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There 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.
Let’s not also forget that Apple and Google are currently illegally distributing the TikTok app in their platforms. Despite a law passed by Congress and upheld by the supreme court that this shouldn’t be happening. But I guess the president, with no legal basis, gets to just order an extension and pinky promise not to enforce it. This is the new crazy dynamic between the administration and tech companies.
We're going into some kind of crazy corruption. When tariffs change hourly, it becomes impossible for a business to adhere to the law. The only way around that is paying off the people doing the auditing or the people at the top. This isn't good.
> currently illegally distributing the TikTok app in their platforms
What's the text of the law about this? Was there a free speech lawsuit over it, or is state censorship of the app store fine now? Just asking because in another thread someone is complaining that EU doesn't have free speech compared to the US.
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The Wikipedia page has a good summary of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok_v._Garland
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That's not really whataboutism, it's more "yesandism", or just adding to the conversation.
To 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.
This is a very good point. This puts AWS in a bad light. We should assume Amazon will, for example, mobilize the whole company to find a needle in a haystack on AWS if the president or his staff calls.
Another 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?
Ironically 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
Many of those protections are meaningless if you ignore the law, as this administration is quite willing to do.
> to what degree Amazon will willfully comply with government requests that come in via phone call and not a warrant
This has been rumbling on for years, regardless of administration, because the security services love overreach. This is the basis of the whole "EU safe harbor" dispute, because Microsoft can't guarantee to EU customers of their Ireland datacenter that they will follow GDPR and not leak customer secrets to US security services.
Pretty much I consider data on aws as compromised from now on.
There's a reason the EU is suddenly a lot more eager to migrate away from the US cloud providers.
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> Amazon appears to be responding to the wishes of the President out of fealty or fear.
Ah yes. When a company does something at the ask of a Democratic administration it’s an act of valor or bravery. When they do it at the ask of a Republican one, it’s fear or fealty.
In reality it’s neither. It’s always just business.
Before you wave this off as a “both sides are just as bad” issue, consider that the reason Amazon started down the path of displaying tariffs is likely due to a long-standing company value of putting the customer first. It makes sense that, as customers, we would want to see the impact of tariffs on our purchasing decisions. We would also want to see how much the sales tax is and how much the shipping cost is.
The problem for the Administration, however, is that they’ve been telling the American people the tariffs are not a tax on consumers, but rather a tax on foreign countries. This is a lie.
So we have a situation where the administration is intimidating Amazon into going against its own values so that it doesn’t expose the lie the Administration is still telling the American people.
I agree with you that Amazon‘s decision to bend to the administrations demand is just business. There are millions of dollars in military cloud infrastructure contracts that could be rescinded as retribution. And we see that the justice department is used by the president in ways that are far outside the norm.
But do you believe this administration is acting like any we’ve seen in living memory?
> Before you wave this off as a “both sides are just as bad” issue, consider that the reason Amazon started down the path of displaying tariffs is likely due to a long-standing company value of putting the customer first. It makes sense that, as customers, we would want to see the impact of tariffs on our purchasing decisions. We would also want to see how much the sales tax is and how much the shipping cost is.
If they actually cared what consumers think, at some point over the past 35 years they would have added country of origin to product pages. Much simpler and higher impact. Does not require any recalculations or interpretations of local profit margin vs import value. Yet they've explicitly chosen never to add it.
Is that in the interests of the consumer?
> The problem for the Administration, however, is that they’ve been telling the American people the tariffs are not a tax on consumers, but rather a tax on foreign countries. This is a lie.
It is a tax on foreign countries. Some portion of it gets passed on to consumers who chose to purchase imported products. But it's not 100% of the tariff amount. And if there is local competition for the good, it may be 0% of the amount. Unless you're doing direct China to consumer sales (i.e. Temu style), you're not going to be able to come up with a perfect figure for these things either.
> So we have a situation where the administration is intimidating Amazon into going against its own values so that it doesn’t expose the lie the Administration is still telling the American people.
Ha! I agree that we have an administration that is leveraging the bully pulpit quite effectively. I see no change in Amazon's values here. They value money.
> I agree with you that Amazon‘s decision to bend to the administrations demand is just business. There are millions of dollars in military cloud infrastructure contracts that could be rescinded as retribution. And we see that the justice department is used by the president in ways that are far outside the norm.
> But do you believe this administration is acting like any we’ve seen in living memory?
No, I think they're effectively using the tools at their disposal to bring about the change that was promised during the years leading up to the 2024 election. None of this is a shock to anybody that was paying attention. And honestly none of this, at least so far, is particularly out of the norm for what's possible with executive authority. The speed of change is likely a bit much for the faint-hearted, but it's not unexpected either. The man ran on a platform of restructuring trade and 145% tarriffs on China is one piece of that puzzle.
The company said they were going to do something, they got threatened by the current administration, and then the company reversed course.
Please name a single comparable situation in the last 20 years where the Democratic president was the one threatening a company and the company reversed course.
Whenever 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.
