> Before you wave this off as a “both sides are just as bad” issue, consider that the reason Amazon started down the path of displaying tariffs is likely due to a long-standing company value of putting the customer first. It makes sense that, as customers, we would want to see the impact of tariffs on our purchasing decisions. We would also want to see how much the sales tax is and how much the shipping cost is.
If they actually cared what consumers think, at some point over the past 35 years they would have added country of origin to product pages. Much simpler and higher impact. Does not require any recalculations or interpretations of local profit margin vs import value. Yet they've explicitly chosen never to add it.
Is that in the interests of the consumer?
> The problem for the Administration, however, is that they’ve been telling the American people the tariffs are not a tax on consumers, but rather a tax on foreign countries. This is a lie.
It is a tax on foreign countries. Some portion of it gets passed on to consumers who chose to purchase imported products. But it's not 100% of the tariff amount. And if there is local competition for the good, it may be 0% of the amount. Unless you're doing direct China to consumer sales (i.e. Temu style), you're not going to be able to come up with a perfect figure for these things either.
> So we have a situation where the administration is intimidating Amazon into going against its own values so that it doesn’t expose the lie the Administration is still telling the American people.
Ha! I agree that we have an administration that is leveraging the bully pulpit quite effectively. I see no change in Amazon's values here. They value money.
> I agree with you that Amazon‘s decision to bend to the administrations demand is just business. There are millions of dollars in military cloud infrastructure contracts that could be rescinded as retribution. And we see that the justice department is used by the president in ways that are far outside the norm.
> But do you believe this administration is acting like any we’ve seen in living memory?
No, I think they're effectively using the tools at their disposal to bring about the change that was promised during the years leading up to the 2024 election. None of this is a shock to anybody that was paying attention. And honestly none of this, at least so far, is particularly out of the norm for what's possible with executive authority. The speed of change is likely a bit much for the faint-hearted, but it's not unexpected either. The man ran on a platform of restructuring trade and 145% tarriffs on China is one piece of that puzzle.
