Yes, Amazon is denying it though it would make sense.
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” the company said in a statement. “Teams discuss ideas all the time. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
Should probably get an [updated], since the submission title now seems inaccurate after Amazon clarification.
abenga · 14h ago
Amazon (used to?) list import charges when I import stuff into my country. It's surprising that they wouldn't the other way.
devrandoom · 15h ago
Trump made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
profmonocle · 23h ago
I'm fine with this as long as they include the tariff in the listed price.
I'm worried businesses are going to use tariffs as an excuse to have a fake list price, then hit you with massive hidden fees at the point of sale.
Some sectors have been doing this for years - "service fees" at restaurants, "regulatory response fees" in the telecom industry, all sorts of nonsense in event ticketing.
Physical goods have mostly been spared this type of fake pricing - aside from sales tax not being included, but that's been universally true in the US forever so everyone is used to it.
Tariffs could be the end of that if businesses see sales plummet. Especially because these scams actually work - the reason restaurants give for not just increasing their menu prices is because higher listed prices drive people away.
gherkinnn · 23h ago
I expect businesses to bump prices.
Bump em because of tariffs, bump em some more to pad the margins because what is an extra 5%, bump em even when they're not affected by tariffs because everyone else is doing so, and delay un-bumping them once tariffs fall again.
ceejayoz · 23h ago
Yup. My grocery store raised bananas from 49¢/pound to 55¢/pound this week, with a sign about 10% tariffs… but the tariff would be on their wholesale costs, not the shelf costs. They're probably paying 1-2¢/pound extra.
People have a hard enough time understanding who pays tariffs. Stores'll be able to muddy the waters this way pretty much at will.
Aurornis · 22h ago
Grocery stores have famously low margins. Everyone thinks they’re cash cows, but they have some of the thinnest profit margins of common consumer businesses.
Stores often sell common staples like bananas, generic milk, and other basics at close to cost. They’re the things that get people in the door. They make their profit on things like cereal, deli meats, packaged goods, and other non-staple items that people also buy once they’re inside.
It’s similar to how many gas stations compete on cost of gas to get people there, but hope that you’ll stop inside and get a $6 drink or some $5 packaged snacks.
Then you have to consider all of the other things that go into a store are also tariffed. The parts for the trucks that transport the bananas have tariffs. Many of their cleaning supplies. Parts for the checkout registers. The light bulbs they have to replace. Many of those tariffs could be well over 100%. They have to make up that price in the cost of bananas and everything else.
Eisenstein · 21h ago
I thought they made a lot of their money selling the desirable shelf space.
"Many grocers earn more profit from agreeing to carry a manufacturer's product than they do from actually selling the product to retail consumers."
I moved to the USA from Belgium, and in the USA I have also seen that the lessee of said space stocks the shelves.
Of course, I didn't know this, which was very weird when I saw someone those stocking shelves, only to be met with a 'sorry, I don't work here' response when asking them a question.
therealpygon · 8h ago
It depends. Some companies choose to stock shelves themselves in order to make sure their products are properly stocked. Coke/Pepsi and their subsidiaries are this way. It ensures that old out of date product isn’t getting shoved to the back of a shelf, allows them to keep a better track on refills (thus an estimate of sales), so on and so forth. In other cases, the store sometimes requires it to alleviate their own stocking burdens. The vendors are also generally the ones who set up the sale advertisement displays (end-cap or stand-alone). It tends to be a win-win because the vendor gets to advertise with a large display and the store may sell more product (and doesn’t have to set the crap up or take it down). Though, anything can be anything from store to store, so these aren’t “rules”.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
Low margins, high volume. The family owners of our regional privately held grocery store chain (Wegmans) are worth billions. They're making plenty.
Aurornis · 22h ago
Everything in the world makes more sense when you accept that it’s all supply and demand. The net worth of the family that owns the business is irrelevant.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
Supply and demand can both be impacted by perception, which can be tweaked by humans.
If tariffs increase the wholesale cost of an item by $1, but you can make consumers think $5 retail is what the increase should be, that’s an extra $4 in your pocket.
Economics education doesn’t stop at 101 for a good reason. “Supply and demand” is like “veins carry deoxygenated blood” - it’s largely true, but further learning reveals complexity.
therealpygon · 8h ago
Yes. If people are unwilling to pay $5 more, they will buy less or buy none. That decreases profits due to decreased demand. Now there is more supply than demand, which means you need to make the purchase more attractive, which generally means spend more on advertisements/rebates, lowering the price to an acceptable rate or improve the product value. Or strike a balance where you shrink both the cost (size), and price, and advertise the cheaper price to make people think they are getting a better deal when they are really just buying less for the same price (or more). Round and round it goes; supply, demand, and misleading.
People should remember that it isn’t just the corporations who raise the price that are at fault, it is the people who are unwilling to go without it when the price is overinflated. Yes, then we nit-pick into things like medical necessity and … thus back to the point that it is both supply and demand, and not.
Aurornis · 22h ago
> Supply and demand can both be impacted by perception, which can be tweaked by humans.
Supply and demand is impacted by many factors, but it’s still supply and demand.
You can put different labels on different components of the influences, but at the end of the day it’s still supply and demand.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
> at the end of the day it’s still supply and demand
What a pity we accidentally gave Nobel prizes out for things like game theory, then.
s1artibartfast · 20h ago
It's not a pity. It's a valuable tool to understand behavior as it relates to supply and demand.
Supply and demand isn't the only thing that exists, but basically everything else feeds into and informs it. It isn't the only starting position, but you can reach basically any point from it.
dylan604 · 20h ago
How much of that wealth is tied directly to the store chain vs investments they have made elsewhere?
ceejayoz · 20h ago
The chain, itself, did $11B in revenue in 2020 for its ~100 stores. It's privately held, largely by the family and their friends. I certainly don't doubt they've purchased other investments with the proceeds over time, but they're making plenty.
gruez · 19h ago
>The chain, itself, did $11B in revenue in 2020 for its ~100 stores.
Revenue =/= profit. OpenAI has similar amount of revenue, but is nowhere near profitable.
>I certainly don't doubt they've purchased other investments with the proceeds over time, but they're making plenty.
The point isn't what they did with the profits, it's whether the profits are commensurate with the capital they put in (ie. return on equity).
ceejayoz · 18h ago
> Revenue =/= profit.
I’m well aware. The assertion that gets made is “oh they’re low margin!” They are. But they have massive volume. So they make lots of money still.
> The point isn't what they did with the profits, it's whether the profits are commensurate with the capital they put in (ie. return on equity).
Well, they certainly didn’t start as billionaires a hundred years ago. The profits seem fine.
I’d be very happy to be in the business of selling $1 bills for $1.02, if the customer base is big enough.
mistrial9 · 22h ago
no - I guess that the massive net worth of that family is related to capital investments.. the value of the property that a store sits on, with no debt.. skillful use of traditional investment vehicles using a predictable cash flow. things like that. Many frugal and tireless small business in the large port city here in California fail.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
Wegmans has long been known for an extremely high revenue per square foot for grocery stores, and their stake in it is absolutely worth billions.
I’d happily take 2-3% margins of their $11B in revenue (2020 per Wiki).
danesparza · 22h ago
Pretty sure those bananas are grown elsewhere. Hopefully we'll still be able to get bananas in the near future. At some point, buyer demand will drop so much it may not make sense to ship them.
ceejayoz · 21h ago
> Pretty sure those bananas are grown elsewhere.
Yes. But the tariffs are on the import price, not the shelf price.
The shelf price went up as if it were on the shelf price, because consumers won't realize/understand the distinction. (Hell, a good proportion of the population still thinks someone else eats the costs entirely.) We saw the same thing during COVID - "it's because of COVID / supply chain issues" was the magic wand you could wave around to raise prices. Some of those increases were warranted, for sure. But all? Almost certainly not.
StackRanker3000 · 19h ago
But what do you mean by “warranted”? Businesses are free to set their prices as they see fit (with some caveats), and you generally expect them to do so in a way that maximizes profits.
The prices before these tariffs were arrived at by some confluence of factors such as cost and competition, it wasn’t some universally agreed “fair pricing” scheme that determined them. So what does it mean for a price to be warranted?
Now businesses have to raise prices because of the aforementioned tariffs, and, you speculate, they will add some extra margin because they think the customer is primed to accept higher prices right now than they’d normally be.
First of all, is that the end of the world? If this is only made possible because the wool has been pulled over the customer’s eyes, then at some point there will be a correction in the other direction - unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such). This particular mechanism on its own won’t cause prices to spiral out of control or anything.
Secondly, even if you think it is bad and don’t want it to happen, how would you prevent it? I can’t come up with a single feasible approach that isn’t basically halfway to socialism (which is fine if that’s your preference, but then that’s a larger conversation).
ceejayoz · 19h ago
> But what do you mean by “warranted”?
In this case, I believe many companies raised pricing more than they needed to, because people misattributed the source of those increases. If, say, ice cream doubled in price in normal times, people would cry foul. COVID gave an ironclad excuse.
> unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such)
I see very little evidence of this. We're great at innovating new ways to price fix without attracting (or successfully fighting off) regulatory attention.
Like outsourcing the price decisions to a third party…
We haven't had 49 cent bananas in my market for a longtime, so I'm wondering if they were adjusting for tariffs as well as just general inflation at the same time (but the sign wouldn't be honest in that case).
dylan604 · 20h ago
is truth in marketing still a thing?
gruez · 19h ago
It would hinge on the wording. "impacted by tarrifs" or "caused by tarrifs" probably won't be illegal, even if they're arguably misleading.
fallinghawks · 22h ago
Back when the price of crude oil was in the news a lot, if a rise was announced, gas stations would immediately hike prices, even though it takes like a month for the oil to be refined into gas and delivered to the station.
Aurornis · 21h ago
Inventory is priced and sold according to market conditions, not the cost of goods.
Everyone does this. If someone was trying to sell their old car and they saw news of upcoming tariffs on cars, they’d expect to sell their car at a higher price even though the tariffed cars haven’t arrived yet.
A second factor is that volatility and unpredictable policy raises risk, which increases prices. There will be a lot of price increases in excess of base tariff rates simply because everything is changing rapidly on the whims of this administration and businesses need more buffer for unexpected shocks.
If you’re a company who set up manufacturing in China, placed orders 4 months ago, and you’re watching the tariff rate change from 65% to 125% or more in the span of days with threats of more, you have to increase your prices a lot to have more buffer. Those parts you ordered now have an unpredictable price tags attached when they arrive at the port. It’s completely out of control.
CobaltFire · 21h ago
Interestingly I’ve seen the exact opposite happen and cause major problems.
In Japan the US Military buys fuel and sets the price at its on base stations according to what they purchase it for. On several occasions when I lived there this resulted in the Base CO having to address everyone and tell them if they don’t buy the fuel (that is now significantly cheaper outside the gate) then the Exchange cannot buy new fuel, and they may have to shut the station down permanently.
It never came to that; everyone just went and paid the higher price for a tank and the issue was resolved.
My point is that trying to price a commodity that moves prices like that by a lagging indicator is a great way to capture business on one side and a great way to go bankrupt on the other.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
P/NE-X is a bit different, due to non-market drivers of how they operate. Aka if Walmart were instead run by Congress. ;)
echoangle · 22h ago
That's perfectly rational though. Stuff is priced taking into account the current value, and a raising crude oil price immediately increases the value of the already refined product. Just like falling prices would immediately lower the value of the already refined product.
ytpete · 15h ago
Do falling prices in crude oil reflect in gas prices as instantly as rising prices in crude oil do though? I think that asymmetry is what the poster was calling out. It lets resellers skim a bit of extra profit off of the volatility, by raising prices quickly but lagging on lowering them.
ttoinou · 21h ago
Maybe you believe in the theory that "price of good = cost + profit" ? It's wrong
amanaplanacanal · 20h ago
They have to. When it comes time to refill their tanks they need the money, which they won't have if they keep charging the old price.
lallysingh · 21h ago
Gas stations generally break even on gas due to high local competition. They'll try to profit from a service center or a shop.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 22h ago
That's expected
If I bought a gallon of water for a dollar and then there was a terrible water shortage I would not let it go for two dollars
kangda123 · 21h ago
Uncertainty costs money. It's normal to require extra pay for extra risk.
Aurornis · 22h ago
Prices are always set by supply and demand.
The price will rise until it gets high enough that the product of sales * price falls.
It has always been that way. Businesses haven’t been selling goods and services out of the goodness of their hearts at an arbitrary price. It’s always supply and demand.
Tariffs are expected to reduced demand because they increase prices. This is why the stock market is down and nearly every economist is calling the tariffs a big problem. Companies won’t have room to raise prices infinitely because they feel like it, because consumers are about to be able to afford fewer things because the things they need are getting more expensive.
iterance · 22h ago
Supply and demand is one driver of economic pricing, but not the only driver. Efficient pricing is a complex topic and not as black-and-white as it seems. As demand falls, the price may be expected to fall, but there is an inelastic limit set by material, labor, transport, and taxation cost. A company may elect to decrease their profit margin per sale to offset increased costs, but there is only so much margin to eat.
In the current circumstances, though, companies do not have a choice to lower prices. The basic cost of taking an item into inventory from these suppliers has risen significantly, in most cases well above 2024 margins.
The net effect is that, despite the market's best effort to correct prices to within an affordable range, costs may rise considerably and availability may still fall regardless. Under severe shock to the system, the usual maxims that account for nominal shifts in day to day trading no longer apply.
Aurornis · 22h ago
This is just semantics. If it becomes untenable to supply a good at a given price, the supply for that good decreases.
Then supply and demand reach equilibrium.
Supply and demand doesn’t mean that either or both supply and demand remain constant. Both supply and demand change depending on the price.
ceejayoz · 21h ago
> Both supply and demand change depending on the price.
But that's a massive oversimplification. It's like saying programming is "just typing". Technically, sure; accurate, no. There's latency in the real world. Bad actors. Information asymmetries. Regulations. Monopolies. Stuff you can't do without and can't even always decline (ambulance ride for an unconscious person). Fake news about a supply crunch changes demand without changing supply for a while.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
Most relevant in modern global economies: lack of available alternatives.
One of the primary reasons for combination in low-margin markets is to gain pricing power. And even if there are 2-5 entities in a given market, informal price collusion is far from unheard of.
It's a lot more complicated than that. Prices are sticky. When you raise prices, consumers notice and your sales go down. Therefore price changes are generally larger and less frequent than would be indicated by a pure supply & demand situation. And that's just one complication among many.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
The demand side in particular can be tweaked by human factors, though. We have advertising because the level of demand isn't some fundamental cosmic constant of the universe like the speed of light.
"The price went up 10%, that must be the 10% tariffs" is something consumers will inherently understand… but it's not the case. The 10% is not on the on-the-shelf price; it's on the wholesale price the importer's charging. The $20 shirt at Old Navy is probably $4 (with $0.40 in tariffs added) for tariff purposes… but they'll add $2 to it anyways, because consumers will go "oh ok". There's a massive information asymmetry here.
The unpredictable nature of these specific tariffs is fairly unique, too. The rates change randomly, with zero warning, and how they're set isn't sensical. With ships across the ocean taking weeks, that's gonna chill the supply side as well.
bryanlarsen · 22h ago
We recently had a good article about the tariffs and the price of shoes here which had a good explanation for why the retail price goes up at the same rate as the tariff. Sorry I can't find and link it.
1. The average apparel retail store margin is nominally 50%, but half of that margin is given back to the consumer for their ubiquitous sales. So that $20 shirt costs the store $10, but the average selling price is actually $15. So if they directly pass through the 10% tariff, it adds $1 to the average $15 sale on that $20 shirt.
2. Increased prices reduce sales. Non-product costs are fairly fixed, so just passing through the tariffs will have a significant impact on store profitability. Retail stores are going bankrupt left and right in this Amazon age. They don't have the capacity to absorb increased costs, if they don't pass them on they'll just go bankrupt more quickly. So that $1 in tariffs turns into a $1.50 price increase.
danesparza · 22h ago
You can increase demand as high as you'd like. If people don't have money to buy it, they're not going to buy it.
"You can see that the money runs out before the month is gone, you can see that people are buying smaller pack sizes at the end of the month," McMillon said.
They do need to eat, but they are eating less - and not by choice. They don't have the money to buy what they want to. No amount of advertising will fix that.
ceejayoz · 21h ago
Smaller pack sizes cost more per unit!
People think they're saving money that way. They often aren't.
evan_ · 21h ago
If you only have $10 you can’t buy the $12 pack with the lower per-unit price.
Being poor is expensive!
s1artibartfast · 20h ago
Calories are cheap. You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks.
Everything after that is preference substitution.
This doesn't invalidate consumer demand. People judge society and ultimately governments based on if they are able to obtain their preferences.
dh2022 · 18h ago
Re: "You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can you please let us know how can you get 2,000 calories for $2?
hollerith · 18h ago
Rice bought in bulk can certainly be had for that price per calorie with some left over for a little protein. I don't recommend anyone follow such a diet though.
alright2565 · 13h ago
I lived off $2/day in food for a few years in the US. Oat flour, protein powder, oil, and a multivitamin.
My approach was a little more engineered than most people's would be, but definitely possible if maybe you expanded it to $3/day or $4/day.
triceratops · 14h ago
Rice, beans, bananas, potatoes. It'll keep you alive but it won't be pretty.
s1artibartfast · 13h ago
In addition to what others said, I buy 2 roast chickens a week for $5 each.
Rice is $20/25 lbs, and 1600 calories/lb for 2000 calories/$
They are 6.5lbs after deboning. Cooked chicken skin on is 950 calories per pound. That is 620 calories/$.
Tortillas themselves are 110 cal, and 4.99 for 100ct, or 2200 cal/$
Yeul · 20h ago
Apparently my country is technically capable of being self sufficient but people diet would have to change back to the 19th century if we were completely cut off (no coffee, tea, tomatoes, bananas, shiracha sauce).
xnx · 22h ago
> Prices are always set by supply and demand.
True, but human psychology is a huge confounding factor. One area where this is evident is gas prices that "go up like a rocket, and come down like a feather" in response to crude oil prices. Simple supply and demand does not explain this.
dstroot · 22h ago
There is inelasticity in gas prices. If the cost of gas goes up you still have to drive to work and the supermarket. Eventually you buy a more fuel efficient car or switch to an EV.
