The state of the American GoP is absurd. Everything is political to them, the Republican party are the ultimate "snowflakes". Science, basic facts, a minority or woman on some military website, pricing on your website ... I'm drinking coffee right now, that's probably offensive to them in some way.
At its core, I think it comes down to the language of morality that’s used. Differences aren’t framed as disagreements, but often as deliberate attacks for their own sake.
It goes further: the language often doesn’t just describe policies as harmful, but conveys them as evil or immoral, either directly or by implication.
This makes compromise almost impossible. In normal negotiation, sides might trade policy priorities—accepting cuts in one area to strengthen another. But when every issue is framed this way it’s no longer a deal making compromise. It’s compromising, moral values.
This is then especially a problem in primary races where a challenger can attack any and all bipartisanship as absolute failure.
I agree with your insight: the language of morality. This use of the language of morality seems to be a consequence of the 1980s subsumption of the Republican party by the US' evangelical christians, the "moral majority". By capturing the "values voters", the Republican party got its policies blessed or ordained by God. That means Republicans have to frame opposition in moral terms - it is, to them.
Per Newt Gingerich’s strategy, in the early 90s it actually became the de facto standard for the GOP as a whole to shift to this language. It was deliberate strategy, it didn’t happen by accident. It was pretty brazen and cynical too, with the title giving away the real intent:
Someone once pointed out to me that the only difference between "special interest" and "public interest" is who said it. I think about that a lot these days.
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
I know many Christians who are willing to compromise in both business & government and hold nuanced opinions about a variety of topics. Sounds more like Barry has a bias and is projecting that bias
While individual Christians may hold nuanced opinions on a variety of topics, collectively, they often exhibit more uniformity in their views, especially in contexts like business and government. Barry Goldwater's point about their unwillingness to compromise stems from the belief that they are acting in the name of God, which can lead to a more rigid stance, as we have seen.
i think the "language of morality" is a sign of the problem but not at the core of it. especially when the morality itself flip/flops every other day.
i think the core of it is tribalism mixed to unrelenting fear-mongering.
tribalism is probably unavoidable. meanwhile the world is becoming more and more complex and unknowable and "anxiogène" (anxiety inducing? i do not have a good word for this).
education is meant to fight this... and it has been under attack for a while now.
the failure to educate renders the world even more unknowable for vast and wide swathes of the population; and i am not talking about a rich/poor divide here, the "tech bro" stereotype fits right there. a "complete education" is not seen as valuable anymore.
many people will throw away a chance at a better world in exchange of a bad world that they "get", this is a natural tendency. especially when the going is bad for the common folk.
my unsubstantiated opinion is that those reasons are why you see more and more simplified speech, simplified world views, anti-intellectualism and other ills prevail.
politics being dominated by corrupt thieves, sycophants, and immoral lobbyists certainly did not help... not mentioning the state of media (social and traditional).
tldr:
- people are afraid so stick to their tribes
- people do not/cannot trust the institutions anymore
- education and thinking itself is under attack
- people are hurting so they cling to what they can
As far as tariff policy goes it would seem that way, although I kinda suspect as far as the Administration is concerned, they don't "really" care. I doubt there's as much ideology behind their actions as it would seem.
Unfortunately, but maybe fortunately, democracy isn't about what's right. It's about representing people. It's unfortunate when so many believe and perpetuate things that are harmful and terrible, and it's unfortunate when our democracy then ultimately represents those things, too.
I would prefer benevolent dictator myself, as long as they were aligned with my values. But that being an unreasonable ask, I will take imperfect democracy over no representation at all.
i've believed this unfortunate truth my entire life, and it's led me to very strongly and consistently reevaluate my beliefs and opinions, because i refuse to be part of an older generation that perpetuates harm due to ego and selfishness.
The counter-action to me is seeking out and sitting in discomfort.
Imho, the root cause of the observed behavior is that everyone prefers comfort over discomfort (physically, mentally, spiritually, etc.), and old people typically have the resources (time, money, etc.) to keep themselves in a comfortable state if they choose.
