amazon founder also owns the Washington Post and prior to the elections, the newspaper did not endorse a candidate and faced severe backlash from the public, to which Bezos said that newspapers endorsing candidates do nothing to tip the scales of an election’.
He stated that he was making a ‘principled decision’, while columnists at the paper sent out a joint signed statement which read, ‘an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love’.
Tariffs have been a significant point of debate recently due to President Donald Trump’s economic policy. The administration announced a list of tariffs from countries around the world before they decided to lower most of them.
While Trump and his administration decided to delay some of his tariff plans, he is seemingly engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff battle with China, as the tariffs on some products are raised up to as much as 245%.
Companies that import from China have to pay a large amount of money to the government in the form of tariffs, and because of this, the end price of the goods will increase.
If Amazon decides to show how much the price of a product has increased because of the tariff, it could lay bare how much the policy will affect individual Americans.
However, Amazon has provided a statement to the Washington Post saying that adding tariff costs ‘was never a consideration for the main Amazon site’, they also went on to say that ‘this was never approved and is not going to happen’.
In response, Trump said that Bezos has ‘done the right thing’ and ‘solved the problem very quickly’ and even praised him, saying he was a ‘good guy’.
This is an interesting story as tariffs are being debated all across the United States. What do you think about the tariffs? Let us know in the comment section on Facebook. Share this with others so they can also be in the know.