4ndrewl · 20h ago
The reason the stock market is down is because of the raging uncertainty of the environment in which businesses have to navigate. Multi-month, let alone multi-year planning has become impossible. Businesses can deal with tariffs, taxes and costs. What they can't deal with is uncertainty.
enragedcacti · 22h ago
> Prices are always set by supply and demand.
Normally I'd make a joke about econ 101 but I'm pretty sure you'd lose points for answering with this in an econ 101 class
lvl155 · 22h ago
You ever heard of pricing power? Monopoly and monopsony?
weakfish · 22h ago
I am so tired of people echoing “supply and demand” like it’s Econ 101. The modern market is infinitely more complex with infinitely more ways to create inefficiencies that don’t respond to simple supply and demand.
barbecue_sauce · 19h ago
"Econ 101" people always seem to ignore that there are higher level economics courses that further expound upon the many complexities, nuances and vagaries of "supply and demand."
mindslight · 20h ago
The problem is that focusing on supply and demand ignores all the ways markets are sticky and not efficient. Asserting that markets are efficient is equivalent to asserting that P == NP.
It's especially galling because if markets actually worked this way, then central planning would work as well.
rlpb · 18h ago
Of course businesses charge the maximum the market will tolerate. That’s how it’s supposed to work. No need to treat this as surprising, nefarious or unexpected.
throwaway83845 · 22h ago
In my experience, once they raise prices due to "external reasons", once they lower prices they are almost always higher than the original price. At least for goods that people buy anyway
snarf21 · 22h ago
They did the same for inflation and oil prices and any other thing they can blame on someone else.
clbrmbr · 23h ago
100% this. I’d take it a step further and say that sales tax should be included when you are logged in and it can be anticipated, like is the case in most other countries.
bluGill · 22h ago
Sales tax cannot be per-calculated, since it is charged on the total sale. Rounding errors will get you. (when I worked fast food 30 years ago one value meal was $3.18, but two were $6.27) The government pays attention to this type of thing and they will get you for those pennies. (remember there are many governments, it is possibly all the local governments in question would decide not to pay attention, but that doesn't mean those rules apply to someone else who lives in a different area and thus has different local governments)
ceejayoz · 21h ago
> Sales tax cannot be per-calculated, since it is charged on the total sale.
Most of the developed world pre-calculates sales tax.
If McDonalds charges you $10.32 in Australia, the government gets $0.84(8181812...) of it. Rounding isn't an issue because you don't write a check for each individual $0.84(8181812...), you pay them the aggregate amount on a regular basis.
Eisenstein · 21h ago
Here is a list of 20 district sales taxes in California alone (out of ~150).
Los Angeles County Measure H: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 03-31-2025
City of Orland Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2017 to 03-31-2025
Rio Dell City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2015 to 12-31-2024
City of El Monte Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025
City of San Pablo Reduction Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 09-30-2022
Town of Truckee Trails Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 10-01-2014 to 09-30-2024
City of La Habra Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025
City of Seal Beach Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2019 to 03-31-2025
City of Westminster Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2017 to 12-31-2022
City of Pismo Beach Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 10-01-2008 to 03-31-2025
Pacific Grove City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 10-01-2008 to 09-30-2022
Town of San Anselmo Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2014 to 03-31-2023
City of Sausalito 2014 Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2015 to 03-31-2023
Mariposa County Healthcare Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2005 to 03-31-2025
Mendocino County Mental Health Treatment Act Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2018 to 03-31-2023
Mendocino Library Special Transactions and Use Tax: 0.125%, 04-01-2012 to 03-31-2023
City of Atwater Public Safety Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 07-01-2013 to 03-31-2023
City of Capitola Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 04-01-2005 to 03-31-2025
City of Campbell Vital City Services Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025
City of Davis Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 10-01-2014 to 03-31-2025
Are those based on the location of the seller or the location of the buyer?
Eisenstein · 19h ago
Buyer.
ceejayoz · 21h ago
Yes. This is silly. We should change it. (But it's largely an issue for online sales, not physical locations. The McDonalds in San Anselmo, barring The Big One, stays in San Anselmo.)
See also: American healthcare, college, etc. "Our setup is absurdly complex in bad ways" is not an argument for keeping that setup, it's an argument for making fixes.
bluGill · 20h ago
There are pros and cons. this system means a town isn't limited as to income because someone else won't allow the tax they want to pay
gamblor956 · 16h ago
Why is this silly? If you're selling something, sales tax (or in other parts of the world, VAT or GST) will be owed[1]. Different places will have different levels of commerce and budgetary requirements, and sales taxes are one of the ways they can fill their coffers. Allowing for local jurisdictions to set their own tax rates is part of the federal system of government; indeed in the U.S. it is arguable that a national sales tax rate a la Europe would be unconstitutional.
And why should we eliminate sales taxes, etc. for online sales? Isn't the whole point of software that it makes it trivial to handle multiple sales taxes?
[1] Sales tax, VAT, etc. are taxes on the buyer but are collected by the seller as a matter of administrative convenience. Use tax / reverse charge covers the situations where a non-local seller doesn't collect the tax, but compliance was so low in the first several decades of e-commerce that every government around the world decided to expand sales tax compliance for online sales to non-local sellers.
ceejayoz · 15h ago
> Why is this silly?
Because it's an immense amount of paperwork, compliance, legal risk, etc. all to avoid just setting a more reasonable state/federal level of taxation. The US has a deeply weird attitude towards any changes to taxation.
> And why should we eliminate sales taxes, etc. for online sales?
No one's proposing that. Online sales just introduce the issue of not knowing the tax jurisdiction that's applicable for a brand-new shopper.
gamblor956 · 5h ago
just setting a more reasonable state/federal level of taxation.
We have reasonable levels of taxation right now. 0% federal rate, because the Constitution does not allow for a federal sales tax. States can set their own rates based on their own needs, just like every member of the EU can set its own rate. And counties and cities can tag-along with their state's sales tax.
This was complicated back in the day when it was all paper tables. Software makes it easy. Excel makes it easy, and the dedicated sales tax SaaS make it even easier.
At my last company, we handled hundreds of thousands of sales a day globally and my tax department spent less than four hours each month on sales tax/VAT compliance because we used Avalara to handle sales tax rate lookups and compliance. (The four hours were for filing the VAT returns in the two dozen countries we couldn't file through Avalara.) To put it in terms a programmer would understand: each month, my entire department spent less time on sales tax compliance than the average Typescript programmer spends on compiling.
Online sales just introduce the issue of not knowing the tax jurisdiction that's applicable for a brand-new shopper.
That has been an issue for decades, and people got along just fine in the days when they had to do it by hand.
Eisenstein · 19h ago
I agree and never made the argument it should not be fixed. It is cause and effect, however.
pentamassiv · 22h ago
Sure it can. It works perfectly fine in many other countries.
xienze · 21h ago
There's a slight difference between having one tax rate at the country level and having numerous differing state and local sales tax rates. You don't even know what to charge the customer until you know their exact location.
ceejayoz · 21h ago
Other countries have states and cities, too.
(And in the fast food example, the customer's home location doesn't matter. The store's does.)
xienze · 21h ago
But do they have the same kind of state and local sales tax rules that we do? Again, _you can't know the price to display if you don't know where exactly in the country the package is going_. It is not possible to display the "final price" in US online stores ahead of checkout unless the user is already logged in AND the shipping address is the same as where the user lives.
The juice is not worth the squeeze for online retailers. Users are used to seeing the final amount at checkout and you know, it's really not that hard to mentally estimate <price of thing I'm buying plus 10%> (which is actually usually an overestimate).
pentamassiv · 2h ago
There are a lot of people who cannot calculate what 10% more equals to. You mentioned that's an estimate and often not correct, so even if you do the calculation, there's a good chance it's wrong. A lot of people are on a budget and what is a rounding error to you, could be the difference between being able to afford it or not for them.
In Germany different tax rates apply to items that you need to survive such as food and other goods. It can be difficult to know which rate applies to a product. The good thing is you don't need to know because the total price is displayed
ceejayoz · 21h ago
That's an argument for fixing the rules. As functional rules in this regard are clearly possible to create.
The EU has a similar smattering of disparate jurisdictions (with varying VAT rates) just like the US does.
xienze · 20h ago
Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US. Again, not quite as simple as you're making it out to be. And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total?
ceejayoz · 20h ago
> Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US.
Cool, great place to start. Let's fix that. Both have similar land mass, similar populations, similar balance of federal-ish and state-ish and local-ish governance, similar cultures, etc.
> And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total?
Surely handling 13k tax jurisdictions is expensive for businesses and consumers on many levels?
bluGill · 19h ago
what are the unintended concecuences of your plan? Until you figure themout don't propose a change as it might be overall worse.
ceejayoz · 19h ago
Proposal: Brick-and-mortar stores, at least, should have to list in-store prices inclusive of tax.
Unintended consequences: None?
jtgeibel · 15h ago
Forcing brick-and-mortar stores to show a higher price including tax than that shown by online stores seems like it would have some unintended consequences. It would likely push more people towards online purchases even if the final price is identical.
ceejayoz · 15h ago
I deliberately browse AirBnB's Australian version because it tells me the actual cost of the listing, inclusive of tax and fees.
Prices are already quite different between online and in-person shopping.
ttepasse · 12h ago
For a computer what is the difference between 27 and 13000?
skeletal88 · 20h ago
In the EU, when I go to some online shop it first lets me chooose my language (and country), then it displays all the prices with the correct VAT amount.
You in the US keep saying "we are so special, so it is impossible to change things for the better in any way". While other countries also have complex rules for similar things yet they still manage to provide a better experience for shoppers, citizens, sick people - everyone.
jay_kyburz · 13h ago
need to get DOGE on it.
AStonesThrow · 20h ago
> one value meal was $3.18, but two were $6.27
That sure is a HUGE rounding error! 9¢ savings by doubling up is nothing to sneeze at!
> they will get you for those pennies
Was your restaurant ever audited? That is a lot of pennies!
bluGill · 19h ago
Opps, my memory of prices is obviously wrong after 30 years. I can't tell you which number is right though.
One penny times the thousand or so meals per day over a year adds up. I don't know if we were audited - but I' s we would have been shut down for failing the audit.
blululu · 20h ago
Agreed in practice, but there is a key difference: sales tax is uniform for all products, import tariffs are not. As a customer I want to effectively compare prices between different options. For sales tax you can simply assume a uniform 9% bump. For tariffs the fee varies for comparable products. I would prefer knowing the full price ahead of times but I absolutely need to know the relative price ranking.
phil21 · 19h ago
> but there is a key difference: sales tax is uniform for all products
Sales tax is not uniform for all products depending on your state. My home state for example does not charge sales tax on food items and clothing. Some other special categories also have different sales tax depending on what they are - e.g. vice taxes for some items.
xsmasher · 19h ago
Technically right but doesn't change their point. Sales tax is uniform for comparable products, tariffs are not.
throwaway7894 · 23h ago
In stores yes, but on the Internet, including it in the price makes it easier to bump up prices. Showing the price without tariff allows you to easily compare before / after, and then when you see tariff added to your bottom line order (e.g. on Amazon) it should drive home the point that tariffs are a tax paid for by the consumers (which unfortunately lots of people still dont believe).
zmgsabst · 22h ago
I actually think that would backfire:
I see two items for $5, but when I add the imported one, suddenly it costs more — and Amazon didn’t tell me that ahead of time or give me any way to choose the one without tariffs on the grid/list view.
This makes tariffs more effective because they can’t bump the domestic price to match — while giving customers a negative chock each time they choose an importer for a product.
throwaway7894 · 22h ago
In your example, why would the domestic seller keep their price at $5 if the other option costs $15?
They'll just raise the price of the domestic good to $13 and we will all pay $8 extra on a thing that used to cost $5.
If the price displayed is still $5 but tariffs added at the end, the domestic seller's $13 sticker price will not look attractive to buyers.
ethbr1 · 21h ago
To capture market share.
For goods that have alternatives, businesses may choose to under-price (relative to their tariffed competitors) in order to gain sales and customers.
sowbug · 22h ago
You say this as if the domestic seller wouldn't also raise prices.
Yeul · 20h ago
I certainly would! If the foreign competition is now cut off I'd raise prices just below them. To do otherwise would be stupid.
This is were tariffs can go horribly wrong: it destroys the incentive for competition between companies.
pentamassiv · 21h ago
A few days ago I tried ordering a bottle cage for my bike from the US. The price was 22.95€. At the checkout, they added a "Tariff Recovery fee" of 1.84€. On top of that, they charged 60.25€ for shipping. The grand total was 80.04€.
I stopped trying to buy stuff from the US, because there's always a ton of added costs
breadwinner · 22h ago
> Some sectors have been doing this for years - "service fees" at restaurants...
If the additional fees is government-forced, such as taxes, then it makes sense to display it separately. You are throwing government-forced costs and regular business costs in the same bucket. If tariffs should be included in the listed price then why not taxes?
pentamassiv · 22h ago
I think they want the price to be the amount they will have to pay to get the item or service. On the bill you can then split up the price into taxes, tariffs and whatever else you want so they are not thrown into the same bucket.
That way there's no surprise at the checkout and you still see how much of the money goes to whom.
It works very well in the rest of the world
breadwinner · 20h ago
The reason that works in the rest of the world is, taxes are the same throughout the country. For example in the UK, the standard VAT rate (20%) applies uniformly to most goods, throughout the UK. So the price can be printed on the label. In the US some states have no sales tax at all, for example Oregon.
Arainach · 22h ago
These generally aren't taxes. These are conservative business owners complaining about having to pay a living wage rather than a poverty wage.
When the rent goes up, the prices change. When insurance goes up, prices change. When labor costs go up it's a "service charge"? That's garbage, just set your prices accordingly.
breadwinner · 22h ago
Tariffs are not labor costs.
Arainach · 21h ago
This thread is about "service fees" at restaraunts.
floxy · 14h ago
>Especially because these scams actually work - the reason restaurants give for not just increasing their menu prices is because higher listed prices drive people away.
Is there a good way to account for the loss of customers from this practice? I have certainly opted out of restaurants with extra fees.
Aissen · 22h ago
> aside from sales tax not being included, but that's been universally true in the US forever so everyone is used to it.
Why are you putting this under the rug so easily? It's never too late to changes those ludicrous behaviors, even if everyone is accustomed to it.
crazygringo · 22h ago
It's not about being used to it. There's good reason sales tax isn't included in the price, which is that sales tax varies locally. It isn't even the same per ZIP code. You couldn't advertise a statewide or nationwide price if you had to include sales tax. You couldn't display prices online at all until you entered your full address, which seems antithetical to privacy.
This is different from most other countries, where the tax is the same nation-wide.
mrguyorama · 19h ago
This is a distraction.
The regional supermarket chain in new england that is owned by kroger ALREADY localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE despite every store in the state having the exact same tax rates.
They STILL don't include the tax in the price listed because fuck you, this is america
gruez · 18h ago
>The regional supermarket chain in new england that is owned by kroger ALREADY localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE despite every store in the state having the exact same tax rates.
Do they actually "localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE", or you only think that way because they ask for the exact store location to view their flyers? It could very well be that they ask the exact store for analytics purposes, but all the stores have the same flyer.
crazygringo · 13h ago
No, it's not a distraction.
Not all ads are weekly sales flyers, obviously. And not all states have the same sales tax throughout, of course.
Also, you know that most items in a Kroger's don't even have sales tax in the first place? So that's an odd place to use as an example.
CivBase · 22h ago
Probably because it's just not as impactful as hidden tariff costs would be. Sales tax is relatively small and consistent. Depending on the product a tariff could be negligable or it could double the sticker price and the customer would have no way of knowing until checkout.
dboreham · 23h ago
Perhaps whoever decided to impose massive sales taxes (tariffs) should have thought of that?
ryandrake · 22h ago
It’s kind of petty to list tariffs as a separate line item and not all the other costs that contribute to the final price. Why just the tariffs, unless Amazon is trying to make a political point?
It strikes me as just as petty as when restaurants started listing “Living Wage Fee” on their bills. They’re bitching and moaning directly to the customer just because they need to pay their staff more and they’re butthurt about it. Why not list all the restaurant’s costs as line items on the bill? They could list the customer’s proportion of the restaurant’s rent, electricity charge, water bill, licensing and taxes if they wanted to. But no, all they put in your face is the Living Wage Fee.
xnx · 22h ago
> It’s kind of petty to list tariffs as a separate line item and not all the other costs that contribute to the final price
I can see that, but these tariffs seem unique in that they are 1) sudden 2) significant 3) broad 4) totally unmotivated
ceejayoz · 22h ago
And 5) change unpredictably and rapidly.
Rates that change from day to day is a serious problem when shipping containers on a boat takes weeks or months.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
> Why just the tariffs, unless Amazon is trying to make a political point?
Why would they not want to make this political point?
echoangle · 22h ago
They are making a point, probably hoping that it will help abolish the tariffs (which they fear will reduce their profit by reducing consumption).
bathtub365 · 22h ago
This seems in line with other government taxes on goods that the consumer ends up paying, like sales tax.
gruez · 18h ago
>It’s kind of petty to list tariffs as a separate line item and not all the other costs that contribute to the final price.
Like sales taxes? Or environmental disposal fees? Both are listed separately in my experience.
welshwelsh · 20h ago
What's wrong with Amazon trying to make a political point?
Amazon is obviously trying to pressure the Trump admin into easing the tariffs. Why wouldn't they? Why shouldn't they? Amazon is as much a political actor as any other company, and they have a major stakeholder when it comes to tariff policy.
mrguyorama · 19h ago
>What's wrong with Amazon trying to make a political point?
Mainly with the concept of letting a ginormous multinational megacorp with more money and resources than 99.9% of the rest of America combined influence our political process is literally how we got here.
The CEO of Amazon is welcome to lobby as himself but letting an extremely already privileged legal fiction (an LLC) have more power over our society is just dumb.
Eextra953 · 22h ago
I'm not sure why so many comments think this is a bad idea. I think it's a great idea and should be adopted by all retailers. We already do the same thing with sales tax. Tarriffs are close to sales tax in there effect to consumers so it makes sense to show it up front. It lets customers see just how much more they have to pay due to the, ever changing, tariffs.
Good for Amazon.
flutas · 21h ago
In a roundabout way it also lets you know what products are manufactured in countries other than China, allowing you to choose them over the Chinese equivalent.
beloch · 21h ago
It's apparently a partisan issue. Take a look at the White House's response.
