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Amazon Rules Out Displaying Tariff Impact After White House Attack
- mdeslaur 2y agoSo it's "political" to show tariffs, but it's not "political" to show sales tax?
- apercu 2y agoWow. Just wow. So much “masculine energy” all around.
- mortar 2y agohttps://archive.is/JVMqF https://archive.is/JVMqF
- linusg789 2y agohttps://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-rules-out-displaying-tariff-impact-after-white-house-attack/ar-AA1DR7LU https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amazon-rules-out-d...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoCowards
- Qwertious 2y agoThey're only cowards if they had principles in the first place. You're indirectly praising Amazon.
- jqpabc123 2y agoI guess they don't want consumers/voters to see how much China is paying??? Time to wake up and smell the coffee --- tariffs are really a tax on *YOU* --- not China. No country has ever taxed it's citizens into greatness.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- paulryanrogers 2y ago> No country has ever taxed it's citizens into greatness. Why do people repeat this? The greatest era of middle-class growth and success was when the rich paid much more in taxes. Perhaps a better phrase is "No government maintained a middle-class by letting the rich soak up all the gains".
- jqpabc123 2y agoOk, so how about, "No country has ever taxed it's *middle class* into greatness"? Or since the middle class constitutes the majority of citizens, "No country has ever taxed *the majority* into greatness"?
- paulryanrogers 2y agoSure. Fine. It's still so reductive as to be nearly useless. Try living in low tax, libertarian havens. There isn't much social mobility. You're born into wealth or you're not. Money and power flow up the (very short) pyramid forever. One must tax the rich heavily because otherwise their money will just snowball until there's little left for anyone else. Cute phrases too often reinforce that reality.
- Filligree 2y agoThe executive really shouldn't be interfering with private companies in this way. This is Amazon bowing to fears of retaliation. For what, giving customers true information?
- ourmandave 2y agoApparently Amazon didn't get the memo on Jan 20th that all decisions must begin and end with "How will this affect the Emperor's image?" It used to be limited to the state run channel Fox News. Even they would screw up once and a while. Depending on the severity, they'd either be dragged on X or receive an unhappy on-air call from the Palace in Mar-a-largo.
- theoreticalmal 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pjc50 2y ago> state run channel Fox News As I keep saying, this is the other way round. In the west we don't have state controlled media, we have a media controlled state. Private propaganda organizations can very effectively steer policy by getting people to believe nonsense.
- ecocentrik 2y agoThe executive really shouldn't be referring to their emergency orders as laws or be suggesting that those orders supersede the US Constitution or laws passed by the legislature and enforced by the courts but that's not where we are.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mmcconnell1618 2y agoThere is no regulation or legislation that is telling Amazon they can/can't or should/shouldn't post this information. Amazon appears to be responding to the wishes of the President out of fealty or fear. The threat of a negative response by the President is enough to change the behavior of the company.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- redserk 2y agoTo me, this calls into question to what degree Amazon will willfully comply with government requests that come in via phone call and not a warrant. From the Amazon shopping side, you can build quite a profile on someone based on their past order history. Want to find protesters? There’s been a number of folks who don’t usually order office supplies suddenly ordering the thick Sharpie markers in a certain area... Hopefully AWS steers clear of this, I suppose. That’d have even worse implications.
- clumsysmurf 2y agoAnother request I suddenly worry about is "what books has this person purchased or read on their kindle" - or - Who has read books critical of the Trump Regime in the past x months?
- dijit 2y agoIronically there are protections for this, and much of what we call "Hacker Culture" is built around the ideas; but they only apply to librarians and libraries in the US; https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill
- drivingmenuts 2y agoMany of those protections are meaningless if you ignore the law, as this administration is quite willing to do.
- 0xcb0 2y agoCan we please just create a browser extension for this ?? How else can we show the people that the Trump team is stealing their money, not china!
- pizzuh 2y agoI was thinking the same thing. How could we compile this data? Seems like something that would be popular and should exist
- a2128 2y agoWhenever I visit the US I get annoyed that the prices listed on the store shelves aren't actually what I pay; in Europe all prices are VAT-inclusive, but in the US none of the prices include sales tax, they're all broken out separately at checkout. I found this unreasonable and confusing until one day I read a conservative argument that this is actually a good thing, because it stops the government from increasing sales tax too much. It constantly reminds residents of how much extra they're paying for sales tax and encourages voting for politicians who will reduce sales tax if it's too high. Okay, it's a reasonable argument, I wasn't super against it anymore. It's fairly shocking to now see this happen, not even as a result of any law but just one of the biggest companies deciding to obey in advance.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoi hated it at first, but then started to appreciate how it gives visibility on the cost of senator salaries and the military.
- KoolKat23 2y agoIt doesn't really as our minds can't truly comprehend the population or volume of goods sold. Without that it's meaningless.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoexcellent point. but it's a start
- Jagerbizzle 2y agoUS Senators make $193,400 per year and there are 100 of them. This ~20mil doesn't exactly stack up to the ~1.8 trillion of US government discretionary spending (or ~4 trillion of 'mandatory' spending).