Unfortunately, comfort also means stasis.
Which is fine as long as the world doesn't change outside that bubble... but it eventually always does.
The Republicans have most of the power right now. Its natural for the party in that situation to politicize everything as part of a fight to hang on to, and grow, their power and control.
The Democratic party had been this way for most of my adult life.
The most charitable interpretation of your comment is that it is based on perceived power due to the party that controls the executive office, and that you came into adulthood at or near the beginning of the Obama administration (of course, that still means you grew up with Bush, Clinton x2, Bush x2).
Or you came into adulthood during or near the Biden administration - which would still mean you are aware of 2016)
That still leaves Republicans controlling the Presidency 1/4 of that time. Further, you, like many Americans, mistake control of the Executive Branch as controlling the government, but "control" involved the legislature, and Republicans, or Republicans and West Virginia Democrats, have controlled both houses in much more of my recent memory.
Judging which party had power by outcomes is much more effective than only consider political seats. Going back at least to the beginning of Obama the major changes pushed through have heavily favored Democratic policies rather than Republican.
Gay marriage, reversing don't ask don't tell, and the ACA are all policies that the Republicans were very opposed to. The overturning of Roe v Wade is the only major Republican win I can think of (maybe I missed some), though that is a decades old fight and one that in my opinion Democrats setup for failure by never pushing it passed a single supreme court ruling.
Political power follows culture, and for the recent past the majority public opinion has generally supported Democratic policies over Republican ones. That's changed.
The last time the parties flipped was in the 70s and 80s. I was only alive for the tail end of that and paying no attention to politics, but my understanding is that the pattern was generally the same. At that time they flipped names as well, many democrats of the era moved over to the republican party. Maybe we'll see that again in the near future, but for now it seems like both parties are happier to keep the same brands while switch many view points (big business vs workers, state rights issues, limits on the executive branch, etc)
I would love some examples of Republican elected officials pushing back against the tariffs (both economically and as an arrogation of Congressional power) and flexing their legislative power. Likewise I'd like to see some of them standing up for civil liberties, the Constitution, and against actual corruption in government like the president's memecoins.
They didn't seem to think so when they voted for Trump.
Who could've known that the tariff man would impose tariffs? Maybe his mini trade war with China in 2018--for which he had to bail out farmers--should've served as an indicator of what was to come.
So far, I haven't found many bonafide Republicans willing to say, "This is bad enough to make me regret voting for Trump", or even to have not voted for, or voted against Trump.
If you are one of these conservative/Republicans, do you fit into any of the above categories?
I mean, he’s just doing the things he said he would do and now all you voters are surprised that he’s trashed your retirement and your life and health will be worse? And it’s going to last decades.
One thing I can't stand about the current administration is just how much they resemble a schoolyard bully. It's never their fault, they are always the victim, and they cry their actions have repercussions. Why is it hostile and political to display the tarriffs to the consumer? Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if a local politician introduced a new sales tax and then got mad at the businesses for showing the new tax to consumers?
The thing that really bugs me is that I'm 43, I'm getting older, I'm open to conservative ideas. I want to see ideas debated in the public forum. And most of all, I want to see leaders inspiring people with like an optimistic conservative vision. Family, personal responsibility, etc. I could totally see some version of a conservative platform that I would vote for. But man, there's no way for these people.
It's astounding how self-victimization works so well for demagogues. Some people will buy that they're under constant attack and irrationally sympathize with them.
When was the last time the White House spokesperson for a different administration publicly called the free market actions of a private company "hostile"?
I'm sure an example, or something like it, could easily be found to make a whatabout argument. The INSANE difference, in both volume and degree, of "comparable" things is the fact they'll never accept. They'll just double down. It's a death spiral.
Trump is turning all the dials up to 11 and that does actually make a difference. Some administrations / governments using bully tactics some of the time does not mean we can't call out one that uses bully tactics all of the time at high intensity and without concern for the broader impacts.