> * White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had discussed the Punchbowl News report with Trump, and his message about it was: "This is a hostile and political act by Amazon." * [1]
The Trump administration has expressed a clear expectation that businesses like Amazon should pretend tariffs are paid by foreign countries. Transparent pricing is now disloyal.
The cope I have been reading on the MAGA side is that now you can see which products are from America or not from China. The white House should have went with that message, but they can't stop being butt hurt all the time.
Terr_ · 8h ago
Even if we charitably ignore the way this administration has contradicted itself, and assume they really do want to spur a change in what Americans buy... I see no innocent explanation for these unconstitutional threats against transparency and free speech.
The simplest explanation is that they want to deceive consumers/taxpayers into blaming higher prices on corporate whim, instead of their decision to take the money away by import taxes.
croes · 18h ago
I guess they aren’t such a big fan of transparency as they claimed
taytus · 20h ago
Just because the White House say it is a partisan issue, doesn’t make it one.
ModernMech · 18h ago
Huh? They are the partisans. If they make it an issue, it’s a partisan issue.
s1artibartfast · 19h ago
Here's a few good reasons that have been thrown out. First is that they're unlikely to implement it accurately, applying a percent to the retailers and Amazon's profit, instead of the cost of goods. Another is that it reveals a lot of business information about margins.
stevenwoo · 15h ago
They caved as soon as Trump complained.
jl6 · 1d ago
Presumably they can determine this for items directly imported, but for all other cases (such as a made-in-the-USA product that is built using made-in-China tools, or from made-in-China components), surely the cost impact on the final product could be extremely complex to work out, if they even have access to that level of supply chain detail?
hippich · 1d ago
Last 2 or 3 years we use their AGL service. I am pretty sure a lot of their third party sellers are. So they will have exact information on custom duties paid.
conductr · 23h ago
If the product was made in US but used a dozen raw materials to create it, Amazon doesn’t know where you sourced them from or how much you paid for them or even how much of each your product consumed in a per unit basis.
SecretDreams · 22h ago
The only tariff Amazon needs to display is the one they need to collect. You are right that more tariffs might've been applied along the way - but it's not relevant for what Amazon has to do.
conductr · 21h ago
The article being discussed isn’t about what Amazon has to do. It’s about them trying to expose the cost of tariffs so consumers know more than they typically do. It’s completely voluntary and intentional on their part. They’re basically quantifying the impact of trumps policies, probably in a way that will change people’s ideas about how it affects their pocketbook. In a way, they’re playing politics with this.
SecretDreams · 16h ago
Amazon is in the business of selling shit. Tariffs will make them sell less stuff. By exposing the component of cost associated with tariffs, Amazon at least informs the customer why business is more expensive lately.
It is "playing politics" the same way listing the effect of taxes on the final cost of something is "playing politics".
This is just useful information for the consumer. It's absolutely absurd to think informing a customer of a cost increase is political.
therealpygon · 13h ago
Amazing how providing facts is now “playing politics”. No one seemed to have a problem with labels when they were slapping Biden stickers on private gas pumps, but I’m sure that is totally different and way more accurate than having provable data and listing it on the cost it incurs.
No comments yet
crazygringo · 22h ago
Does Amazon collect any tariffs at all? That would be unusual for a retailer.
Unless they're registered as an importer? I could see that as a service they might provide to certain sellers, just like warehousing and other logistics.
But generally, they will receive their merchandise from a corporate entity who paid the tariff already.
throwup238 · 21h ago
Amazon AGL handles direct to warehouse shipping for importers. Amazon won’t be the importer of record for you (the IOR is the one responsible for making sure tariffs are paid) but since they’re the ones handling the goods at the port, they need all the documentation from the IOR which will include tariffs paid.
It doesn’t apply to parts imported and assembled in the US before going to the Amazon fulfillment warehouses, but it does work for their direct to warehouse imports.
SecretDreams · 21h ago
I'll say regardless of it's Amazon or the last party in-line prior to the final sale, my point is the same. They're just displaying the last tariff that was collected before it enters into the hands of the consumer.
cj · 23h ago
I think the GP is asking about “Assembled in the USA” products where individual components are imported from around the world.
Wouldn’t “custom duties paid” be on each individual component?
abirch · 1d ago
A lazy way to do this is to take the current price as the non tariff price and assume any increase in price is based on tariffs.
maxvisser · 1d ago
Some Amazon programmer tomorrow
priceIncrease := (newPrice - oldPrice) / oldPrice
var trump_tariff bool
if priceIncrease > 1.0 {
trump_tariff = true
}
unwind · 1d ago
Please don't use if:s to assign boolean literals, just do it:
const trump_tariff = priceIncrease > 1.0
also saves you from not initializing the variable in the default/other case. :)
Upvoter33 · 23h ago
This was just someone showing you what the "Amazon programmer" was doing, and hence a deep cut reference to the likelihood of it being poor quality code :)
TheSoftwareGuy · 23h ago
If you really wanted to look like Amazon codex you would write Java :)
maxvisser · 19h ago
I see I missed an opportunity to make it even funnier.
throwaway519 · 23h ago
const
I feel you may underestimate how often they change.
grokkedit · 23h ago
not to mention the mix of snake_case & camelCase
Someone · 23h ago
In the original code, trump_tariff is a sticky value. If that’s intended/not intended, the above introduces/fixes a bug.
ImHereToVote · 23h ago
If statements are great because they are highly readable.
bee_rider · 22h ago
Seems novel and kinda “going out on a limb,” sort of unlikely for a big entity like Amazon, right?
I wonder if they will just allow their suppliers to add in an additional “my tariff costs” number, which the supplier can compute however they want and be responsible for. (This would be on top of the main tariff price, the one paid directly by Amazon, which of course they’ll have receipts for).
parrit · 1d ago
Then increase the price!
littlestymaar · 1d ago
That would also be quite a misleading way to do it.
acdha · 1d ago
I’m sure it would be off in some cases, but “quite misleading” seems like an exaggeration: the economy was steadily growing and there weren’t any major drivers of inflation other than Trump’s massive tax hike.
graemep · 1d ago
There are other sources of price changes - commodities prices, exchange rates, taxes in originating countries, costs of transport....
acdha · 1d ago
Yes, but how many of those dramatically jumped recently? Two years from now, sure, you’ll have to ask about other things but it’s not like the commodities market had other massive upsets this month.
graemep · 20h ago
Oil has varied in a range of about 23% in the last few weeks, and the USD to CNY rate. Raw material for many things (like plastics) and obviously used for transport.
acdha · 15h ago
Oil has gone down, though, and the primary driver for the volatility was the tariffs. It’s not like there was a big change in production or something like the pandemic causing millions of people to change their driving habits.
Again, the question is simply what non-tariff factor would explain non-trivial prices over a month? If there isn’t one, it doesn’t seem unfair to attribute the increase to a huge policy change.
littlestymaar · 2h ago
> Again, the question is simply what non-tariff factor would explain non-trivial prices over a month?
Having the most economically clueless US president in a century and watching his erratic behavior in real time.
Tariffs are only a small piece of the puzzle.
CamperBob2 · 20h ago
Oil has primarily gone down. Demand destruction tends to do that.
graemep · 18h ago
It went up then down. Either way, its still makes the assumption that "price change is purely due to tariffs" inaccurate - it just changes the direction of the error.
bee_rider · 22h ago
I don’t think they are going to do some novel calculation or go out on a limb much at all.
I mean, passing along tax information is a political act (in the same way not showing items on the shelf with sales tax, and then including it on your bill is an anti-sales-tax political statement—the point is to blame the government for an annoying surprise), but it is (I think, at least) widely seen as sort of… normal acceptable behavior in the US.
mrits · 1d ago
I don't think it takes much thinking to realize how misleading this is. I'd really be interested in Prime Day when tariffs are decreasing everything
acdha · 23h ago
Can you give an example? Usually short term price fluctuation would be in response to something like a sudden change in market demand or something like a natural disaster lowering production but nothing like that seems to have happened other than the largest tax increase in U.S. history and the demand shock from the federal cuts should be lowering prices, not raising them.
littlestymaar · 20h ago
> Usually short term price fluctuation would be in response to something like a sudden change in market demand or something like a natural disaster lowering production
That's theoretical economics, meanwhile in the real world, retail stores change the prices of goods depending on the weather or holidays.
acdha · 15h ago
And in your theory thousands of vendors around the world all randomly did this in the same direction at the same time? It’s not like chocolate eggs before Easter are the only thing going up while the rest of the economy is chugging along like normal.
Similarly, weather could explain the decline of winter gear sales in the northern hemisphere or specific commodities being hit by a storm but that wouldn’t affect the whole economy and we’d all have seen coverage of some epic monsoon or drought if it was that impactful.
littlestymaar · 7h ago
I just gave you examples of the most common reasons for price changes that your mental model wasn't taking into account.
Prices vary based on many more factors than what you think it does, that's it.
> all randomly did this in the same direction at the same time
Who says it's random? Most of the variation is very likely linked to the US government actions, but the first order effect of actual tariffs is far from the only way the Trump administration is messing up the economy. In fact, the mess started long before the tariffs actually went enforced and it didn't stop when they where suspended.
mrits · 22h ago
Price fluctuation doesn't usually depend on market demand or natural disasters. How you got that idea is beyond me.
acdha · 20h ago
All I’m talking about is basic supply and demand: if prices suddenly go up significantly, that usually means that there is either a big change in demand or the supply has become limited and buyers are having to pay more. A big natural disaster can cause that if it affects agricultural supply, shipping, or factory production (e.g. years ago, flooding in Thailand caused hard drive prices to double[1]).
My point was simply that since nothing like that has happened, prices spiking is almost certainly due solely to the tariffs.
The problem is that you are invoking a crude theory in a simplistic fashion that has with very little predictive power over the real world.
It's as if you told a guy working in a ski station that “the temperature cannot be above 0°C as there's snow everywhere and everyone knows that snow melts above zero”.
It's not how it works, and the economy doesn't work in the simplified fashion you seem to believe it does either. You cannot reason from first principles using “basic supply and demand” arguments like that any more than you can make statements about the weather using the second law of thermodynamics.
Price change all the time for variety of reasons, seasons being one of them (that's why CPI figures are said to be “seasonally adjusted”, BTW).
acdha · 15h ago
> The problem is that you are invoking a crude theory in a simplistic fashion that has with very little predictive power over the real world.
I appreciate the mix of unwarranted condescension with the assertion that the theory that sudden tariffs cause sudden price increases doesn’t have predictive value, when basically every sober analyst predicted what we are seeing now.
It’s not exactly a secret that prices fluctuate seasonally but what we’re seeing now is spread across the entire economy, suddenly, and in sectors which do not normally experience that seasonal volatility.
littlestymaar · 7h ago
> what we’re seeing now is spread across the entire economy, suddenly
Including in sectors that aren't affected by tariffs at all, that's the thing.
> the assertion that the theory that sudden tariffs cause sudden price increases doesn’t have predictive value, when basically every sober analyst predicted what we are seeing now.
You are misunderstanding. Tariffs will cause price increase with certainty. But so will lowering the USD value on FX markets, and so will adding massive uncertainty to businesses (including, but not limited to, the prospect of higher inflation in the near future), etc.
Tariffs will cause price hikes, but attempting to measure tariffs effect by observing price variations simply cannot work.
Real life prices are influenced by much more than just supply and demand.
littlestymaar · 20h ago
I've been convinced for a while that teaching economics broadly is a mistake, people who have taken a minimum amount of economics class do in fact understand less how the economy works than people who don't…
mrits · 20h ago
People that actually have ran a business and priced stuff generally have a better idea of how pricing works
littlestymaar · 16h ago
Exactly.
reverendsteveii · 21h ago
Let's POSIWID this for a second. Perfect accuracy isn't the goal here, nor does it meaningfully contribute to the goal. The goal is messaging, it's about drawing a line in consumers' brains between the price increases and Trump. If it were me I'd just take the pre-tariff price, work out a post-tariff price and then assign the blame for the difference between them to Trump. No one is gonna check up on this, and it has the narrative on its side. Even Trump's supporters acknowledge that his tariffs are gonna raise prices, they're just integrating that fact by saying it's for the greater good and it'll bring manufacturing back home and put a chicken in every garage and a car in every pot and all of that. Amazon just wants to hammer him on this because even after Lord Bezos bent the knee, donated tons of money and used his power to manipulate the media in favor of Trump Trump still went ahead with moves that will consolidate his own power but cost his nobles a ton of money.
dagaci · 1d ago
Surely they will have receipts for the tariffs paid…
stetrain · 23h ago
Company A imports steel and pays a tariff, uses the steels to make screws in the US.
Company B imports lumber and pays a tariff, manufacturers it into furniture rails in the US.
Company C buys furniture rails from Company B and screws from Company A and assembles them into an end table.
Company D buys the end tables wholesale from Company C and distributes them on Amazon.
How does Amazon display the tariffs paid by Company A and B and correctly show the price difference in the final product?
bdavisx · 23h ago
Yes, that would be complicated. EXCEPT most of what amazon sells is Company A in China makes product -> Company B imports and sells on amazon. That's easy to calculate.
stetrain · 23h ago
You're right, but the parent comment was asking about the exception to that majority.
dgfitz · 23h ago
A and B passed along the tariff costs to C, which passed those costs to D. D now costs more, assuming they pass the delta cost to the consumer. The only delta a customer cares about is the past/current cost of D, which is what amazon would presumably display.
Isn't this the horn everyone keeps trumpeting? It doesn't seem complicated.
conductr · 22h ago
There’s a million reasons besides tariffs a cost may increase. Sellers with no tariffs will just increase prices to pad profits if they’re given an opportunity to let Amazon pin it on tariffs. There is a lot of evidence supporting the theory that this type of manufactured inflation is what drove the recent pandemic era inflation. Corporate profits alone are the best indicator of this occurring. They raised prices by a lot more than their cost increased because they could hand wave broadly at inflation.
rsynnott · 21h ago
> Sellers with no tariffs will just increase prices to pad profits if they’re given an opportunity to let Amazon pin it on tariffs
Well, realistically they'll do that _anyway_. If you decrease price competition, prices go up. That is the order of things.
conductr · 20h ago
A lot of things go counter to economic theory. If you’re an American company used to selling 30% above Chinese competitors, you likely can’t ramp up production quickly or will hesitate to make the decision but will likely increase your prices simply because you can and partly because you’re used to the charging x% over Chinese goods. You may even feel being price competitive with China lessens your perceived value, quality, etc. in the consumer’s minds.
dgfitz · 21h ago
I'd rather solve that problem than the tariff thing. I was thinking just this morning about the bull-whip effect that never came.
mightyham · 22h ago
It is complicated because tariffs are not just "passed off". In the real world, tariffs are almost always marginal, meaning each company is willing to absorb some of the cost, ie lower profits. In parent's example, the US has a large steel industry and rail companies relying on imports cannot arbitrarily raise prices because they need to stay competitive with companies using domestic. Markets are also dynamic and simply comparing pre/post price may work temporarily, but for a persistent tariff that metric will become increasingly meaningless as price inevitably fluctuates due to other factors.
stetrain · 22h ago
Prices fluctuate all the time especially on Amazon items. Inflation is also a factor. Just taking prices from Jan 19, 2025 as a baseline and attributing all other changes to tariffs isn't going to be accurate.
myrmidon · 23h ago
This doesn't help; e.g. if you buy sneakers made in the US, those might be affected by leather import tariffs, but Amazon is not gonna know by how much and manufacturers are gonna be cagey with exact numbers.
scotty79 · 23h ago
They can put up "up to x" for products which provenience in not known. And if you want to bring it down you need to present 3rd party audit result about how much of your price comes from US.
ChrisMarshallNY · 21h ago
I was just talking to a couple friends of mine, about this, yesterday. They run a medium-sized manufacturing business that has almost all their work done overseas.
Another friend of mine was just laid off, as a transportation broker, directly because of the tariffs.
The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight.
I feel as if this was not well thought-out. Maybe megacorps, like Tesla, can weather it, but many smaller businesses have no buffer.
That said, the manufacturing imbalance and trade imbalance is a very real problem that needs to be solved. I just feel as if we are approaching it in a manner that is simplistic, and favors only very large corporations.
andrewflnr · 21h ago
> I feel as if this was not well thought-out.
No need to hedge. Anyone with their head on the right way around can see how much thought went into it.
bloudermilk · 21h ago
It’s as if these policies were created without any concern for the well being of SMBs and consumers.
sorcerer-mar · 19h ago
It is a literal stupid person calling the shots. He literally thinks trade deficits are the US "losing" or "giving away" money to foreign countries, and he believes (correctly, in a way) that we can tariff our way to perfect trade balance.
garciasn · 20h ago
s/SMB.*$/anyone./g
atoav · 19h ago
"Not well thought out"? This was the equivalent of putting on a blindfold and throwing random darts at a world map.
On top of that the reasons they gave are contradictory, because in the end the truth is the tariffs were based on the vibes one specific man had held since the 80s. However the world is very different since then.
Not even the numbers make sense. If the goal was to punish people with whom the US has a high trade deficit, why slap a 10% fee on those who don't have a trade deficit at all? This tells countries: "No matter what you do, we will abuse our position of power anyways" instead of telling them "If you behave we both will benefit".
But maybe that wasn't the reason, instead it was manufacturing? Then why on earth not pair tariffs with incentives and help for corporations who want to move their production lines to the US? With the current volatile climate in the US nobody is going to move anything, except maybe away from the US.
andrewflnr · 13h ago
Let's be careful. It wasn't really "vibes", especially not at the start. There was a very clear cut ("simplistic" would be too generous) formula that determined the tariffs. Granted, probably the tone of the "negotiations" since then has been vibe-influenced...
atoav · 3h ago
The formula is utterly nonsensical.
Sorry, but I have first semester art students who apply more care when choosing electronic components for their first project after 8 hours of instructions. And art students are not exactly known to be math-heads.
The first thing you'd do is to check for edge cases, like how the formula treats countries that you just extract wealth from like Lesotho. If you have 10 interns spending 20 minutes on each of the 194 countries that takes you a single 8 hour work day tops.
DrillShopper · 19h ago
> The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight.
That is their goal - to drive out the small and medium businesses so that the president's donors can swoop in with private capital offers to enrich themselves.
sorcerer-mar · 19h ago
No it's not. He's just a very unintelligent person surrounded by sycophants. Trump almost certainly doesn't even have an ulterior motive here. He has loudly proclaimed for decades his belief that trade deficits are the same as a subsidy or giveaway to the other country.
