Respect for competency, expertise, education, objectivity, honesty, cross-partisanship and compromise, empathy, diversity of thought, and a host of other important foundations for a healthy country, have already left the building.
1. A tariff is part of the landed cost of a product - meaning it's a component of a businesses' Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). It is not an optional additional service, such as shipping, and is not something that can readily be broken out of product costings (which is used to determine markup and price).
2. Many, many businesses purchase goods for resale from other businesses which imported the goods. Sometimes a business may be two or three times removed from the actual importation of products. None of those businesses would have the capability to prove which component of their price is due to tariffs. This policy would only favor businesses which are importing direct and then reselling direct to consumer, ie. the very overseas Chinese businesses the tariffs are specifically targeting.
Amazon already has a Chinese problem in that it's being slowly converted into a higher-priced Temu - filled with junk and knock-offs everyone complains about. I do not see it being advantageous for Amazon to create such a policy that grossly favors overseas businesses over Amazon's domestic partners and 3rd party sellers.
Bezos may have realized the net effect of the move had a decent likelihood of proving to be self-immolation.
evolve2k•9mo ago
“Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” the White House press secretary asked.
The statement is delivered with authority but is utterly nonsensical.
xk_id•9mo ago