I think there's more to this than Amazon being annoyed at the stupid taxes raised on imported goods. Same with price labels on items with and excluding tax; people just like the lower numbers better, and stores that don't show low numbers will lose customers even if they operate at the same price point.
Studies have shown that consumers will gladly visit restaurants that don't include tips in their prices over restaurants that do, even when the prices are exactly the same.
In a country used to not seeing the total price on store goods, hiding the tariffs away as a "+145% tariff" label makes perfect sense. Just raising the total cost and hiding the tariff, what the American governments probably would prefer, would put Amazon at a disadvantage against other stores that do show the split.
On another note, Apple got very upset at Facebook when they tried to pull the same trick regarding the 30% Apple tax. In that case, Apple forbade Facebook from making it explicit how much of the transaction was a tariff raised by an external party. Same trick, but different outcome (because Apple can force Facebook's hand).
If we want capitalism to work at its best, the masses of decision makers that power the invisible hand require as much information as possible. I'm definitely not a fan of government using politics to obfuscate economic details of a tax, but I am also very much not a fan of captive market makers, like Apple, Google, or Visa, being able to unilaterally and forcibly bury this information.
Prohibiting retailers from offering a different cash price (Visa/MC) or preventing app owners from charging 30% more than they do on their own website to cover the marketplace costs (or preventing them from allowing the app to funnel them elsewhere for subscriptions that span much farther than the app alone) are all the dark, informationless side of capitalism.
Ignoring tariffs for the moment... No one should be shocked that Amazon would do this.
Remember back when it was controversial to apply sales tax to online shopping? The biggest lobbyist against it was Amazon, which they marketed as fighting for the market against the government. Then they got big enough to survive a reversal ... and swung the other way to weaponize the law against their smaller competitors.
They've done a lot more than this, including creating their own brands to inject into a successful niche product or segment. They did all that off of sales/product data they aggregated from all sales on their platform.
Amazon is a dirty player in the market, and everyone should remember that.
Neutral behavior is not desired. The admin desires to take unilateral, unchecked action without repercussions, while controlling the narrative. Enact tariffs while publicly stating "everything is fine."
"Why are you making us look bad by sharing the facts of the actions we're taking?" is how you can think of this. Never assume rational and good faith behavior from bad faith actors. Watch what someone does, not what they say. The words are free and meaningless.
Well, in the literal sense it would be neutral to be transparent, but "political" in the sense that the White House is using means "you're being mean to me."
That's what I would think. Though, as other users have pointed out, Amazon is being selective about what what they show. If they really wanted to be transparent and neutral, they'd need to show everything that makes up the price (how much the seller/manufacturer gets paid, what Amazon's cut is, how much goes to the payment processor, etc.)
Personally, I think it would be pretty great if they showed all that, but I don't see that ever happening.
Yeah, I agree it's different, but it's all selective transparency. They're willing to be transparent about things they can directly blame on the government (tax, tariffs) but not other things that influence the price (Amazon's markup, the payment processing charges).
It would be better if they showed all of that, IMO.
No, that's not the same thing. Tariffs are taxes collected by customs agents (no matter how much this administration wants to pretend they aren't), and taxes already show up as itemized additions to your receipt, unlike margins and seller fees.
To me that just means they're already doing selective transparency. They treat government influences on price as different than other factors that influence the price.
Every receipt I’ve ever gotten in my life has separated tax, and I don’t recall I’ve ever seen seller margins or anything like that on a receipt before.
Yeah, I'm not saying Amazon is the only one doing this. But I am saying that if they're saying that consumers deserve transparency, this just scratches the surface.
No, seriously: "political neutrality" as a concept is inherently and fatally flawed.
The closest you can ever attempt to come is either
a) maintain/support the current status quo—this is obviously a big problem for anyone the status quo is not serving
b) tailor whatever you're saying/doing to try to cleave to the exact current center of the political landscape—this is obviously going to be very fraught and highly subjective; no one actually does this
Anyone who says they're "apolitical" or who tells you to make something "politically neutral" is nearly guaranteed to be just a beneficiary of the status quo advocating for preserving it, often without even realizing that's what they're doing.