DrillShopper · 19h ago
I never said it was explicitly Trump's goal, just that it was (with his knowing or not, and him not knowing is much more concerning) the goal of his administration (the people who really run the economic policy) here.
sorcerer-mar · 18h ago
I think that may be their goals, but also that the policy is not actually being driven by their goals. The tariff rates were calculated by trade deficits. That's it. That has "following stupid dictate from Dear Leader" written all over it.
reverendsteveii · 21h ago
"This is hostile and political."
--The President. No, Really.
Surely he should be proud of his bigly beautiful tariffs, and happy to have them prominently displayed, that a grateful public might marvel at them.
Der_Einzige · 20h ago
And since now we have the ERS, I shouldn't have to pay my federal income taxes anymore, since Trump said he'd get rid of the IRS and abolish it!
wombat-man · 20h ago
I can't tell if they still, genuinely, just don't understand how tariffs work and how they are charged. But if they're lying... why? to what end?
People are going to notice when prices are jacked up or stores are empty.
reverendsteveii · 20h ago
The point of the tariffs is rolling them back when the entity being punished does what Trump wants them to do. This was revealed in the initial stutterstep rollout of tariffs against Canada and Mexico. They both gave him political victories on the border, and in exchange the tariffs were delayed.
Quit assuming he wants what he says he wants and start assuming he wants the obvious, easily-predictable consequences of his actions.
mrguyorama · 19h ago
If Fox News never tells them that increasing prices are Trump's fault, they will never turn on him. People need to stop treating his supporters as rational people just missing some information.
It's a classic cult of personality. They ignore reality as Trump demands.
There is no way out of this by insisting that they will naturally snap out of it. That's never been how cults of personality end.
neogodless · 21h ago
Technically Karoline Leavitt said it.
reverendsteveii · 21h ago
thank you for correcting me. the point still stands: it's really weird the way the government uses "political" as a pejorative when everything they do is, by definition, political. it smacks of doublethink.
pessimizer · 20h ago
Not if your point was that Trump Really Said It. You said one thing and it was wrong. And since it was in the second sentence of the article you linked, I assume you just read the headline.
reverendsteveii · 20h ago
I...just told you what my point was in the comment you're replying to?
bigyabai · 19h ago
It really is a direct quote from Donald Trump:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier she had discussed the initial news with Trump and his response was: “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.”
Thank you for correcting my correction! I didn't get that deep.
insane_dreamer · 20h ago
She speaks on behalf of the President.
DamnInteresting · 18h ago
> President Donald Trump personally called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday to complain about about a report that the online retail giant was considering displaying U.S. tariff costs on its product listings [...] Within hours of the call, Amazon publicly downplayed the scope of its plan — and then announced that it had been scrapped entirely.
Apparently Amazon's temporary spine was made of slugs, and it just got salted.
pessimizer · 20h ago
I mean, it is a manufactured story that Amazon denies. It was obviously crafted as a hostile political act by whoever made it up (or exaggerated a random remark someone made.)
I don't understand your point. Am I supposed to be shocked that people could be politically hostile towards Trump? Am I supposed to be shocked that his press secretary accused Amazon of being politically hostile towards Trump? Is there a new "norm" of Presidents never accusing critics of being hostile or trying to score political points?
reverendsteveii · 20h ago
The denial from amazon is only half an hour old as of this writing, which means it was about 6 minutes old when you posted this. and again, as I had said plainly before you even joined this thread, the thing I want to discuss is politicians using the word 'political' as a pejorative. I think it's interesting how he seems to be redefining the term and taking advantage of everyone else's distaste for it in order to make what other people do "political" (conniving, backstabbing, and all sorts of other negative connotations) whereas what he does AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is not "political".
TrackerFF · 1d ago
Cool, it is rare to see that kind of transparency. I live in a country with both tariffs / import taxes on a bunch of items, and a general VAT. VAT (25%) is the only thing you ever see as a consumer, and other taxes (like for exmaple 10.7% on clothes imported to my country) are hidden away by the stores.
I've been checking out some of the aliexpress / temu / etc. subreddits, and US consumers are losing their marbles over the new import duties. Most stores have now rolled out those on check-out.
op00to · 1d ago
Who says it will be right? There are no real consumer protections any more. Why not just lie about it?
mrarjen · 1d ago
Flipping from discount everything store to monopolistic price gauging power house.
xtiansimon · 23h ago
Interesting.
AliExpress added this last week as a line item cost during checkout.
I took up a new hobby in 2021 and was buying materials from Amazon and eBay. There’s more transparency on eBay for products shipped directly from China. As a result I stated to realize when shopping on Amazon (and not buying a known Branded Manufacturer, but choosing same category product at lower price) I was buying the exact same low quality Chinese products on Amazon as I was buying on eBay and paying more. Of course, Amazon has better customer service and more consistent return policies compared to eBay stores. There’s benefits for the price, but the products are the same.
Then I discovered AliExpress, and found the same products I was buying on eBay, and Amazon, but my costs were even less. Downside was longer shipping times, and (effectively) no returns.
Last week I looked to buy more materials at AliExpress, and found the line item tariff cost had doubled the price.
I think you see the differences I’m highlighting here are cost and customer service—ALL for the SAME products.
I’m bummed my hobby costs are going up for the same quality products. I’m bummed the sub-800$ exemption is going away.
I believe AliExpress is the Chinese equivalent of eBay. Everybody is buying from the wholesale marketplace, Alibaba. If an Amazon seller is adding tariffs, then I think they’re an AliExpress seller on the Amazon platform.
largbae · 22h ago
Would this not reveal every importer's gross margin to its competitors? The tariff is only on the importer's "landed cost". If the tariff is itemized(and not just a made up number by the seller), then you can easily work out their gross profit margin and the price they are paying their OEM.
It seems like no seller would want this.
aaronbaugher · 22h ago
Yeah, it won't last. They'll decide it's too revealing, or too hard to calculate an actual number. People are throwing around all sorts of percentages, and none of them really mean anything because whatever the effect of tariffs is on a particular item, it's bundled up with the inflation that's been growing for years and everyone in the supply chain taking a bigger chunk because everyone else is. This is just performative.
SecretDreams · 22h ago
This is a fair point. Interesting topic since I think transparency to the end user on the effects of tariffs is also important.
alphabetting · 1d ago
Over half of Amazon's third party sellers are Chinese companies who regularly false report to dodge tariffs on their products in ways that American competitors can't. Amazon claims to police them but they're extremely reliant on them at this point and the Chinese sellers just start up new brands if penalized.
The best way to avoid this kind of behavior is to avoid shopping at stores where you can’t trace the origin of their products.
Stop buying “brands”, and looking for “deals” and acting like a consumer. Do research and find high quality products, pay more for those products, buy less disposable junk. This isn’t just a “China” thing it’s in general.
sorcerer-mar · 22h ago
This is actually the exact reason for the existence of brands. You absolutely should buy brands, and stop buying random "RANDOMCAPITALLETTERS Product 1"
But yeah, what people think of as good, high-quality brands often are not.
ericmay · 22h ago
It's a little difficult for me to make the point I want to make here because I don't disagree with you, but the usage of the word "brand" is not as descriptive as I'd like it to be.
If you're buying good copper cookware the manufacturer "brand" matters, they build a reputation for having quality products, ideally continue to make those quality products at a fair price, etc. and life is good.
But then there are brands and unfortunately when we use the term brand we wind up lumping together "high quality brands" with "cheap, useless dog shit products" and it can be difficult to differentiate. At least for me and my limited vocabulary.
sorcerer-mar · 21h ago
I get it - there are brands that are well-known for being brands (i.e. famous for being famous) and there are brands that are well-known for making legitimately good products.
Avoid the former like the plague, but the latter is one of the best methods to find legitimately great stuff.
ericmay · 20h ago
Absolutely. I actually keep and maintain extensive lists of businesses that produce "real stuff" that we only buy from for those item categories.
sorcerer-mar · 20h ago
Do you publish these anywhere? Very into good products and as you know they’re hard to find haha
ericmay · 20h ago
I haven't yet - I want to but honestly just haven't had any good ideas on how to do so. I could just create a website and maintain it for other people I guess?
If you have any recommendations or ideas I'd be happy to collaborate! Doesn't need to be something that makes money, though hopefully something that doesn't cost money either! Lol
mrguyorama · 19h ago
Except there is an entire business strategy that has been consistently deployed in extracting that brand value by making the product shittier and just waiting for sales to slow as people figure it out.
Craftsman for example.
trollbridge · 23h ago
I buy cheap things at Harbor Freight now instead of on Amazon because at least then I know I can return it if it breaks.
conductr · 22h ago
I find Amazon has the better return policy. HF has at times zero flexibility and I find I really have to pay attention to each item’s policy and weight the risk of failure (eg. A $5 hammer is low risk, $400 machine is too high risk). It’s not worth the mental math required while shopping. I only buy consumables there (HF) now, gloves, ropes, tarps, etc. Nothing with moving part, especially a motor. I’ve been left holding the bag on $400 items I I couldn’t even assemble because the bolt holes were out of alignment (obvious manufacturing defect) and they’ve refused to allow the return or force a boxing fee on me.
DrillShopper · 19h ago
This seems like the exact situation a credit card chargeback is designed to fix.
conductr · 19h ago
I think HF technically tells you no refunds or that there's a restocking fee policy when you buy it so I don't think it would work. As a consumer, I'm used to companies like that making an exception when something goes overly wrong like what happened to me. It's not like I used it and it failed, I couldn't even assemble it. I spoke to the manager and he insisted he didn't even have the authority to wave the fees. It would require some regional VP or greater and I'd have to wait for him to return a message, and he hinted that he never approves it and it would all be a waste of time. I just gave up as I was in the middle of my project and just needed to get back to it. I stopped shopping here after that though.
bee_rider · 15h ago
Can a business just say “no refunds, even if the device is completely non-functional.”
At least (maybe it varies state by state) Massachusetts has an “implied warranty of merchantability,” the thing has to basically work at least for a little bit.
I mean, if the bolt-holes don’t line up, they didn’t just sell you a bad <thing>, they sold you a random sheet of metal that is not <thing>.
conductr · 7h ago
This is kind of the argument I made to the manager in a Karenesque fashion. Why would I have even bought it if I knew it was defective? How would I have known without opening the box? Etc. I live in a state that is politically conservative and probably least likely to have similar protections but also ultimately I wasn’t going to have a legal battle over it. They lost me as a customer, well not even entirely, just for tools and bigger ticket stuff. I go through work gloves too quickly and they have them a third of the prices at Home Depot so I go for that
CamperBob2 · 20h ago
No, the best way to avoid this kind of behavior is to refrain from incentivizing it with misguided, poorly-thought-out, and anticapitalistic trade policy.
Smuggling is the world's second-oldest profession. Trade finds a way.
lvl155 · 23h ago
When are we going to realize this is a form of dumping by the Chinese? People love cheap goods but as QoL in China improves, they won’t be able to churn out cheap goods for long. That’s why CCP is hellbent on trying to monopolize global supply chain. In fact, I believe we are first slowly and then drastically headed toward global equilibrium in labor cost. We might be looking at significantly cheaper labor in the US and double or triple labor costs in China and India.
ZeroTalent · 23h ago
There is no more "as QoL in China improves."
The majority of parts of "Swiss Made" watches are made in China, utilizing a loophole that requires 60% of the watch's cost to be manufactured and assembled in Switzerland. So they make a rotor made out of gold in Switzerland, which accounts for 60% of the COGS of the watch, pop the rotor on the movement, and the sapphire glass on the watch, and it's "Swiss Made."
You start with this, but then the rest of your comment is totally unrelated. Could you elaborate?
phil21 · 19h ago
China is already producing top-tier parts at the current set wages. Wages are unlikely to increase as quality of production goes up - it's already world class.
That's the argument as I see it at least. I tend to mostly agree, with some carve-outs for highly specialized industry and general "social" differences in how business is typically done.
At this point, if you need basic manufacturing - China seems unbeatable on both price and quality for the vast majority of items. Not to mention lead times and iteration speed.
nebula8804 · 2h ago
That will only last as long as their current generation is not in retirement age (10-20 years left). They have among the worst replacement rates in the world. Its too late to fix that. Afterwards China either becomes fully automated in an extreme fashion or they exit from the world stage as a manufacturing powerhouse. If they become robotic everyone else can as well.
Also on that note Robots are going to have to become real cheap, I suspect the reason they are so good at everything is because there is so much competition from 1+ billion people its that cutthroat
Robots will have to become cheaper than all these people assembling a generic bluetooth speaker or the price will go up eventually tariffs or not...go ahead count the number of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U
rafram · 19h ago
In what economic model is wage growth determined by the quality of the work? That sounds very unrealistic to me.
ZeroTalent · 16h ago
I read the parent comment totally wrong.
ZeroTalent · 16h ago
Oh my... I read this as QC, quality of manufacturing, not QoL.
Disregard my comment.
scarface_74 · 23h ago
From your citations
> What kind of idiot US seller hasn’t had their Chinese factory also write in a lower value on the import invoice?
Why do people on X think Americans don’t cheat the system too?
hypeatei · 1d ago
I'm surprised they're able to calculate all of this properly in the first place. The U.S. doesn't have government personnel at the ports so the importer self reports. There isn't a central system to administer these tariffs either so during chaotic moments, you go based off the tweet of the hour I guess.
venusenvy47 · 23h ago
I'm friends with someone who works for a logistics company, and collecting the tariff from each company, and sending to the government, is part of the service they provide. It actually wasn't a complicated part of their business until a couple months ago, because of how little that aspect would change. But now their compliance teams have to read the Federal Register every day to keep up. They are getting stuck in the middle of this, because they quote the delivery costs to the company, but by the time the shipment arrives, the tariff has suddenly risen and then the company complains "that is not the cost you quoted us".
DennisP · 1d ago
Or you start bribing customs officials not to spot-check you, because when the policy's so chaotic it's the only way you can do business.
aaronbaugher · 22h ago
They're not able to. They're pulling numbers out of their asses, like everyone is right now.
robalpha · 1d ago
Wouldn't this reveal their margins? If you see the tariff amount, you can then find the appropriate line in the policy and then calculate how much they paid for it at import.
JumpCrisscross · 1d ago
> If you see the tariff amount, you can then find the appropriate line in the policy and then calculate how much they paid for it at import
With the amount of day-to-day and place-to-place variation in tariffs, I'd say that's highly unlikely. Simpler: check their public filings for aggregate statistics.
FinnKuhn · 1d ago
Unless they keep the margin the same percentage.
Clubber · 1d ago
Yes, good point. I suspect the numbers won't be precise. The objective is to qualify raising prices, not necessarily their own transparency. Of course this is signaling that Amazon is choosing to distribute the costs to customers rather than absorbing them in any way, so take that for what it is.
indoordin0saur · 20h ago
> Yes, good point. I suspect the numbers won't be precise.
This has to be illegal. You can't slap on a $20 sales tax fee at the end when it's actually $12 and pocket the difference as profit.
nobody9999 · 15h ago
>This has to be illegal. You can't slap on a $20 sales tax fee at the end when it's actually $12 and pocket the difference as profit.
Not sure where you are, but this is pretty much de rigueur in the US for a whole bunch of stuff, notably telecom (mobile and fixed line), ISP, cable TV, electric utilities, as well as other stuff. On your invoice, you'll see stuff like "regulatory recovery fee", "franchise fee", "FCC Admin fee" and the like. None of which are taxes or government imposed fees. Rather, they're just using standard cost-of-doing-business expenses to tack on to your bill while claiming the price is at least 10-15% less.
My favorite is the $23/month "broadcast TV surcharge," which the cable company claims is to cover fees paid to the networks they carry. Since they have to pay these folks to carry their content anyway, they should just include it in the normal price, right? But if they did, that alone would increase the "price" by at least 15-20%.
As such, at least in the US, what law makes this "illegal?" Please tell me as it would save me at least $100/month in such fees/surcharges, or at least the "price" would be the actual "total you owe" price on the bottom line.
I wish.
Clubber · 20h ago
This isn't sales tax, this is tariff. Not sure if they are any laws regarding that or not.
It might be like shipping and handling: $20. The shipping is probably $5, the handling is $15. The handling is just a fee they charge to sell it to you. They want you to think it's shipping that's why they put "shipping" first. Uber Eats calls it "taxes and other fees," which are mostly fees, but they want you to think it's taxes, that's why they put "taxes" first.
Many business are scummy like that, we've just gotten used to it.
The point being, they are signaling a price hike and they are trying to attribute it to tariffs, which maybe or may not be true down to the penny. If they were exact in what the tariff was, people can easily calculate their cost, which Amazon doesn't want. I'm sure they will sneak in some extra profit in there at some point using similar tactics as described above.
indoordin0saur · 20h ago
Even if they can get away with it I don't think this will work so well. So upon check out you're just getting a fee and sometimes it's egregiously high and sometimes it is nonexistent? If you're buying a $100 item (and let's say a $50 cost basis) that has three versions: US made, Japanese made and Chinese made you could get a $0 fee, a $5 or a $50 fee. And at the same time you know that retailers could be just completely making up the tariff fee because there is absolutely no regulation or accountability? Seems like a very fast way to completely lose the trust of your customers.
Clubber · 20h ago
>So upon check out you're just getting a fee and sometimes it's egregiously high and sometimes it is nonexistent? If you're buying a $100 item (and let's say a $50 cost basis) that has three versions: US made, Japanese made and Chinese made you could get a $0 fee, a $5 or a $50 fee.
It would be more obfuscated than that. They're scummy, I didn't say they weren't clever. A company probably wouldn't make the exact same product in three different countries and Amazon probably wouldn't stock all three, they'd just pick the version they could make the most money on. Also, they probably wouldn't make the difference obvious, just a few cents or dollars here or there. They would say the tariff is $5, when it really was $4.50 and they'd just round up. At scale that really ads up.
>Seems like a very fast way to completely lose the trust of your customers.
Most of them lost trust a long time ago. I mean, what companies do you trust? I don't trust very many, if any.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we should all trust Amazon...
Edit: Amazon said displaying tariffs was never approved and won't happen. More junk news.
I currently trust that when I add items to my shopping cart at a known retailer (either online or brick&mortar) the prices listed are the ones I'll see at checkout, plus some small deterministic sales tax and/or shipping fee.
rubyfan · 23h ago
Is this a reputable news site? There are some warning signs that make me believe it’s sponsored content. It feels less like news and more like propaganda?
