For just a moment, it looked like Jeff Bezos and Amazon had grown a set. Bezos has famously become a Donald Trump fan, even using his position as owner of the Washington Post to order the Post’s editors to dump their endorsement of Kamala Harris last year. But I thought that when it affected Bezos’ bottom line, Bezos might show some spine. But no. The Trump Tariffs are going to wreak havoc on basically every part of the American economy, if not the global economy. Someone at Amazon thought it would be a good idea to introduce a line on Amazon’s site where people could see the real cost of the Trump Tariffs on the products consumers are buying. The plan was shut down as soon as the Trump White House whined about it publicly, and Trump apparently called Bezos personally to get Amazon’s plan shut down.
President Donald Trump personally called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday to complain about a report that the online retail giant was considering displaying U.S. tariff costs on its product listings, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Within hours of the call, Amazon publicly downplayed the scope of its plan — and then announced that it had been scrapped entirely.
The pressure campaign on Bezos by Trump and the White House came after Punchbowl News reported earlier Tuesday that Amazon will soon show consumers how much of an item’s cost comes from tariffs. The amount added as a result of tariffs will be displayed right next to each product’s total listed price, a person familiar with the plan told the news outlet.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the report by torching Amazon over what she called “a hostile and political act.”
“Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt asked. She added, “This is another reason why Americans should buy American.”
Amazon shares dropped more than 2% in premarket trading immediately following the remarks. By noon, the stock had recovered its losses.
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” the spokesperson said. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was “never approved” and is “not going to happen.”
The White House spokesmoron really did call the proposal a “hostile and political act”… to show consumers how much the Trump Tariffs really cost them. It’s remarkable that even the IDEA of showing the true cost of the Trump Tariffs was so incendiary that Donald Trump panicked and called Jeff Bezos immediately. Bezos shouldn’t have backed down. The billionaire class supporting Trump remains one of the oddest parts of this whole fascist catastrophe – granted, they have enough money to be insulated from the worst of Trump’s insanity and fascism, but Trump really is affecting their bottom line across the board.
REPORTER: Amazon will soon display a number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding. Isn’t that a perfect demonstration that it’s the American consumer who is paying for these policies?
LEAVITT: This is a hostile and political act by… pic.twitter.com/oewT08hBSH
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 29, 2025
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