Ultimately, it's much more honest and positive in the long run to be honest about your own biases and, yes, be as transparent as possible.
This is false. Or at least it's almost totally false.
I can try to judge things by whether they are true or false, accurate or misleading, good or bad ideas, regardless of who said them.
Yeah, I fail sometimes - partly because I do have biases, and partly because I don't have infinite amounts of time and energy to dig in to find out the truth. Still, I don't judge what the administration says by which brand of administration it is. I prefer my news sources to be straight rather than slanted.
And I can say that without being a supporter of the current status quo. I find Trump's bullying to be reprehensible.
"I can employ reading comprehension and bullshit detection skills on any text" is not the same as saying "any text is neutral", nor even "it is possible for a text to be neutral".
My statement says nothing about the ability of any particular reader to use their learned skills of discerning fact from falsehood to judge what is true. It says that even if you (for any value of "you", including me!) think what you are writing is "neutral", that is, at best, and with 99.9% certainty, because it conforms to the current status quo and/or your unconscious assumptions and biases.
This is political, so are the tariffs. It’s the same cat and mouse game with local/state regulations on restaurant staff compensation and ‘service fees.’
No love for Amazon in general, they’ve been gaming the system for a long time, but it’s not hard to see why they would do this. Prices will go up, this an easy way to deflect the blame (and to be fair… it’s an accurate deflection).
I've seen gas pumps that prominently enumerate all the taxes included in the price, which were more than 50% in some European countries. It's a bit political for a business to call attention to otherwise-hidden taxes in the prices of its products, but both rational and fair.
Ohio has those stickers, mandated by law (2017 Ohio Fuel Tax Transparency Act). A Republican legislature passed the law, signed by a Republican governor.
Republicans used to have some semblance of ideology that you could kinda count on them sticking to occasionally... ish. That's all gone now. It doesn't even matter what they said 5 minutes ago, hate big tech?, next thing you know they hand big tech the purse strings of government.
The writing has been on the wall demographically for decades. Their base has been shrinking, fewer people are religious, white folk are losing status. It’s become harder and harder to win an election for turn since GW Bush, and even that went down to the courts.
Many districts are only red due to blatant gerrymandering. But even that gets harder to wield so what seems to have happened is that while they still can ostensibly win an election, they crank the wheel and destroy the rules so that they never have to compete on a level field again
I think including the taxes on fuel would be good, as it'd show people the ridiculous amount of money they're paying to maintain the infrastructure their cars use (though fuel taxes often don't come close to covering road maintenance).
Such a system could get complicated quickly, though, and showing the profit margin also wouldn't be of interest to many salespeople. Making fuel price total up to €2.09/L is easy if petrol were only taxed at €0.7891/L, but the 21% VAT being applied to the total sales price after the per liter tax (and the 9% profit margin) makes the math a tad more complex.
I don't think you could call those taxes "hidden" though. Anyone can look up how much tax they pay. It's not like taxes are sent out in secret to gas pumps every day.
When my state jacked up fuel taxes a few years ago, some local gas stations started printing the $/gallon that went to taxes on stickers on the pumps. Seems like a good thing: more information is always good, as long as it's correct. Same thing would be true of this tariff info -- good if correct.
It didn't last on the gas pumps, though, because ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
> ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
I don't think the intent of gas stations displaying the taxes is to convince people to use less gas. It's to create political pressure to reduce the tax.
The tarrifs are an exception from the normal rules about keeping politics out of things, because they're non-toxified by partisan culture war. They came so far out of left field that nobody was pre-trained to interpret criticism of them as an attack on their identity.
As an environmentalist, I am generally in favor of gasoline tax to pay for road maintenance. Without getting into the nuance of that position - I do not disagree with the fact that gas stations in my area break down the added cost per gallon into federal, state, and local tax per gallon. In fact I support it, transparency is important.
White House should change their perspective: “Amazon changes pricing information to promote zero tariff USA Made products by highlighting products with no markup”
Conservatism is the fear of everything: change, new ideas, people that don’t look like us, education, science, the list goes on and on... Why do you think they love their guns so much? They are scared.