> The Trump White House is furious with Amazon over reports that it plans to display the cost of tariffs on items it sells.
> Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has just given the company both barrels, at her briefing with the media today.
> Leavitt claims the move is “a hostile and political act by Amazon”, and asks why Amazon didn’t take a similar step when inflation hit 40-year highs under the Biden administration.
hamilyon2 · 1d ago
Can Amazon please also list every subsidy and incentive, state, federal and local, tax evasion loophole and proportion of it passed to consumer?
digdigdag · 1d ago
Why would (should) they? The tarrif is biggest contributor to the would-be price increase, and they want to offload the blame to the policies that enacted it.
Why do you think you get a breakdown of governmental fees in your electric or phone bill, but not the tax subsidies?
Workaccount2 · 22h ago
Electronics components vendors have recently implemented this. There is a notice next to some parts that they will be subject to tariff charges. When you go to checkout there is an additional cost line with those charges.
I recently had to buy some transformers, and had no other choice but to get bent over. The price more than doubled at checkout.
lordloki · 21h ago
Sounds like they're using the excuse of the tariffs to overcharge. They would pay the tariffs on their wholesale costs when they import. If they're then passing the same tariff % to the customer at their retail price then they're ripping you off.
woah · 19h ago
Tariffs are 124%
xipho · 22h ago
On a "price awareness vein" - I've thought that a killer app would be a phone app that runs in a grocery store, it detects costs, brands, and sizes, and overlays two things 1) the option that is cheaper per mass and 2) whether there are cheaper options in other stores. Bonus for "this no-name is the same as that brand-name".
Imagine waving your phone, or having on your VR glasses and getting this feedback "instantly".
Plus, you can sell what you learned to sellers so they can out-compete one-another (and drive prices down for consumers).
In a sci-fi world this would turn grocery stores into Faraday cages quickly.
Maybe not useful for the Doordash generation, but the majority of human life can't afford such.
DrillShopper · 19h ago
That sounds like living in hell, tbqh, especially with the selling data part.
xipho · 17h ago
The discovery part is anything but. I was trained to recognize scams in grocery stores (the on sale smaller is never cheaper then the bulk item... until rarely it is) early on by my parents. Few people recognize just how bad this is. Educating folks with somethign that does it for them first is a first step.
But yah, completely with you on the "sales is hell" part, that bit was for the startup bros.
dapf · 1d ago
Great! They should do that in every single country, for all tariffs.
pjc50 · 23h ago
Not an unreasonable idea. All UK receipts show VAT broken out (where applicable, not a tariff)
Prices shown should be post-tax post-fees all-in wherever possible, though. Otherwise you get Ryanair.
al_borland · 23h ago
I’d like them to add a Made in USA section where people can find tariff free products that support local businesses and workers.
tnel77 · 23h ago
While I agree with you, I think it would be extremely rare (maybe impossible) to have a truly tariff-free product.
Yes, all of the parts and assembly for a product can occur in the United States, but what about the tools they use? What about the semi and the fuel it uses to bring you those tools? While there will certainly be companies that don’t directly pay tariffs, it will be hard for just about every domestic manufacturer to be completely shielded from their effects.
Workaccount2 · 22h ago
People won't use it. Even with tariffs, stuff is still cheaper than made in usa.
People are going to be pissed that a basic clothes iron now cost $80, but they will not go buy the $225 that is made in texas or wherever. Especially when it is no better, and likely even worse, than the $80 one.
bluGill · 22h ago
I have done that, but it is a lot of work for the same quality (though it generally gets rid of the junk)
NicuCalcea · 23h ago
I would also like a filter like that, though for a different purpose.
ChoGGi · 22h ago
I'd rather a percentage made in, so you can get an idea of how "made in America" something is.
jghn · 22h ago
This is incredibly naive. How can you possibly know the source of every component and raw material in what you're buying? "Made in USA" *at best* translates to "assembled in the USA"
coliveira · 1d ago
This may backfire. Will they also show how much their profits are costing consumers?
murderfs · 1d ago
Where exactly do you think Amazon's profits are coming from? Over half of their profit comes from AWS, and the retail side does not appear to have substantially different margins than brick and mortar retailers (~3% net margin).
hattmall · 1d ago
The fees they charge third party sellers are significant.
murderfs · 17h ago
Yes, and the cost to reimplement the USPS so that you can get your order in a day is also significant.
Asmod4n · 23h ago
The case maker HYTE calculates 25% as net margin for brick and mortar stores for MSRP and says stores are tough and won’t allow any % less margin.
Update: oh and they also said stores won’t lower it because of the tariffs, making the stores more money.
murderfs · 17h ago
That's gross margin, not net margin. It's not free to do the logistics to actually get you your order, either keeping warehouses and paying for shipping and handling, or physically maintaining and staffing a storefront to sell the product.
pjc50 · 23h ago
People who are not children understand that retailers have margins. You can shop around to avoid a retailer margin .. unless they're a monopoly. You can't shop around tariffs. Well, legally.
jmull · 1d ago
It will backfire if they don't do something nobody has ever done?
How does that work?
I think you mean that Trump people will get mad at them for highlighted his screwup. I'm sure that's true -- they've decided to back Trump no matter what, which leads them to numerous irrational positions -- but it's not like Amazon or anyone else can do anything about it. Trump and his supporters just thrash about destructively and we all pay the price.
onion2k · 1d ago
Would that actually be very much for any particular item? Amazon is a business whose success is due to scaling a very small profit on billions of transactions rather than making very much on any particular sale.
Indirectly… Tariff is based on their cost, not list price, right?
devrandoom · 1d ago
That requires you to know when the item was imported. The tarrif forecast is a harder business than mid level wizardry.
indoordin0saur · 20h ago
My favorite brand drops a new pair of shoes in June. I order them shortly thereafter. They are imported from China who at the time has a 100% tariff. I see a $5 tariff charge. I now know that the $250 pair of shoes actually cost the retailer $5 and my boyfriend who keeps telling me they are cheap trash is suddenly vindicated.
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
— Jeff Stein
djoldman · 23h ago
It would be amazing if there was regulation requiring the display of a "total tariff" line item to every product and service offered or listed for sale. Perhaps subject to a minimum total price, so that buying an apple didn't require such a burden on retailers.
The idea being that folks would pay attention to this stuff. There are a zillion tariffs affecting prices and they just sit there for decades.
tbatchelli · 20h ago
CamelCamelCamel records the prices over time of items in Amazon. It's helpful because they fluctuate quite a bit, so you can tell when you might be overpaying. In any case, that can be the database of record for the tariff effects if Amazon does not itemize the tariff costs.
devsda · 23h ago
Will Amazon also display the referral fee they charge the seller for the purchase ?
Its good to know if Amazon's cut is on the total price including the tariff or the price excluding the tariff. It'll help understand whether Amazon is profiting from the situation or not.
xivzgrev · 22h ago
This one sparks joy!
I hope other retailers follow suit
apawloski · 1d ago
In an administration that changes critical economic policies on a week-to-week basis, listing this as surcharge makes sense. Easier to change than baking into the price.
Wistar · 20h ago
WH: “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.”
> Amazon.com denied a report on Tuesday that it planned to disclose the cost that U.S. tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump were adding to its products, after the White House blasted the initial story.
I wonder if they keep this after Trump's gone, especially for countries whose tariffs were high before Trump. I as a customer would prefer they did.
My uninformed guess is that this hurts the bottom line in at least the short term if customers are less likely to purchase an item which sports high tariffs (even if they might otherwise buy the item if the precise tariff were hidden). And the long term benefit to global trade (inasmuch as one sees that as a good thing, which I mostly do) isn't something that's very testable, much less certain.
xienze · 21h ago
> I wonder if they keep this after Trump's gone, especially for countries whose tariffs were high before Trump. I as a customer would prefer they did.
They won't. It's clearly meant to target Trump specifically. It's not as though there were absolutely no tariffs of any kind on various products before this year, so ask yourself why they're so concerned about showing tariffs NOW and not say, any time in the past.
rsynnott · 21h ago
The US's weighted average tariff was previously something like 1.8%, and even then that was pumped up by tariffs on various agricultural products and on cars (ie stuff people were unlikely to buy on Amazon). Most developed countries are in the 1-2% range.
Their Brazilian site might be one place that it would make sense, in that Brazil does have rather high tariffs.
1970-01-01 · 22h ago
This is absolutely going to backfire. The question is: will it backfire on the POTUS or the merchants? My take is free markets will strongarm the POTUS as they have already demonstrated the ability to do that.
duncangh · 23h ago
Amazon will add any information to the UX like a hoarder adding trinkets to their collection from the gift store. It's kind of endearing, really
abirch · 1d ago
This makes sense and it kind of anchors people on a lower price point. Not sure how many people like me are going to postpone purchases.
mandeepj · 22h ago
* Amazon showing tariff costs is 'hostile and political act,' WH says*
WH is now filled with extremely dumb people. The other day, the Orange clown was telling automakers to not raise prices due to tariffs, instead absorb them <face palm>
indymike · 22h ago
I'd love to have this kind of transparency on mandated fees and taxes on everything.
deagle50 · 20h ago
So they want to show the government's markup but not their own?
dizhn · 1d ago
I am not sure if everyone was able to read the paywalled article but the general consensus from the comments seem to be the expectation that amazon will list tariffs for all products.
They actually already do this in Amazon stores in other countries for good that are shipped from overseas. They display the cost of customs processing and it's either included or in addition to the base cost. Then they tack on shipping if applicable. This of course is only for products that do not require further customs processing due to the cost of items going over allowed limits, number of units that are considered commercial purchases, whether the product is in a list of products with different requirements etc.
I really do doubt Amazon will do something much different in the US. Can someone with access to the article comment on this?
abhisek · 1d ago
The original article is behind a paywall so can't really read through it. But am guessing its something to do with the trade war with China. Alternative information source suggests it has something to do with sellers who import from China are pulling off from the Prime Day.
> Tariffs on sellers' goods are putting Amazon in an awkward position for Prime Day, said Arun Sundaram, an analyst at CFRA Research.
Amazon quickly backed down once attacked by the White House over it.
Intimidation tactics are working.
gclawes · 23h ago
Good. Make it an API service.
josefritzishere · 22h ago
I am already seeing tarrifs on invoices for a few weeks. We immediately adjusted COGS and list in our price book and passed these increases on to customers.
EasyMark · 20h ago
This is the right thing to do. Transparency is good. Let people decide if they want to pay the backdoor VAT that Trump is adding to their lives. When politicians scream and wail when transparency increases, then you know the right thing is happening.
SilverBirch · 22h ago
It's thoroughly satisfying to see how quickly Amazon have had to go hostile on Trump after Bezos immolating the WSJ to satisfy Trump. This is a massive attack on the Trump administration you've to wonder if Bezos regrets playing along in the run up to this.
bluedino · 22h ago
Sure, but don't fix fake reviews or counterfeit products or...
> According to e-commerce software company SmartScout, 900 products on Amazon saw increased prices since April 9, with an average increase of 29%.
Tariffs aren't having a big impact yet.
MBlume · 1d ago
Trump will certainly consider this provocation, so perhaps the news here is that Amazon considered this worth it, even given the inevitable retaliation.
kenjackson · 1d ago
Isn’t Trump the one doing the tariffs? Isn’t the point to get you to buy products without tariffs? I’d think this plays directly into what Trump wants.
deskamess · 23h ago
The narrative has been that the 'other countries' pay for the tariff. Not the US consumer. So this may be an issue and not one that you can walk away from easily when the customer sees that it is added to their bill.
mbfg · 1d ago
The Tariffs would have to be around 1000% for it to be worth buying american in many cases.
kemotep · 23h ago
Trump has at least 3 contradictory goals that he has spoken at length about with his tariff policies so it’s not clear what exactly would make him happy that you could consistently work towards other than I guess capitulating to whatever demands he has that day.
dboreham · 23h ago
Amazon should add an "I did that" graphic with Trump's face next to the price increase.
Etheryte · 1d ago
The Red Coalition ad under the article hits a very ironic note:
> You voted for American energy dominance—and the Trump Administration is delivering. From solar to oil & gas, they’re unleashing it all. More energy. More jobs. Higher wages. America is booming—because when we lead, we win.
Loughla · 1d ago
Are we booming?
op00to · 1d ago
Did we not have enough energy before? Rolling blackouts due to fuel shortages?
watwut · 23h ago
The Trump wrote, literally: We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.
You can't argue against that, he was right. It all did BOOM.
rubyfan · 23h ago
The whole site seems sponsored by them?
jstummbillig · 1d ago
Can I assume that nobody is actually commenting on the article (considering it's paywalled, on a site that I personally never heard about before) and every comment in this thread is spawned off of 7 words of headline?
fortran77 · 22h ago
Very few people read the articles on Hacker News, no matter what the source.
kebokyo · 22h ago
I can’t read the actual article because I can’t find a way past the paywall… but I am fairly certain this is a political play.
If consumers see two products, one from China and another from Vietnam, both with their tariff markups listed, I have a feeling they’d pick the Vietnam product more often due to the lower markup. This makes Trump happy because he clearly wants us to stop buying Chinese products.
kebokyo · 21h ago
Never mind I am a silly little goober who thinks a little too well
To recycle a similar sentiment from another submission [0] on the White House's response:
One of the Republicans' (conflicting) rationales for the import taxes was Americans would notice the higher prices and be motivated to seek out domestic alternatives.
If they were telling the truth, they should be happy to see these factors clearly displayed, since that makes it easy for consumers to compare and switch to other products that aren't being tariffed.
Instead, they're freaking out, indicating they want to deceive consumers and voters into blaming higher prices on "greedy companies", instead of (correctly) blaming the federal government which is taking the money for unprecedented new "national emergency" taxes.
I hope amazon.com will call them "Trump tariffs" to make sure who is to blame.
paulcole · 23h ago
You can blame Trump but in the US, we’re all to blame here. Blaming somebody who’s not me just make it easier to feel good about myself and like I’m less of the problem.
I mean call them the Democrats tariffs. 2024 was a gift-wrapped election victory and the Democrats (shockingly) bungled it in staggeringly impressive fashion.
myrmidon · 23h ago
What do you think the democrats did wrong-- what should they have done to win?
I'm curious; I currently don't think that election was so easy for them, with having to run a different candidate, and the overton window shifting right (not just US; EU too).
bluGill · 21h ago
For starters they more or less blindly went with their candidate until forced to change. I don't know who should have seen Biden was no longer competent, but the signs should have been there - those people should have made Biden resign a year before the primary season started.
Of course the republicans are just as guilty as democrats in letting their people keep running as they get old in office.
I have a personal policy of never voting for someone who has held the office more than 1 time. If more people would do this we would solve a bunch of problems. (2 terms is a good number if you like the person since they have some experience in the second term). This also means I oppose too small districts in local issues - if there are not several people interested in running for the office than either it shouldn't be elected (why do I elect my country treasurer - it shouldn't have any power), or the district is too small.
paulcole · 20h ago
1. Biden was clearly gone mentally well before they let on. He should have been taken out in the primary season.
2. Democrats believe that "anybody who's not the other guy" is a winning strategy despite it failing over and over. They think that a candidate that people are excited to vote for is not a necessity and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. They got beat with this strategy in 2000, 2004, 2016 (and now 2024). It barely worked in 2020.
If the plan in 2028 is somebody who's a hold-your-nose and say "Well I'll vote for anyone who isn't republican" they will get absolutely smoked again.
myrmidon · 19h ago
I can see your point about it being better to switch candidates early, but this is mostly on Biden himself IMO; I can see publicly visible infighting against the current president doing even more damage to the party (long term and immediate results!), than being slow at picking the candidate.
> They think that a candidate that people are excited to vote for is not a necessity and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. They got beat with this strategy in 2000, 2004, 2016 (and now 2024). It barely worked in 2020.
Who, specifically, is "they"? I think either party just picks the candidate that can muster the most internal support and money, and those are both pretty good proxies for probability of success.
I strongly disagree with your examples. I think Al Gore was an excellent candidate (and he was very close to winning, too). 2004 was basically unwinnable for democrats against an incumbent after going through a crisis that fused the country together.
Trumps success I believe is mainly owed to a media landscape that is extremely helpful for populism in general, a bit of an overton "backlash" after achieving a lot of progressive goals (LGBT, black president, environmentalism) and his success in building a cult of personality out of voters with conflicting beliefs (=> the whole anti-woke movement) as well as diametrically opposed interests (working-class voters that don't stand to profit from neither isolationism-light nor gilded-age-v2 policies).
I personally don't see the republicans holding on to the presidency either way, because in my view, Trump was basically heaping a lot of blame as central part of his rethoric, but after actually getting all the power, people are gonna expect results at some point. Blaming "deep state obstructionism" and "the media" is just not gonna cut it to justify mediocrity, and looking at present policies and past results, mediocrity is about the best I'd expect from him as administrator (thats simply not what he is good at).
Zamaamiro · 22h ago
This is quite a display of mental gymnastics and historical revisionism.
The last couple of years have seen a massive post-COVID backlash to incumbent parties all over the world—Democrats were just caught in the wave.
Why on Earth would anyone not call them anything but Trump Tariffs when he is the one who imposed them and when they’re uniquely his idea?
paulcole · 15h ago
I gave my reason. That it's stupid to think blaming the person matters at all.
Fix the problem which is electing people like this.
If my toddler scribbles on the wall I better put the markers away next time not put up a little sign that says, "Junior's Doodles."
Terr_ · 8h ago
> If my toddler scribbles on the wall I better put the markers away next time not put up a little sign that says, "Junior's Doodles."
The point of "Trump Tariffs" is not to make the Trump the scribbler face that wall and feel shame for his output--everybody knows he's too damaged for that.
The point is to ensure everybody else (i.e. voters) recognize that the government is taking their money and understand how it came to occur.
To return to your analogy, it's some message that tells other adults to stop giving Junior their markers, from a source that is beyond your direct control.
sethd · 23h ago
As an independent, let me just say: fuck that. Trump and his voters are to blame.
bluGill · 21h ago
All the democrats who ran with a candidate who couldn't convince other independents to vote for Harris, or convince all the potential voters who stays home to come vote are also to blame.
sethd · 20h ago
I did vote, but not for Harris or Trump. :)
Would I have voted for a Democrat or a Republican if they ran the "right" candidate? I suppose anything is possible, but given the history, I would consider that to be very unlikely.
