Amazon’s idea of showing tariff costs on some products won’t be implemented after White House blowback, but other companies may try the policy.
The company had looked into the idea of showing the cost of tariffs on price tags for products on its Amazon Haul service, but announced it would not after the White House pushed back on the idea.
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WATCH HERE“It’s not a surprise, because as Reuters wrote, Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing.
The administration lashed out at Trump ally Jeff Bezos after the first report came out about the potential policy, with Leavitt later saying that Amazon had opted not to display the prices, which she argued would have been a “hostile and political act.”
Amazon issued a statement saying they had only considered the idea, but that it was “never a consideration” for its main site.
“The team that runs our ultra-low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” the company said in a statement.
Even as Amazon won’t move forward with the policy, other companies are already exploring the idea. Chinese discount retailers Shein and Temu have announced they will pass import related costs along to consumers, with Temu marking certain products that will not see increases because they are stocked in US based warehouses.
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Dominick Miserandino, the CEO of Retail Tech Media Nexis, said that many companies could opt for an approach of transparency amid the impacts tariffs could have on consumer costs.
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SIGN UP “That transparency, for me, is the only answer for a retailer, especially when a Chinese-based company (like) Shein and Temu are being so transparent about it,” he said.
Steven Durlauf, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, said the White House balking at Amazon’s proposal wasn’t a surprise.
“They naturally objected to Amazon making plain the fact that a tariff is a de facto sales tax,” he said.
Durlauf said that other retailers may be too afraid to consider listing import-associated costs on apps and websites due to fears of pressure from the White House, and he said the tariff policies of the U.S. could put consumers and companies at a disadvantage.
“These erratic policies have broken so many connections and so many levels of trust with the rest of the world, so many expectations about agreements that it is going to be a world where the demand for American goods…I don’t want to say permanently…but is indefinitely damaged,” he said.
The White House has argued that the tariffs will be key to rebalancing trade deficits and will have long-range benefits, but many economists have expressed skepticism that the policies will have their intended effects.