You can’t go back to “the good ol’ days” because THEY’RE GONE!
I see a lot of comments here and in the other thread talking about Amazon's high profits on retail sales, so I looked up the last earnings report.
For the year of 2024, Amazon made a 5.5% operating profit on non-AWS revenue. This is before taxes and, I think, before leases on buildings and property.
the cry-baby-ness of the US Far Right is really something to behold. they seized control of the federal government and are now looting it and pushing all their deeply stupid hobby horses, but still they can't stop whinging about people merely noting what stupid stuff they're doing.
wah wah wah. if you don't won't people calculating the costs of your tariffs, perhaps don't introduce the world's worst tariff regime?
How long before the White House makes a "deal" with Amazon that somehow shields Amazon specifically from tariffs affecting their prices in exchange for removing the display; just shoveling US taxpayer money at them (after all we're saving billions that we used to spend on things like cancer research). Then we'd be at a place where Amazon's prices end up being dramatically lower than every other seller in the US, further entrenching their monopoly status, and taxpayers would actually be footing the bill. Talk about picking winners and losers...
Amazon has every incentive to show tariff rates to the customer. They don't want to be the bad guy overcharging in the transaction.
Neither do local merchants when they collect a sales tax.
Neither does the homeowner when they rent their guest room on Airbnb.
Neither does Lady Gaga when she sells a ticket through Ticketmaster.
This isn't controversial. It's price transparency for the consumer and it helps them make better choices.
What's unusual is the White House attacking a private sector retailer for a reasonable choice that's clearly theirs to make. Seeing the "+145% tariff" on your checkout page would puncture a hole in the narrative we've heard for years from Donald Trump that "China pays the tax."
No, you and I pay the tax. And both the U.S. and China will suffer.
While senseless politics like this are going on that every person on HN is libbing out over - houses continue to be unaffordable, no universal healthcare, and wages will continue to stagnate compared to costs.
Y’all are blind as hell to the real issues. This football version of American politics is so nonsensical. Not an ounce of material analysis even in something that could be as material as this.
If White House enacted a different tax to, say, fund more highways, and Amazon decided to display that, then that might be a different matter.
But this is tariffs. Tariffs work by making imported goods more expensive, which makes them less attractive to consumers, which makes domestic goods more attractive in comparison. That's the whole fucking point of tariffs. To make imported goods more expensive.
Amazon is essentially running a free advertisement for White House, showing off how Trump's tariffs are doing their job!
Exactly what else did Trump supporters expect to happen? Ponies and rainbows? Well, probably not rainbows - it's gay.
Tariffs are on the import cost. Wouldn't putting this tariff display in, and the customer knowing what the tariff % is leak the import cost to the end customer? Typically you don't share what that internal cost is with the end customer.
Sales tax is different because it's on the retail price that the customer pays.
Typical gaslighting behaviour. If you have as many customers as Amazon and the price increases that noticeably, that’s them being by forced to cover their own ass versus taking the heat when they shouldn’t.
Hostile and political? Probably. It's also telling people the truth about how much Trump's policies are costing them, or at least costing them on those particular purchases.
This is self-defense by Amazon. "Don't blame us that things got more expensive." But yes, it's also political (that's kind of inevitable when politics is the source of the additional cost).
If tariffs are so good, they should be happy that Amazon is doing free advertising of them on the Trump administration’s behalf. Why do they seem upset that people would know about the tariffs they’re so proud of? Such a mystery
> Why didn't Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?
Because the inflation under Biden was itself an accident. Trump is doing this on purpose.
Furthermore, if you buy the idea that the inflation was caused solely by handing out stimulus checks during a pandemic, then it's at least partially Trump's fault, too. Remember that Trump's the one who pushed for all this stimulus, because he was worried about his re-election prospects in 2020.