DrillShopper · 19h ago
Congrats for voting for Trump indirectly
bluGill · 19h ago
Congradulations for ensuring we get more and more evil.
DrillShopper · 15h ago
I'm focused on harm reduction - there was no credible non evil candidate on the ticket in 2024. I don't like either of them, but only one of them was whipping up a frenzy to disenfranchise my friends and cut them off from society on a fundamental level, and the other was not.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
"You shouldn't have made me abuse you."
C'mon. This isn't even an attempt at "both sides" shit.
Trasmatta · 1d ago
Maybe Jeff shouldn't have been so eager to jump on the Trump train.
ceejayoz · 1d ago
The #1 rule of being extorted is giving in means you’ve shown you can be extorted.
The extorter will never stop increasing the ask. Columbia University found this out.
HamsterDan · 23h ago
It's pretty clear you don't know what blackmail is.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
Extortion, if you prefer. I'll edit it.
anovikov · 21h ago
Not sure what they are planning to gain this way. Just alienate Trump administration and become a subject of government action? That's near certain to happen when you fall out of line.
yapyap · 1d ago
Bezos slighting Trump?
Interesting
alistairSH · 1d ago
Meh, he’s already paid millions in bribes (that we now about). That’ll buy him a pass for a little while.
ceejayoz · 22h ago
No, it won’t.
It just tells the administration there’s more where that comes from.
Vader: “I’m altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.”
matwood · 1d ago
Trump stabs everyone in the back eventually. It highlights the narcissism of all the tech CEOs that they somehow thought they would be different.
CodeCompost · 1d ago
Tariffs are good. Tax the consumers and pass them as tax breaks to the rich. /s
mrweasel · 23h ago
I absolutely hate the fact that you can go read "Protection or Free Trade(1)" by Henry George and learn that this is exactly what will happen. Tariffs are a tax on the poor, it will never benefit them, in any shape or form. It won't bring them jobs, it won't increase their pay, tariffs only serves to line the pockets of the already wealthy manufacturers. For everyone else this is just an increase on the products they consume. Then realise that Henry George published that book in 1886. It is an incredibly relevant piece of work that shows EXACTLY what will/is happening in the US. It's also terrifying that a book that's almost 140 years old describes the problems with current policies so well.
Henry George, Georgeism, the Land Value Tax, Thomas Paine, and the modern versions of their ideas (i.e. Andrew Yang's platform) are LITERALLY the best ideas we have ever conceived in regards to economic policy making. Milton fking Friedman agrees that the LVT is the only "good" tax.
Unfortunately, parasites get fucked up by these policies, and so they will fund right wing fascist revolutions to make absolutely sure that NOTHING that Henry George ever proposed is implemented.
Henry George is among the greatest humans who ever lived.
Free Trade! Free Land! Free Men!
thrance · 1d ago
You don't have to put the "/s", it's literally what happened. It's not like they're hiding it. Trump wants to get back to the Gilded Age (he's said so many times), were the only form of taxation were tariffs on foreign imports, and the bourgeoisie was able to amass unparalleled power and wealth domestically, at the expense of everyone else.
As far as I'm concerned, this is dumb as shit and straight reverse-robinhood.
Der_Einzige · 1d ago
I hate the cheeto in chief, but I also really hate low quality Chinese shit. I'd love to see Timu and the myraid amounts of trash that Amazon sells finally die.
That said, China makes a lot of good quality things too and a whole lot of things that we have no hope of being competitive in producing.
Also, it's not like anything we bring back to the USA under the circumstances is going to be higher quality.
I was already buying a lot of clothes from brands that pride themselves on trying hard to do Made in America, like Schott Nyc. It'll be interesting to see how this impacts them or brands like Thursday.
I really want the impact of this to be to force Americans to buy fewer, higher quality things instead of bloat loads of cheap shit. I don't think that this will be the impact of the policy, unfortunately...
Also, given that Cheeto promised no more IRS, I shouldn't have to pay federal income taxes this year. Don't tread on me zion don.
horns4lyfe · 1d ago
Are they going to show the cost of tariffs for other countries as well? Or just partisan hackiness?
sebstefan · 1d ago
Do you really believe that it would change anything if a democrat did this?
There's nothing partisan about this, it's Amazon. They like free trade. It's about policy not the party
Zamaamiro · 22h ago
Since when did free trade become a partisan issue?
All respected economists on all sides of the political spectrum agree that tariffs hurt the economy. The current President is the only political actor pushing for tariffs.
Reminding people that tariffs are a tax on the consumer is not a partisan issue; it is transparency and plainly economics 101.
rsynnott · 23h ago
In most of the countries that Amazon operate in, for most products, they'll be either 0 or minimal. Developed countries tend to have weighted average tariffs of 1-2%; there are often carve-outs for specific goods for protectionist purposes, but they're rarely on consumer products.
Also, I thought these were bigly beautiful tariffs, Trump's proudest achievement; surely he will be pleased to see them displayed so prominently, so that people can marvel at them?
swarnie · 1d ago
Almost all developed countries have free trade agreements with their biggest partners.
100%+ fees added overnight are interesting, no one is writing features to show 0% that hasn't budged in decades.
watwut · 23h ago
Yes, you can see tariffs and shipping separately on Amazon when buying in different country. At least could a while ago, I havet done that foe a long time.
petesergeant · 1d ago
In which direction is this partisan? Trump’s proud of the tariffs isn’t he?
rayiner · 23h ago
Amazon is the archetype of a destructive business. It’s a business that depends completely on flooding the country with cheap chinese crap, delivered overnight by desperate recent immigrants. The archetype of the hollowing out of america championed by the Reagan/Bush GOP.
Eextra953 · 22h ago
This line of thinking is what people are pushing to justify the insane tarriff policy. Amazon is evil, slave labor, they tarriff us, etc. I'm not saying these things aren't true. However, my problem with this argument is that it frames the consumer as a victim to Amazon and to the 'hollowing out of America'. Consumers have a choice - they love using Amazon and importing cheap goods. Where is the self-reflection?
rayiner · 21h ago
> I'm not saying these things aren't true
But it still seems like you’re disagreeing with my conclusion?
Yes, consumers love cheap goods. And businesses love to make short term profits even if it means selling out the future by gutting American companies and turning them into mere distributors for Chinese companies. That’s why you need the government to intervene to change peoples’ behaviors.
There is a reason we tax cigarettes and other things that are bad for us. We do it to change people’s behaviors, to get them to consume less of the bad thing. Yes, like with tariffs, it makes the bad thing more expensive. That’s the whole point! Amazon is a bad company with a bad business model, and I don’t actually care who is the one who takes them out.
slibhb · 17h ago
Yeah, let's ban machines in factories while we're at it. Then Americans will have the honor of stitching clothing and standing at conveyer belts.
On a less sarcastic note, pretty much zero mainstream economists believe that tariffs will bring back manufacturing to the US. There are economists who think the US should manufacture more. They talk about taxing consumption more and savings/investment less. When you cite economists to tariff-enthusiasts, they usually reply with "economics is a scam!" or some such nonsense. That's only a breath away from an equally dumb Marxist line: "economists are just servants of The Capital". Bleh.
And I love Amazon. They're a fantastic company and have been since day 1. I'm a grown-up. If I want to buy cheap Chinese goods, I should be able to. And if that hurts Americans, that sucks for them, but I shouldn't have to pay a tax because some US company can't compete with Chinese companies. And if I lose my job because someone in China does it better/cheaper, I won't whine about it. I'll find something else to do.
rayiner · 17h ago
> On a less sarcastic note, pretty much zero mainstream economists believe that tariffs will bring back manufacturing to the US.
I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
I’m not a Marxist, but I’m also not a religious zealot. I believe in aerospace engineers enough that I’m comfortable getting into a metal tube that’s 35,000 feet in the air. But I don’t have similar confidence in the postulates of economists.
> And if that hurts Americans. that sucks for them
The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.
You don't have to go all the way. Just experiment with a VAT and lowering corporate taxes.
> I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
What economists have is better than vague feelings about the dignity of working in a factory as opposed to a service job.
> The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.
Is that the point of the government? Not in the American tradition. Americans are remarkably invididualistic. If that's anti-social, well, the experiment has been running for a few hundred years and it's worked pretty well. I don't believe the past 20 years have been so bad that the US should start acting like a third world country.
rayiner · 14h ago
> What economists have is better than vague feelings about the dignity of working in a factory as opposed to a service job.
You've got it backwards. If people have the feeling that there is more dignity working in a factory than delivering Door Dash, that's a preference that should be factored into the economic analysis. Similarly, economic analyses considers factors like labor laws and environmental laws as detracting from "comparative advantage," even though it probably better reflects peoples' preferences for those things to be a minimum standard that no country is competing on. And it's certainly relevant that being a manufacturing powerhouse provides a long-term military advantage compared to a services-based economy. Prior to World War II, the U.S. had largely demilitarized. It built the world's largest military within a couple of years, because of its industrial capabilities. Those are real-world considerations, but aren't factored into simplistic comparative-advantage analyses.
slibhb · 11h ago
What I posted there was a bit muddled. Economics is attempting to be a science. To the greatest extent possible, it should not be value-based. Politics is value-based, and it has priority over economics when it comes to making decisions. But if your politics is "we need more manufacturing in the US" then you should listen to economists in pursuit of that goal.
Bringing back manufacturing with tariffs is like banning fossil fuels to combat climate change. It's not good policy.
rayiner · 10h ago
> To the greatest extent possible, it should not be value-based. Politics is value-based, and it has priority over economics when it comes to making decisions. But if your politics is "we need more manufacturing in the US" then you should listen to economists in pursuit of that goal.
I agree with this completely. But I think most economists simply disagree with this goal and aren’t thinking of ways to advance the goal. So we’re stuck with tariffs, which at least is something we have used in the past to support industry.
I would posit that this attitude is at the root of a lot of the distrust of and consternation at experts. If people say: “we want a society with more manufacturing/fewer immigrants/etc.,” the expert response is “you’re stupid to want that.” They’re not thinking of ways to leverage their expertise in service of those outcomes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cpvrrre4zlkt?post=asset%3A0240...
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” the company said in a statement. “Teams discuss ideas all the time. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-29/white-hou...
I'm worried businesses are going to use tariffs as an excuse to have a fake list price, then hit you with massive hidden fees at the point of sale. Some sectors have been doing this for years - "service fees" at restaurants, "regulatory response fees" in the telecom industry, all sorts of nonsense in event ticketing.
Physical goods have mostly been spared this type of fake pricing - aside from sales tax not being included, but that's been universally true in the US forever so everyone is used to it.
Tariffs could be the end of that if businesses see sales plummet. Especially because these scams actually work - the reason restaurants give for not just increasing their menu prices is because higher listed prices drive people away.
Bump em because of tariffs, bump em some more to pad the margins because what is an extra 5%, bump em even when they're not affected by tariffs because everyone else is doing so, and delay un-bumping them once tariffs fall again.
People have a hard enough time understanding who pays tariffs. Stores'll be able to muddy the waters this way pretty much at will.
Stores often sell common staples like bananas, generic milk, and other basics at close to cost. They’re the things that get people in the door. They make their profit on things like cereal, deli meats, packaged goods, and other non-staple items that people also buy once they’re inside.
It’s similar to how many gas stations compete on cost of gas to get people there, but hope that you’ll stop inside and get a $6 drink or some $5 packaged snacks.
Then you have to consider all of the other things that go into a store are also tariffed. The parts for the trucks that transport the bananas have tariffs. Many of their cleaning supplies. Parts for the checkout registers. The light bulbs they have to replace. Many of those tariffs could be well over 100%. They have to make up that price in the cost of bananas and everything else.
"Many grocers earn more profit from agreeing to carry a manufacturer's product than they do from actually selling the product to retail consumers."
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee
Of course, I didn't know this, which was very weird when I saw someone those stocking shelves, only to be met with a 'sorry, I don't work here' response when asking them a question.
If tariffs increase the wholesale cost of an item by $1, but you can make consumers think $5 retail is what the increase should be, that’s an extra $4 in your pocket.
Economics education doesn’t stop at 101 for a good reason. “Supply and demand” is like “veins carry deoxygenated blood” - it’s largely true, but further learning reveals complexity.
People should remember that it isn’t just the corporations who raise the price that are at fault, it is the people who are unwilling to go without it when the price is overinflated. Yes, then we nit-pick into things like medical necessity and … thus back to the point that it is both supply and demand, and not.
Supply and demand is impacted by many factors, but it’s still supply and demand.
You can put different labels on different components of the influences, but at the end of the day it’s still supply and demand.
What a pity we accidentally gave Nobel prizes out for things like game theory, then.
Supply and demand isn't the only thing that exists, but basically everything else feeds into and informs it. It isn't the only starting position, but you can reach basically any point from it.
Revenue =/= profit. OpenAI has similar amount of revenue, but is nowhere near profitable.
>I certainly don't doubt they've purchased other investments with the proceeds over time, but they're making plenty.
The point isn't what they did with the profits, it's whether the profits are commensurate with the capital they put in (ie. return on equity).
I’m well aware. The assertion that gets made is “oh they’re low margin!” They are. But they have massive volume. So they make lots of money still.
> The point isn't what they did with the profits, it's whether the profits are commensurate with the capital they put in (ie. return on equity).
Well, they certainly didn’t start as billionaires a hundred years ago. The profits seem fine.
I’d be very happy to be in the business of selling $1 bills for $1.02, if the customer base is big enough.
I’d happily take 2-3% margins of their $11B in revenue (2020 per Wiki).
Yes. But the tariffs are on the import price, not the shelf price.
The shelf price went up as if it were on the shelf price, because consumers won't realize/understand the distinction. (Hell, a good proportion of the population still thinks someone else eats the costs entirely.) We saw the same thing during COVID - "it's because of COVID / supply chain issues" was the magic wand you could wave around to raise prices. Some of those increases were warranted, for sure. But all? Almost certainly not.
The prices before these tariffs were arrived at by some confluence of factors such as cost and competition, it wasn’t some universally agreed “fair pricing” scheme that determined them. So what does it mean for a price to be warranted?
Now businesses have to raise prices because of the aforementioned tariffs, and, you speculate, they will add some extra margin because they think the customer is primed to accept higher prices right now than they’d normally be.
First of all, is that the end of the world? If this is only made possible because the wool has been pulled over the customer’s eyes, then at some point there will be a correction in the other direction - unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such). This particular mechanism on its own won’t cause prices to spiral out of control or anything.
Secondly, even if you think it is bad and don’t want it to happen, how would you prevent it? I can’t come up with a single feasible approach that isn’t basically halfway to socialism (which is fine if that’s your preference, but then that’s a larger conversation).
In this case, I believe many companies raised pricing more than they needed to, because people misattributed the source of those increases. If, say, ice cream doubled in price in normal times, people would cry foul. COVID gave an ironclad excuse.
> unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such)
I see very little evidence of this. We're great at innovating new ways to price fix without attracting (or successfully fighting off) regulatory attention.
Like outsourcing the price decisions to a third party…
https://www.propublica.org/article/senators-introduce-legisl...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/data-company-agri-s...
Everyone does this. If someone was trying to sell their old car and they saw news of upcoming tariffs on cars, they’d expect to sell their car at a higher price even though the tariffed cars haven’t arrived yet.
A second factor is that volatility and unpredictable policy raises risk, which increases prices. There will be a lot of price increases in excess of base tariff rates simply because everything is changing rapidly on the whims of this administration and businesses need more buffer for unexpected shocks.
If you’re a company who set up manufacturing in China, placed orders 4 months ago, and you’re watching the tariff rate change from 65% to 125% or more in the span of days with threats of more, you have to increase your prices a lot to have more buffer. Those parts you ordered now have an unpredictable price tags attached when they arrive at the port. It’s completely out of control.
In Japan the US Military buys fuel and sets the price at its on base stations according to what they purchase it for. On several occasions when I lived there this resulted in the Base CO having to address everyone and tell them if they don’t buy the fuel (that is now significantly cheaper outside the gate) then the Exchange cannot buy new fuel, and they may have to shut the station down permanently.
It never came to that; everyone just went and paid the higher price for a tank and the issue was resolved.
My point is that trying to price a commodity that moves prices like that by a lagging indicator is a great way to capture business on one side and a great way to go bankrupt on the other.
If I bought a gallon of water for a dollar and then there was a terrible water shortage I would not let it go for two dollars
The price will rise until it gets high enough that the product of sales * price falls.
It has always been that way. Businesses haven’t been selling goods and services out of the goodness of their hearts at an arbitrary price. It’s always supply and demand.
Tariffs are expected to reduced demand because they increase prices. This is why the stock market is down and nearly every economist is calling the tariffs a big problem. Companies won’t have room to raise prices infinitely because they feel like it, because consumers are about to be able to afford fewer things because the things they need are getting more expensive.
In the current circumstances, though, companies do not have a choice to lower prices. The basic cost of taking an item into inventory from these suppliers has risen significantly, in most cases well above 2024 margins.
The net effect is that, despite the market's best effort to correct prices to within an affordable range, costs may rise considerably and availability may still fall regardless. Under severe shock to the system, the usual maxims that account for nominal shifts in day to day trading no longer apply.
Then supply and demand reach equilibrium.
Supply and demand doesn’t mean that either or both supply and demand remain constant. Both supply and demand change depending on the price.
But that's a massive oversimplification. It's like saying programming is "just typing". Technically, sure; accurate, no. There's latency in the real world. Bad actors. Information asymmetries. Regulations. Monopolies. Stuff you can't do without and can't even always decline (ambulance ride for an unconscious person). Fake news about a supply crunch changes demand without changing supply for a while.
One of the primary reasons for combination in low-margin markets is to gain pricing power. And even if there are 2-5 entities in a given market, informal price collusion is far from unheard of.
If OP wants an intro to the determinants of price elasticity, starting here would be a good idea: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand
"The price went up 10%, that must be the 10% tariffs" is something consumers will inherently understand… but it's not the case. The 10% is not on the on-the-shelf price; it's on the wholesale price the importer's charging. The $20 shirt at Old Navy is probably $4 (with $0.40 in tariffs added) for tariff purposes… but they'll add $2 to it anyways, because consumers will go "oh ok". There's a massive information asymmetry here.
The unpredictable nature of these specific tariffs is fairly unique, too. The rates change randomly, with zero warning, and how they're set isn't sensical. With ships across the ocean taking weeks, that's gonna chill the supply side as well.