- 1oooqooq 2y agothe salaries are the least expensive part of their cost.
- flyinglizard 2y agoIt was not practical from the get-go, because showing how tariffs are affecting the consumer price requires to expose the supplier cost to buyers and I find it hard to believe sellers (or Amazon itself) would want that.
- KoolKat23 2y agoThis is normal business practice. It's shown on other Amazon stores for e.g. in Europe. Where it's common to order from other Amazon stores.
- thrance 2y ago[flagged]
- loudmax 2y ago[flagged]
- niam 2y agoI wonder what the range of possible deals to be struck between Amazon and Trump includes, and/or whether this is the start of one. Though I agree with the prevailing notion that the simplest explanation would seem to be a mere concession to the Trump admin.
- nickjj 2y agoPolitics aside, how could they decide not to show it? If something cost $50 yesterday and now suddenly it's $75 or $100 with no explanation wouldn't that make more people think it's inflation which in turn has its own set of negative impacts? No one is just going to blindly forget a massive price hike on a wide range of things. All this does is allow businesses to raise their prices arbitrarily and blame tarrifs on the side if anyone complains. Basically the same thing that happened with inflation after covid. I guess this explains why they are not showing it. If that's not the truth, that's ok. That's what happens when you're not transparent. People will make assumptions based on their beliefs.
- acdha 2y agoThat’s why it can’t be “politics aside”: a politician decidedly unilaterally to make one of the largest tax hikes in American history. There just isn’t a way to talk about that without recognizing that it was a political act made for political reasons. I think you’re right about the cover this provides for businesses, too, which makes it interesting from a political standpoint. The president clearly recognizes that the tariffs are a political liability if voters are allowed to see the unblended costs but if the costs are hidden, that gives carte blanche to every business to raise prices now knowing that consumers will assume it’s tariff-related like all of the other price increases they’re seeing.
- jjallen 2y agoA thought I had is that they shouldn't show the "impact", they should simply show the tariff that was paid for a given product. Let the consumers develop their own facts, knowledge and biases about the actual effect. They could also show the pre-tariff and post-tariff prices; that would be the most helpful thing. Or a price chart, which would be interesting ex-tariff.
- throw0101a 2y agoSomeone made the observation that if the WH is proud of the tariffs and think they are good policy to bring back manufacturing (or whatever), then wouldn't they want their (according-to-them) awesome idea to be as widely publicized as possible? If tariffs are a good thing why not allow them to be 'advertised' that much more? Don't you want credit for the good idea you came up with?
- ecocentrik 2y agoIf the primary objective of tariffs was really to promote American manufacturing there would be an associated "Made in America" campaign that informed consumers that they're supporting American manufacturing. These types of campaigns are almost always popular and successful. I believe this isn't occurring because increasing American manufacturing is not the only stated objective of Trump's economic policies. His stated secondary objective, replacing revenue from income tax with tariff revenue, conflicts significantly with the first. If enough tariff revenue is never achieved, Trump would not have the excuse or the opportunity to disband the IRS. Informing consumers of their tax burden puts this objective in peril. If a change in tax policy is the short term goal, is manufacturing a long term goal? Wouldn't a robust manufacturing sector mean decreased tariff revenue? The picture isn't clear because Trump is being very opaque with his policies.
- yalogin 2y agoI wonder if this “prostration” is a direct result of becoming too big as a company. I cannot imagine a company as big Amazon just succumbing to political pressure to their own detriment like this unless it benefits them somehow. The only way the government can help is through their kuiper project. If only Amazon was split into smaller groups then the store will not be beholden to the satellite internet group and AWS’ integrity wouldn’t be questioned, may be. Also if split each of them will be run by a different individual and so may be have more practical
- koolba 2y agoFor years Amazon has refused to display a consistent “Made in ____” label on product pages. They also will not let you filter on (or exclude) country of origin. They’re free to do whatever they want, but it’s hardly some conspiracy theory. It’s just business. That includes deciding to or deciding not to show tariff impact on prices.
- typedef_struct 2y agoAmazon does not have this information, nor would a competitive seller wish to provider it. Who my suppliers are and what they charge? So what, Amazon can better decide whether to enter my market?
- senectus1 2y ago4d chess. Amazon won no matter what. either WH says nothing and the values are shown. WH says something in outrage (like they did) and amazon backs down.. but its such big news that the awareness has been heightened. Now even the most rabid MAGAhead knows that this is going to cost them at the hip pocket, and knows that the WH knew, and used their power to shut amazon up. JB won this round.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cjoelrun 2y agoHow would showing this information help their business? Wouldn't you avoid purchasing if it might go down later?
- irthomasthomas 2y agoIf they wish to incentivize purchasing of domestic manufactured goods then surely they would welcome this? Consumers could see at a glance if they where buying American, or paying a penalty to buy foreign. I don't get the WH response.
- beej71 2y agoIt makes Trump look bad, and that dude is fragile. If Amazon were marking "made in America" WH would be all for it.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43832588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43832588
- bastard_op 2y agoNow we need a browser extension that DOES show the tariff impact on purchases. Inquiring minds want to know.