He is correct too. Compare tax rates in the European continent to the USA. US taxes are much lower. Some states, like New Hampshire, have 0 sales tax. So if you buy something that costs a dollar, you actually pay a dollar. Not 1.06 like in Pennnsylvania, or a whopping 1.27 like in Hungary.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/EU_VAT_T...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Sales_ta...
States with a low sales tax tend to have high property taxes.
Apparently the New Hampshire median home price is 487K. With a property tax of 1.89% that's 9.2K/yr or $767 per month.
EU property taxes are a fraction of that: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/real-property-taxes-eu...
Overall, Europeans do pay higher taxes but Americans really overlook how much property tax they pay, and how this closes the gap significantly.
i hated it at first, but then started to appreciate how it gives visibility on the cost of senator salaries and the military.
US 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).
the salaries are the least expensive part of their cost.
It doesn't really as our minds can't truly comprehend the population or volume of goods sold. Without that it's meaningless.
excellent point. but it's a start
That conservative argument is just an excuse. The price is not shown in full, to make it harder for customer to know how much they are spending before they are at the counter.
It is fully possible to show full price along with tariffs and taxes, if you want to show them. It does not necessitates misleading prices. This is just conservatives being pro-manipulation and against informed customers.
When I was ordering package to a country that had tariffs, an online store shown me item price, shipping, tariffs and total price. Nothing new or shocking about showing a full price along with its breakdown.
How do you show the final price to someone when dining in and carrying out food have different tax rates? You won’t know the price until they complete the purchase.
How do you put the final price on an ad that will be broadcast over a large area or distributed in a newspaper that goes to same, with different tax rates in different parts of the area? You won’t know the price until you know which location they’re shopping at.
You simplify the tax code so that, like the vast majority of other developed nations, these situations do not apply.
However that requires a centralization of power that is politically unpalatable in the US currently.
In practice, I think that this issue largely persists in the US because of tipping culture though. It perpetuates an acceptance of final cost uncertainty that makes the insanity of all the examples you describe seem somehow not so weird after all.
> How do you show the final price to someone when dining in and carrying out food have different tax rates?
I show two prices. Or, I show price for food and then price for packing separately. This is not a difficult problem at all.
>ow do you put the final price on an ad that will be broadcast over a large area or distributed in a newspaper that goes to same, with different tax rates in different parts of the area?
Are we now in some kind of completely different hypothetical example that is neither online shopping nor "prices in the store" we discussed before?
What they’re getting at is not applying tax to the price is the standard consistent way to show price in the US. If you have a national ad campaign you wouldn’t be able to show the price with tax because every state and city has their own tax rate. So then, as a consumer, you’d have to guess if you’re looking at a national ad or regional that has tax applied. This also applies to products that have their price printed on the packaging for national distribution. Sure the price could have fine print that says if tax is included or not, but now there’s more than one way to display price — even in a store. See: https://xkcd.com/927
> 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 not really reasonable. Like, at all.
You can know how much sales tax/VAT is without having to do math every time you pay a bill. For one thing, receipts can and AFAIK always include VAT separately in the EU, with a line for each VAT amount if different (e.g. in France food and alcohol are under different VAT rates, so on the receipt it says you paid X in VAT, of which Y was under 20% for alcohol, Z under 5.5% for food).
You retain the same "power" while being more informed and you're spared quick mental math every time you pay.
The question is not whether the person can see the vat. It's whether they are actively confronted with it. I actually found the argument extremely convincing as a euro person. Now I would like to see separate VAT here too.
It's psychology. Just like withholding taxes on salaries before they are paid.
That's more about forcing people to manage their cashflow and not giving them the opportunity to not pay the income tax.
Whatever you say... Some countries even hide the labour tax from the pay slips, meaning most salaried people believe they pay much less in tax than what they actually do.
Which country? This makes no sense. The UK payslip is entirely for the purpose of displaying before tax, deductions, and post-tax salary. It's a PAYE receipt, effectively.
Nordic countries do this. They call it an "employment fee", which is calculated on your salary and does not show up on your pay slip. It is quite sustainable as well. Of course you also have your "normal" income tax, which is withheld from you before payment and shows up on your pay slip. Also quite sustainable.
The 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?
Apparently 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.
> 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.
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The 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.
Someone 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?
If 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.
So it's "political" to show tariffs, but it's not "political" to show sales tax?
I 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.
> 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".
Ok, 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"?
Sure. 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.
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Politics 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.
That’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.
I 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
A 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.
Amazon 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?
If 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.
It makes Trump look bad, and that dude is fragile. If Amazon were marking "made in America" WH would be all for it.
How would showing this information help their business? Wouldn't you avoid purchasing if it might go down later?
It 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.
This 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.
Cowards
They're only cowards if they had principles in the first place. You're indirectly praising Amazon.
For 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.
I 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.
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43832588
4d 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.
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Now we need a browser extension that DOES show the tariff impact on purchases. Inquiring minds want to know.
Can 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!
I was thinking the same thing. How could we compile this data? Seems like something that would be popular and should exist
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Wow. Just wow. So much “masculine energy” all around.
Crafted by Rajat
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