1. The average apparel retail store margin is nominally 50%, but half of that margin is given back to the consumer for their ubiquitous sales. So that $20 shirt costs the store $10, but the average selling price is actually $15. So if they directly pass through the 10% tariff, it adds $1 to the average $15 sale on that $20 shirt.
2. Increased prices reduce sales. Non-product costs are fairly fixed, so just passing through the tariffs will have a significant impact on store profitability. Retail stores are going bankrupt left and right in this Amazon age. They don't have the capacity to absorb increased costs, if they don't pass them on they'll just go bankrupt more quickly. So that $1 in tariffs turns into a $1.50 price increase.
"You can see that the money runs out before the month is gone, you can see that people are buying smaller pack sizes at the end of the month," McMillon said.
They do need to eat, but they are eating less - and not by choice. They don't have the money to buy what they want to. No amount of advertising will fix that.
People think they're saving money that way. They often aren't.
Being poor is expensive!
Everything after that is preference substitution.
This doesn't invalidate consumer demand. People judge society and ultimately governments based on if they are able to obtain their preferences.
My approach was a little more engineered than most people's would be, but definitely possible if maybe you expanded it to $3/day or $4/day.
Rice is $20/25 lbs, and 1600 calories/lb for 2000 calories/$
They are 6.5lbs after deboning. Cooked chicken skin on is 950 calories per pound. That is 620 calories/$.
Tortillas themselves are 110 cal, and 4.99 for 100ct, or 2200 cal/$
True, but human psychology is a huge confounding factor. One area where this is evident is gas prices that "go up like a rocket, and come down like a feather" in response to crude oil prices. Simple supply and demand does not explain this.
Normally I'd make a joke about econ 101 but I'm pretty sure you'd lose points for answering with this in an econ 101 class
It's especially galling because if markets actually worked this way, then central planning would work as well.
Most of the developed world pre-calculates sales tax.
If McDonalds charges you $10.32 in Australia, the government gets $0.84(8181812...) of it. Rounding isn't an issue because you don't write a check for each individual $0.84(8181812...), you pay them the aggregate amount on a regular basis.
Los Angeles County Measure H: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 03-31-2025
City of Orland Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2017 to 03-31-2025
Rio Dell City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2015 to 12-31-2024
City of El Monte Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025
City of San Pablo Reduction Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 10-01-2017 to 09-30-2022
Town of Truckee Trails Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 10-01-2014 to 09-30-2024
City of La Habra Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025
City of Seal Beach Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2019 to 03-31-2025
City of Westminster Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 04-01-2017 to 12-31-2022
City of Pismo Beach Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 10-01-2008 to 03-31-2025
Pacific Grove City Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 10-01-2008 to 09-30-2022
Town of San Anselmo Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2014 to 03-31-2023
City of Sausalito 2014 Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2015 to 03-31-2023
Mariposa County Healthcare Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2005 to 03-31-2025
Mendocino County Mental Health Treatment Act Tax: 0.50%, 04-01-2018 to 03-31-2023
Mendocino Library Special Transactions and Use Tax: 0.125%, 04-01-2012 to 03-31-2023
City of Atwater Public Safety Transactions and Use Tax: 0.50%, 07-01-2013 to 03-31-2023
City of Capitola Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 04-01-2005 to 03-31-2025
City of Campbell Vital City Services Transactions and Use Tax: 0.25%, 04-01-2009 to 03-31-2025
City of Davis Transactions and Use Tax: 1.00%, 10-01-2014 to 03-31-2025
* https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa105.pdf
See also: American healthcare, college, etc. "Our setup is absurdly complex in bad ways" is not an argument for keeping that setup, it's an argument for making fixes.
And why should we eliminate sales taxes, etc. for online sales? Isn't the whole point of software that it makes it trivial to handle multiple sales taxes?
[1] Sales tax, VAT, etc. are taxes on the buyer but are collected by the seller as a matter of administrative convenience. Use tax / reverse charge covers the situations where a non-local seller doesn't collect the tax, but compliance was so low in the first several decades of e-commerce that every government around the world decided to expand sales tax compliance for online sales to non-local sellers.
Because it's an immense amount of paperwork, compliance, legal risk, etc. all to avoid just setting a more reasonable state/federal level of taxation. The US has a deeply weird attitude towards any changes to taxation.
> And why should we eliminate sales taxes, etc. for online sales?
No one's proposing that. Online sales just introduce the issue of not knowing the tax jurisdiction that's applicable for a brand-new shopper.
We have reasonable levels of taxation right now. 0% federal rate, because the Constitution does not allow for a federal sales tax. States can set their own rates based on their own needs, just like every member of the EU can set its own rate. And counties and cities can tag-along with their state's sales tax.
This was complicated back in the day when it was all paper tables. Software makes it easy. Excel makes it easy, and the dedicated sales tax SaaS make it even easier.
At my last company, we handled hundreds of thousands of sales a day globally and my tax department spent less than four hours each month on sales tax/VAT compliance because we used Avalara to handle sales tax rate lookups and compliance. (The four hours were for filing the VAT returns in the two dozen countries we couldn't file through Avalara.) To put it in terms a programmer would understand: each month, my entire department spent less time on sales tax compliance than the average Typescript programmer spends on compiling.
Online sales just introduce the issue of not knowing the tax jurisdiction that's applicable for a brand-new shopper.
That has been an issue for decades, and people got along just fine in the days when they had to do it by hand.
(And in the fast food example, the customer's home location doesn't matter. The store's does.)
The juice is not worth the squeeze for online retailers. Users are used to seeing the final amount at checkout and you know, it's really not that hard to mentally estimate <price of thing I'm buying plus 10%> (which is actually usually an overestimate).
In Germany different tax rates apply to items that you need to survive such as food and other goods. It can be difficult to know which rate applies to a product. The good thing is you don't need to know because the total price is displayed
The EU has a similar smattering of disparate jurisdictions (with varying VAT rates) just like the US does.
Cool, great place to start. Let's fix that. Both have similar land mass, similar populations, similar balance of federal-ish and state-ish and local-ish governance, similar cultures, etc.
> And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total?
Surely handling 13k tax jurisdictions is expensive for businesses and consumers on many levels?
Unintended consequences: None?
Prices are already quite different between online and in-person shopping.
You in the US keep saying "we are so special, so it is impossible to change things for the better in any way". While other countries also have complex rules for similar things yet they still manage to provide a better experience for shoppers, citizens, sick people - everyone.
That sure is a HUGE rounding error! 9¢ savings by doubling up is nothing to sneeze at!
> they will get you for those pennies
Was your restaurant ever audited? That is a lot of pennies!
One penny times the thousand or so meals per day over a year adds up. I don't know if we were audited - but I' s we would have been shut down for failing the audit.
Sales tax is not uniform for all products depending on your state. My home state for example does not charge sales tax on food items and clothing. Some other special categories also have different sales tax depending on what they are - e.g. vice taxes for some items.
I see two items for $5, but when I add the imported one, suddenly it costs more — and Amazon didn’t tell me that ahead of time or give me any way to choose the one without tariffs on the grid/list view.
This makes tariffs more effective because they can’t bump the domestic price to match — while giving customers a negative chock each time they choose an importer for a product.
They'll just raise the price of the domestic good to $13 and we will all pay $8 extra on a thing that used to cost $5.
If the price displayed is still $5 but tariffs added at the end, the domestic seller's $13 sticker price will not look attractive to buyers.
For goods that have alternatives, businesses may choose to under-price (relative to their tariffed competitors) in order to gain sales and customers.
This is were tariffs can go horribly wrong: it destroys the incentive for competition between companies.
I stopped trying to buy stuff from the US, because there's always a ton of added costs
If the additional fees is government-forced, such as taxes, then it makes sense to display it separately. You are throwing government-forced costs and regular business costs in the same bucket. If tariffs should be included in the listed price then why not taxes?
That way there's no surprise at the checkout and you still see how much of the money goes to whom.
It works very well in the rest of the world
When the rent goes up, the prices change. When insurance goes up, prices change. When labor costs go up it's a "service charge"? That's garbage, just set your prices accordingly.
Is there a good way to account for the loss of customers from this practice? I have certainly opted out of restaurants with extra fees.
Why are you putting this under the rug so easily? It's never too late to changes those ludicrous behaviors, even if everyone is accustomed to it.
This is different from most other countries, where the tax is the same nation-wide.
The regional supermarket chain in new england that is owned by kroger ALREADY localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE despite every store in the state having the exact same tax rates.
They STILL don't include the tax in the price listed because fuck you, this is america
Do they actually "localizes their weekly sales flyer TO THE STORE", or you only think that way because they ask for the exact store location to view their flyers? It could very well be that they ask the exact store for analytics purposes, but all the stores have the same flyer.
Not all ads are weekly sales flyers, obviously. And not all states have the same sales tax throughout, of course.
Also, you know that most items in a Kroger's don't even have sales tax in the first place? So that's an odd place to use as an example.
It strikes me as just as petty as when restaurants started listing “Living Wage Fee” on their bills. They’re bitching and moaning directly to the customer just because they need to pay their staff more and they’re butthurt about it. Why not list all the restaurant’s costs as line items on the bill? They could list the customer’s proportion of the restaurant’s rent, electricity charge, water bill, licensing and taxes if they wanted to. But no, all they put in your face is the Living Wage Fee.
I can see that, but these tariffs seem unique in that they are 1) sudden 2) significant 3) broad 4) totally unmotivated
Rates that change from day to day is a serious problem when shipping containers on a boat takes weeks or months.
Why would they not want to make this political point?
Like sales taxes? Or environmental disposal fees? Both are listed separately in my experience.
Amazon is obviously trying to pressure the Trump admin into easing the tariffs. Why wouldn't they? Why shouldn't they? Amazon is as much a political actor as any other company, and they have a major stakeholder when it comes to tariff policy.
Mainly with the concept of letting a ginormous multinational megacorp with more money and resources than 99.9% of the rest of America combined influence our political process is literally how we got here.
The CEO of Amazon is welcome to lobby as himself but letting an extremely already privileged legal fiction (an LLC) have more power over our society is just dumb.
Good for Amazon.
> * White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had discussed the Punchbowl News report with Trump, and his message about it was: "This is a hostile and political act by Amazon." * [1]
The Trump administration has expressed a clear expectation that businesses like Amazon should pretend tariffs are paid by foreign countries. Transparent pricing is now disloyal.
[1]https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/white-house...
The simplest explanation is that they want to deceive consumers/taxpayers into blaming higher prices on corporate whim, instead of their decision to take the money away by import taxes.
It is "playing politics" the same way listing the effect of taxes on the final cost of something is "playing politics".
This is just useful information for the consumer. It's absolutely absurd to think informing a customer of a cost increase is political.
No comments yet
Unless they're registered as an importer? I could see that as a service they might provide to certain sellers, just like warehousing and other logistics.
But generally, they will receive their merchandise from a corporate entity who paid the tariff already.
It doesn’t apply to parts imported and assembled in the US before going to the Amazon fulfillment warehouses, but it does work for their direct to warehouse imports.
Wouldn’t “custom duties paid” be on each individual component?
priceIncrease := (newPrice - oldPrice) / oldPrice var trump_tariff bool
if priceIncrease > 1.0 { trump_tariff = true }
I wonder if they will just allow their suppliers to add in an additional “my tariff costs” number, which the supplier can compute however they want and be responsible for. (This would be on top of the main tariff price, the one paid directly by Amazon, which of course they’ll have receipts for).
Again, the question is simply what non-tariff factor would explain non-trivial prices over a month? If there isn’t one, it doesn’t seem unfair to attribute the increase to a huge policy change.
Having the most economically clueless US president in a century and watching his erratic behavior in real time.
Tariffs are only a small piece of the puzzle.
I mean, passing along tax information is a political act (in the same way not showing items on the shelf with sales tax, and then including it on your bill is an anti-sales-tax political statement—the point is to blame the government for an annoying surprise), but it is (I think, at least) widely seen as sort of… normal acceptable behavior in the US.
That's theoretical economics, meanwhile in the real world, retail stores change the prices of goods depending on the weather or holidays.
Similarly, weather could explain the decline of winter gear sales in the northern hemisphere or specific commodities being hit by a storm but that wouldn’t affect the whole economy and we’d all have seen coverage of some epic monsoon or drought if it was that impactful.
Prices vary based on many more factors than what you think it does, that's it.
> all randomly did this in the same direction at the same time
Who says it's random? Most of the variation is very likely linked to the US government actions, but the first order effect of actual tariffs is far from the only way the Trump administration is messing up the economy. In fact, the mess started long before the tariffs actually went enforced and it didn't stop when they where suspended.
My point was simply that since nothing like that has happened, prices spiking is almost certainly due solely to the tariffs.
1. https://www.techspot.com/guides/494-hard-drive-pricewatch-th...
It's as if you told a guy working in a ski station that “the temperature cannot be above 0°C as there's snow everywhere and everyone knows that snow melts above zero”.
It's not how it works, and the economy doesn't work in the simplified fashion you seem to believe it does either. You cannot reason from first principles using “basic supply and demand” arguments like that any more than you can make statements about the weather using the second law of thermodynamics.
Price change all the time for variety of reasons, seasons being one of them (that's why CPI figures are said to be “seasonally adjusted”, BTW).
I appreciate the mix of unwarranted condescension with the assertion that the theory that sudden tariffs cause sudden price increases doesn’t have predictive value, when basically every sober analyst predicted what we are seeing now.
It’s not exactly a secret that prices fluctuate seasonally but what we’re seeing now is spread across the entire economy, suddenly, and in sectors which do not normally experience that seasonal volatility.
Including in sectors that aren't affected by tariffs at all, that's the thing.
> the assertion that the theory that sudden tariffs cause sudden price increases doesn’t have predictive value, when basically every sober analyst predicted what we are seeing now.
You are misunderstanding. Tariffs will cause price increase with certainty. But so will lowering the USD value on FX markets, and so will adding massive uncertainty to businesses (including, but not limited to, the prospect of higher inflation in the near future), etc.
Tariffs will cause price hikes, but attempting to measure tariffs effect by observing price variations simply cannot work.
Real life prices are influenced by much more than just supply and demand.
Company B imports lumber and pays a tariff, manufacturers it into furniture rails in the US.
Company C buys furniture rails from Company B and screws from Company A and assembles them into an end table.
Company D buys the end tables wholesale from Company C and distributes them on Amazon.
How does Amazon display the tariffs paid by Company A and B and correctly show the price difference in the final product?
Isn't this the horn everyone keeps trumpeting? It doesn't seem complicated.
Well, realistically they'll do that _anyway_. If you decrease price competition, prices go up. That is the order of things.
Another friend of mine was just laid off, as a transportation broker, directly because of the tariffs.
The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight.
I feel as if this was not well thought-out. Maybe megacorps, like Tesla, can weather it, but many smaller businesses have no buffer.
That said, the manufacturing imbalance and trade imbalance is a very real problem that needs to be solved. I just feel as if we are approaching it in a manner that is simplistic, and favors only very large corporations.
No need to hedge. Anyone with their head on the right way around can see how much thought went into it.
On top of that the reasons they gave are contradictory, because in the end the truth is the tariffs were based on the vibes one specific man had held since the 80s. However the world is very different since then.
Not even the numbers make sense. If the goal was to punish people with whom the US has a high trade deficit, why slap a 10% fee on those who don't have a trade deficit at all? This tells countries: "No matter what you do, we will abuse our position of power anyways" instead of telling them "If you behave we both will benefit".
But maybe that wasn't the reason, instead it was manufacturing? Then why on earth not pair tariffs with incentives and help for corporations who want to move their production lines to the US? With the current volatile climate in the US nobody is going to move anything, except maybe away from the US.
Sorry, but I have first semester art students who apply more care when choosing electronic components for their first project after 8 hours of instructions. And art students are not exactly known to be math-heads.
The first thing you'd do is to check for edge cases, like how the formula treats countries that you just extract wealth from like Lesotho. If you have 10 interns spending 20 minutes on each of the 194 countries that takes you a single 8 hour work day tops.
That is their goal - to drive out the small and medium businesses so that the president's donors can swoop in with private capital offers to enrich themselves.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/white-house-blasts-amazon-ov...
People are going to notice when prices are jacked up or stores are empty.
Quit assuming he wants what he says he wants and start assuming he wants the obvious, easily-predictable consequences of his actions.
It's a classic cult of personality. They ignore reality as Trump demands.
There is no way out of this by insisting that they will naturally snap out of it. That's never been how cults of personality end.
Apparently Amazon's temporary spine was made of slugs, and it just got salted.
I don't understand your point. Am I supposed to be shocked that people could be politically hostile towards Trump? Am I supposed to be shocked that his press secretary accused Amazon of being politically hostile towards Trump? Is there a new "norm" of Presidents never accusing critics of being hostile or trying to score political points?
I've been checking out some of the aliexpress / temu / etc. subreddits, and US consumers are losing their marbles over the new import duties. Most stores have now rolled out those on check-out.
AliExpress added this last week as a line item cost during checkout.
I took up a new hobby in 2021 and was buying materials from Amazon and eBay. There’s more transparency on eBay for products shipped directly from China. As a result I stated to realize when shopping on Amazon (and not buying a known Branded Manufacturer, but choosing same category product at lower price) I was buying the exact same low quality Chinese products on Amazon as I was buying on eBay and paying more. Of course, Amazon has better customer service and more consistent return policies compared to eBay stores. There’s benefits for the price, but the products are the same.
Then I discovered AliExpress, and found the same products I was buying on eBay, and Amazon, but my costs were even less. Downside was longer shipping times, and (effectively) no returns.
Last week I looked to buy more materials at AliExpress, and found the line item tariff cost had doubled the price.
I think you see the differences I’m highlighting here are cost and customer service—ALL for the SAME products.
I’m bummed my hobby costs are going up for the same quality products. I’m bummed the sub-800$ exemption is going away.
I believe AliExpress is the Chinese equivalent of eBay. Everybody is buying from the wholesale marketplace, Alibaba. If an Amazon seller is adding tariffs, then I think they’re an AliExpress seller on the Amazon platform.
It seems like no seller would want this.
https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1908343624464576666
Stop buying “brands”, and looking for “deals” and acting like a consumer. Do research and find high quality products, pay more for those products, buy less disposable junk. This isn’t just a “China” thing it’s in general.
But yeah, what people think of as good, high-quality brands often are not.
