Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company, considered marking the amount added as a tariff to the price of some products, but immediately withdrew its implementation plan when the White House protested. Major foreign media reported that President Donald Trump personally called Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, to express his dissatisfaction in the process.
Amazon said in a statement on the 29th, “The team that runs the Amazon Hall store reviewed the idea of marking import costs on certain products, but this was never a consideration for major Amazon sites and was not implemented on any of Amazon’s platforms.” Amazon also stressed that such a review has not been approved and will not be “realized” in the future.
Earlier in the day, U.S. media Punchbowl News reported that Amazon will begin to mark the cost of tariffs next to the price of goods. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said at a press briefing that this was “Amazon’s hostile and political act,” adding, “Why didn’t Amazon take this action when the Joe Biden administration recorded the highest inflation in 40 years?”
In a briefing, Levitt said Amazon’s decision to mark the tariffs was “not surprising” after introducing that “Amazon cooperated with Chinese propaganda agencies” while holding up a printed piece of paper by Reuters in December 2021. The article he mentioned censored user reviews of a book containing President Xi Jinping’s speech and writing on Amazon’s China website.
CNN and NBC quoted senior White House officials as saying that President Trump, who learned about Amazon before the White House briefing, was very angry and called Bezos directly to express his dissatisfaction.
Amazon Hall is a shopping mall targeting low-priced Chinese platforms Temu and Xuin that sells ultra-low priced products priced at 20 dollars or less. Amazon has been operating the store since November last year. In response to U.S. tariffs, rival Temu began selling about 145% of “import charges” added to the price of the product over the weekend.
JENNIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