If you're buying good copper cookware the manufacturer "brand" matters, they build a reputation for having quality products, ideally continue to make those quality products at a fair price, etc. and life is good.
But then there are brands and unfortunately when we use the term brand we wind up lumping together "high quality brands" with "cheap, useless dog shit products" and it can be difficult to differentiate. At least for me and my limited vocabulary.
Avoid the former like the plague, but the latter is one of the best methods to find legitimately great stuff.
If you have any recommendations or ideas I'd be happy to collaborate! Doesn't need to be something that makes money, though hopefully something that doesn't cost money either! Lol
Craftsman for example.
At least (maybe it varies state by state) Massachusetts has an “implied warranty of merchantability,” the thing has to basically work at least for a little bit.
I mean, if the bolt-holes don’t line up, they didn’t just sell you a bad <thing>, they sold you a random sheet of metal that is not <thing>.
Smuggling is the world's second-oldest profession. Trade finds a way.
The majority of parts of "Swiss Made" watches are made in China, utilizing a loophole that requires 60% of the watch's cost to be manufactured and assembled in Switzerland. So they make a rotor made out of gold in Switzerland, which accounts for 60% of the COGS of the watch, pop the rotor on the movement, and the sapphire glass on the watch, and it's "Swiss Made."
Best source, a rabbit hole: https://monochrome-watches.com/h-moser-cie-launches-swiss-ma...
Replicas are also manufactured in the same factories as "authentic" watches, but are fully assembled in China. (my personal insider anecdote)
"Investigators who work for Rolex and others say high-end fakes are “made in the same industrial parks and on cloned CNC machines”": https://www.businessinsider.com/how-counterfeit-rolexes-work...
"2025 “superfake” TAG Heuer Aquaracers used real Swiss Sellita movements inside Chinese-made cases—proof of parts leakage, if not identical factory floors": https://www.heddels.com/2025/03/spotting-a-superfake-4-real-...
You start with this, but then the rest of your comment is totally unrelated. Could you elaborate?
That's the argument as I see it at least. I tend to mostly agree, with some carve-outs for highly specialized industry and general "social" differences in how business is typically done.
At this point, if you need basic manufacturing - China seems unbeatable on both price and quality for the vast majority of items. Not to mention lead times and iteration speed.
Also on that note Robots are going to have to become real cheap, I suspect the reason they are so good at everything is because there is so much competition from 1+ billion people its that cutthroat
Robots will have to become cheaper than all these people assembling a generic bluetooth speaker or the price will go up eventually tariffs or not...go ahead count the number of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U
Disregard my comment.
> What kind of idiot US seller hasn’t had their Chinese factory also write in a lower value on the import invoice?
Why do people on X think Americans don’t cheat the system too?
With the amount of day-to-day and place-to-place variation in tariffs, I'd say that's highly unlikely. Simpler: check their public filings for aggregate statistics.
This has to be illegal. You can't slap on a $20 sales tax fee at the end when it's actually $12 and pocket the difference as profit.
Not sure where you are, but this is pretty much de rigueur in the US for a whole bunch of stuff, notably telecom (mobile and fixed line), ISP, cable TV, electric utilities, as well as other stuff. On your invoice, you'll see stuff like "regulatory recovery fee", "franchise fee", "FCC Admin fee" and the like. None of which are taxes or government imposed fees. Rather, they're just using standard cost-of-doing-business expenses to tack on to your bill while claiming the price is at least 10-15% less.
My favorite is the $23/month "broadcast TV surcharge," which the cable company claims is to cover fees paid to the networks they carry. Since they have to pay these folks to carry their content anyway, they should just include it in the normal price, right? But if they did, that alone would increase the "price" by at least 15-20%.
As such, at least in the US, what law makes this "illegal?" Please tell me as it would save me at least $100/month in such fees/surcharges, or at least the "price" would be the actual "total you owe" price on the bottom line.
I wish.
It might be like shipping and handling: $20. The shipping is probably $5, the handling is $15. The handling is just a fee they charge to sell it to you. They want you to think it's shipping that's why they put "shipping" first. Uber Eats calls it "taxes and other fees," which are mostly fees, but they want you to think it's taxes, that's why they put "taxes" first.
Many business are scummy like that, we've just gotten used to it.
The point being, they are signaling a price hike and they are trying to attribute it to tariffs, which maybe or may not be true down to the penny. If they were exact in what the tariff was, people can easily calculate their cost, which Amazon doesn't want. I'm sure they will sneak in some extra profit in there at some point using similar tactics as described above.
It would be more obfuscated than that. They're scummy, I didn't say they weren't clever. A company probably wouldn't make the exact same product in three different countries and Amazon probably wouldn't stock all three, they'd just pick the version they could make the most money on. Also, they probably wouldn't make the difference obvious, just a few cents or dollars here or there. They would say the tariff is $5, when it really was $4.50 and they'd just round up. At scale that really ads up.
>Seems like a very fast way to completely lose the trust of your customers.
Most of them lost trust a long time ago. I mean, what companies do you trust? I don't trust very many, if any.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we should all trust Amazon...
Edit: Amazon said displaying tariffs was never approved and won't happen. More junk news.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-displaying-...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2025/apr/29/hsbc-t...
> The Trump White House is furious with Amazon over reports that it plans to display the cost of tariffs on items it sells.
> Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has just given the company both barrels, at her briefing with the media today.
> Leavitt claims the move is “a hostile and political act by Amazon”, and asks why Amazon didn’t take a similar step when inflation hit 40-year highs under the Biden administration.
Why do you think you get a breakdown of governmental fees in your electric or phone bill, but not the tax subsidies?
I recently had to buy some transformers, and had no other choice but to get bent over. The price more than doubled at checkout.
Imagine waving your phone, or having on your VR glasses and getting this feedback "instantly".
Plus, you can sell what you learned to sellers so they can out-compete one-another (and drive prices down for consumers).
In a sci-fi world this would turn grocery stores into Faraday cages quickly.
Maybe not useful for the Doordash generation, but the majority of human life can't afford such.
But yah, completely with you on the "sales is hell" part, that bit was for the startup bros.
Prices shown should be post-tax post-fees all-in wherever possible, though. Otherwise you get Ryanair.
Yes, all of the parts and assembly for a product can occur in the United States, but what about the tools they use? What about the semi and the fuel it uses to bring you those tools? While there will certainly be companies that don’t directly pay tariffs, it will be hard for just about every domestic manufacturer to be completely shielded from their effects.
People are going to be pissed that a basic clothes iron now cost $80, but they will not go buy the $225 that is made in texas or wherever. Especially when it is no better, and likely even worse, than the $80 one.
Update: oh and they also said stores won’t lower it because of the tariffs, making the stores more money.
How does that work?
I think you mean that Trump people will get mad at them for highlighted his screwup. I'm sure that's true -- they've decided to back Trump no matter what, which leads them to numerous irrational positions -- but it's not like Amazon or anyone else can do anything about it. Trump and his supporters just thrash about destructively and we all pay the price.
https://ir.aboutamazon.com/sec-filings/default.aspx
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.” — Jeff Stein
The idea being that folks would pay attention to this stuff. There are a zillion tariffs affecting prices and they just sit there for decades.
Its good to know if Amazon's cut is on the total price including the tariff or the price excluding the tariff. It'll help understand whether Amazon is profiting from the situation or not.
I hope other retailers follow suit
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/04/29/wh_hostil...
"Trump complained to Bezos before Amazon said it scrapped idea to display tariff cost" - April 29 2025 9:01 AM EDT: [2]
"Amazon denies tariff pricing plan after White House calls it "hostile and political"" - April 29, 2025 12:01 PM EDT: [3]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/white-house... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/white-house-blasts-amazon-ov... [3] https://www.axios.com/2025/04/29/tariffs-amazon-prime-day-se...
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/white-house...
My uninformed guess is that this hurts the bottom line in at least the short term if customers are less likely to purchase an item which sports high tariffs (even if they might otherwise buy the item if the precise tariff were hidden). And the long term benefit to global trade (inasmuch as one sees that as a good thing, which I mostly do) isn't something that's very testable, much less certain.
They won't. It's clearly meant to target Trump specifically. It's not as though there were absolutely no tariffs of any kind on various products before this year, so ask yourself why they're so concerned about showing tariffs NOW and not say, any time in the past.
Their Brazilian site might be one place that it would make sense, in that Brazil does have rather high tariffs.
WH is now filled with extremely dumb people. The other day, the Orange clown was telling automakers to not raise prices due to tariffs, instead absorb them <face palm>
They actually already do this in Amazon stores in other countries for good that are shipped from overseas. They display the cost of customs processing and it's either included or in addition to the base cost. Then they tack on shipping if applicable. This of course is only for products that do not require further customs processing due to the cost of items going over allowed limits, number of units that are considered commercial purchases, whether the product is in a list of products with different requirements etc.
I really do doubt Amazon will do something much different in the US. Can someone with access to the article comment on this?
> Tariffs on sellers' goods are putting Amazon in an awkward position for Prime Day, said Arun Sundaram, an analyst at CFRA Research.
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/some-amazon...
Intimidation tactics are working.
> According to e-commerce software company SmartScout, 900 products on Amazon saw increased prices since April 9, with an average increase of 29%.
Tariffs aren't having a big impact yet.
> You voted for American energy dominance—and the Trump Administration is delivering. From solar to oil & gas, they’re unleashing it all. More energy. More jobs. Higher wages. America is booming—because when we lead, we win.
You can't argue against that, he was right. It all did BOOM.
If consumers see two products, one from China and another from Vietnam, both with their tariff markups listed, I have a feeling they’d pick the Vietnam product more often due to the lower markup. This makes Trump happy because he clearly wants us to stop buying Chinese products.
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/29/tariffs-amazon-prime-day-se...
One of the Republicans' (conflicting) rationales for the import taxes was Americans would notice the higher prices and be motivated to seek out domestic alternatives.
If they were telling the truth, they should be happy to see these factors clearly displayed, since that makes it easy for consumers to compare and switch to other products that aren't being tariffed.
Instead, they're freaking out, indicating they want to deceive consumers and voters into blaming higher prices on "greedy companies", instead of (correctly) blaming the federal government which is taking the money for unprecedented new "national emergency" taxes.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027
I mean call them the Democrats tariffs. 2024 was a gift-wrapped election victory and the Democrats (shockingly) bungled it in staggeringly impressive fashion.
I'm curious; I currently don't think that election was so easy for them, with having to run a different candidate, and the overton window shifting right (not just US; EU too).
Of course the republicans are just as guilty as democrats in letting their people keep running as they get old in office.
I have a personal policy of never voting for someone who has held the office more than 1 time. If more people would do this we would solve a bunch of problems. (2 terms is a good number if you like the person since they have some experience in the second term). This also means I oppose too small districts in local issues - if there are not several people interested in running for the office than either it shouldn't be elected (why do I elect my country treasurer - it shouldn't have any power), or the district is too small.
2. Democrats believe that "anybody who's not the other guy" is a winning strategy despite it failing over and over. They think that a candidate that people are excited to vote for is not a necessity and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. They got beat with this strategy in 2000, 2004, 2016 (and now 2024). It barely worked in 2020.
If the plan in 2028 is somebody who's a hold-your-nose and say "Well I'll vote for anyone who isn't republican" they will get absolutely smoked again.
> They think that a candidate that people are excited to vote for is not a necessity and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. They got beat with this strategy in 2000, 2004, 2016 (and now 2024). It barely worked in 2020.
Who, specifically, is "they"? I think either party just picks the candidate that can muster the most internal support and money, and those are both pretty good proxies for probability of success.
I strongly disagree with your examples. I think Al Gore was an excellent candidate (and he was very close to winning, too). 2004 was basically unwinnable for democrats against an incumbent after going through a crisis that fused the country together.
Trumps success I believe is mainly owed to a media landscape that is extremely helpful for populism in general, a bit of an overton "backlash" after achieving a lot of progressive goals (LGBT, black president, environmentalism) and his success in building a cult of personality out of voters with conflicting beliefs (=> the whole anti-woke movement) as well as diametrically opposed interests (working-class voters that don't stand to profit from neither isolationism-light nor gilded-age-v2 policies).
I personally don't see the republicans holding on to the presidency either way, because in my view, Trump was basically heaping a lot of blame as central part of his rethoric, but after actually getting all the power, people are gonna expect results at some point. Blaming "deep state obstructionism" and "the media" is just not gonna cut it to justify mediocrity, and looking at present policies and past results, mediocrity is about the best I'd expect from him as administrator (thats simply not what he is good at).
The last couple of years have seen a massive post-COVID backlash to incumbent parties all over the world—Democrats were just caught in the wave.
Why on Earth would anyone not call them anything but Trump Tariffs when he is the one who imposed them and when they’re uniquely his idea?
Fix the problem which is electing people like this.
If my toddler scribbles on the wall I better put the markers away next time not put up a little sign that says, "Junior's Doodles."
The point of "Trump Tariffs" is not to make the Trump the scribbler face that wall and feel shame for his output--everybody knows he's too damaged for that.
The point is to ensure everybody else (i.e. voters) recognize that the government is taking their money and understand how it came to occur.
To return to your analogy, it's some message that tells other adults to stop giving Junior their markers, from a source that is beyond your direct control.
Would I have voted for a Democrat or a Republican if they ran the "right" candidate? I suppose anything is possible, but given the history, I would consider that to be very unlikely.
C'mon. This isn't even an attempt at "both sides" shit.
The extorter will never stop increasing the ask. Columbia University found this out.
Interesting
It just tells the administration there’s more where that comes from.
Vader: “I’m altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.”
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_or_Free_Trade
Unfortunately, parasites get fucked up by these policies, and so they will fund right wing fascist revolutions to make absolutely sure that NOTHING that Henry George ever proposed is implemented.
Henry George is among the greatest humans who ever lived.
Free Trade! Free Land! Free Men!
As far as I'm concerned, this is dumb as shit and straight reverse-robinhood.
That said, China makes a lot of good quality things too and a whole lot of things that we have no hope of being competitive in producing.
Also, it's not like anything we bring back to the USA under the circumstances is going to be higher quality.
I was already buying a lot of clothes from brands that pride themselves on trying hard to do Made in America, like Schott Nyc. It'll be interesting to see how this impacts them or brands like Thursday.
I really want the impact of this to be to force Americans to buy fewer, higher quality things instead of bloat loads of cheap shit. I don't think that this will be the impact of the policy, unfortunately...
Also, given that Cheeto promised no more IRS, I shouldn't have to pay federal income taxes this year. Don't tread on me zion don.
There's nothing partisan about this, it's Amazon. They like free trade. It's about policy not the party
All respected economists on all sides of the political spectrum agree that tariffs hurt the economy. The current President is the only political actor pushing for tariffs.
Reminding people that tariffs are a tax on the consumer is not a partisan issue; it is transparency and plainly economics 101.
Also, I thought these were bigly beautiful tariffs, Trump's proudest achievement; surely he will be pleased to see them displayed so prominently, so that people can marvel at them?
100%+ fees added overnight are interesting, no one is writing features to show 0% that hasn't budged in decades.
But it still seems like you’re disagreeing with my conclusion?
Yes, consumers love cheap goods. And businesses love to make short term profits even if it means selling out the future by gutting American companies and turning them into mere distributors for Chinese companies. That’s why you need the government to intervene to change peoples’ behaviors.
There is a reason we tax cigarettes and other things that are bad for us. We do it to change people’s behaviors, to get them to consume less of the bad thing. Yes, like with tariffs, it makes the bad thing more expensive. That’s the whole point! Amazon is a bad company with a bad business model, and I don’t actually care who is the one who takes them out.
On a less sarcastic note, pretty much zero mainstream economists believe that tariffs will bring back manufacturing to the US. There are economists who think the US should manufacture more. They talk about taxing consumption more and savings/investment less. When you cite economists to tariff-enthusiasts, they usually reply with "economics is a scam!" or some such nonsense. That's only a breath away from an equally dumb Marxist line: "economists are just servants of The Capital". Bleh.
And I love Amazon. They're a fantastic company and have been since day 1. I'm a grown-up. If I want to buy cheap Chinese goods, I should be able to. And if that hurts Americans, that sucks for them, but I shouldn't have to pay a tax because some US company can't compete with Chinese companies. And if I lose my job because someone in China does it better/cheaper, I won't whine about it. I'll find something else to do.
Mainstream economists also widely agree corporate taxes and capital gains taxes are bad: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Should we eliminate those taxes and have everyone pay a large VAT?
I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
I’m not a Marxist, but I’m also not a religious zealot. I believe in aerospace engineers enough that I’m comfortable getting into a metal tube that’s 35,000 feet in the air. But I don’t have similar confidence in the postulates of economists.
> And if that hurts Americans. that sucks for them
The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.
You don't have to go all the way. Just experiment with a VAT and lowering corporate taxes.
> I don’t have confidence that economists have fully figured out how economies work or what the relevant trade offs are. Economics is somewhere between the social “sciences” and real science in terms of methodological reliability.
What economists have is better than vague feelings about the dignity of working in a factory as opposed to a service job.
> The whole point of government is so people can vote to override anti-social individual behavior like this.
Is that the point of the government? Not in the American tradition. Americans are remarkably invididualistic. If that's anti-social, well, the experiment has been running for a few hundred years and it's worked pretty well. I don't believe the past 20 years have been so bad that the US should start acting like a third world country.
You've got it backwards. If people have the feeling that there is more dignity working in a factory than delivering Door Dash, that's a preference that should be factored into the economic analysis. Similarly, economic analyses considers factors like labor laws and environmental laws as detracting from "comparative advantage," even though it probably better reflects peoples' preferences for those things to be a minimum standard that no country is competing on. And it's certainly relevant that being a manufacturing powerhouse provides a long-term military advantage compared to a services-based economy. Prior to World War II, the U.S. had largely demilitarized. It built the world's largest military within a couple of years, because of its industrial capabilities. Those are real-world considerations, but aren't factored into simplistic comparative-advantage analyses.
Bringing back manufacturing with tariffs is like banning fossil fuels to combat climate change. It's not good policy.
I agree with this completely. But I think most economists simply disagree with this goal and aren’t thinking of ways to advance the goal. So we’re stuck with tariffs, which at least is something we have used in the past to support industry.
I would posit that this attitude is at the root of a lot of the distrust of and consternation at experts. If people say: “we want a society with more manufacturing/fewer immigrants/etc.,” the expert response is “you’re stupid to want that.” They’re not thinking of ways to leverage their expertise in service of those outcomes.