If you want a real criticism of this policy, it's that Bezos was spending $$$ to be at the Trump inauguration just a few months ago. Big Tech put their muscle behind Trump despite being the industry most reliant on foreign immigration and trade - the things Trump desperately wants to shut down. They did this because they're so shit scared of antitrust legislation that they're willing to break up America before America can break up them.
Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all, and Bezos didn't realize this. So instead of owning a broken-up business empire he's going to own no empire at all. Welcome to the bust-out.
> Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all
It this is true (it might be, it might not be), there's no particular reason why it needs to be the USA. Bezos and the current management structure and employees of Amazon in the USA might prefer if it was that way, but there's little about the company that requires it, other than its biggest market also being the USA.
Also: Bezos doesn't really own Amazon any more in any meaningful sense. He owns less than 10% of the stock.
I'll give you that Bezos is mostly gone from Amazon.
However, Amazon does need to be in the USA, even if it's not their host country, because they're a retailer. They make their money by buying goods and selling them to the people who want them.
Remember when Amazon used to only have one warehouse in one state, and relied on being able to ship things to get around sales tax? That didn't last - and not just because the law caught up with the loophole. They wanted to do next-day or same-day shipping that basically required them to have a warehouse in every city, and thus pay sales tax everywhere.
Amazon moving out of the US would make them equivalent to Temu or Wish in terms of convenience, and their sales would crater. Not to mention Trump is closing off the loophole those companies used, too.
> Remember that Trump's the one who pushed for all this stimulus, because he was worried about his re-election prospects in 2020.
The man had the first batch of checks from the treasury redesigned/printed just so he could put his big sharpie signature on the check, for self promotion purposes.
Inflation doesn't make more profit (unless a greedy retailer hikes prices beyond inflation because they think they can hide it in the general inflation).
Interesting how grocery profits went higher than the prior 30 year trend when covid supply chain impacts happened, and have continued to stay on a higher trend in the high inflation years following covid.
Yes, the retailers are greedy and increasing prices beyond inflation, and they're quite successful at it.
Also no one was going to blame Amazon for inflation. There are still people in the US who are under the impression that the only reason they would be paying any part of the tariffs is due to corporate greed instead of that just being how tariffs work.
Passing the cost to the consumer isn't a requirement. Sometimes it's impossible and stay competitive with local business.
Say local business charges $110. Imported charges $80 but a 50% tariff making it $120. If the import charges $120, they won't be competitive on price, so if that was their only differentiation, they would need eat at least $10 in tariffs.
Why are you only blaming Biden? Trump put more stimulus into the economy than Biden did. Both are culpable if looking at raw numbers. Additionally, I would argue that PPP loans from Trump's CARE act were mostly a failure, transferring more wealth to the already wealthy and pushing up asset prices even further.
And you think the seller is pocketing inflation price increases? If you're really talking about inflation, there's nothing to pocket, because the profit after increasing the prices has the same buying power. And every other price increase is not related to inflation.
Inflation is a systemic issue that cannot be specifically identified. A tax is a deliberate fee that is distinct from the actual cost of items. Not showing the cost of tariffs would be a deliberate attempt to hide the price of that tax.
White House should be furious. This definitely makes the Trump Administration look bad since it's a separate price added onto the final price. There are 180.1 million Amazon Prime US subscribers. This means potentially 180 million Americans will see the tariff effects directly. Not counting total US Amazon shoppers due to lack of numbers.
Edit: people are downvoting me because of the first sentence. All I’m saying is that if I’m the Whitehouse, I’d be furious too. I never said I think the tariffs are a good idea.
You may be missing the "and be added to the final price" bit, or interpreting it differently than it may have been intended.
In European countries with VAT, the price on the item / shelf tag / whatever includes the VAT. You don't need to remember what jurisdiction you're in and thus what percentage of sales tax you need to add on to the displayed price to know how much you'll be asked to pay when you check out. If the tag says 12 euro, 12 euro is exactly what you're paying at the register.
Sure, in the US, your receipt will tell you how much sales tax you paid. But that is information you're not given until the point of checkout. Additionally you may not have the explicit tax amount presented to you til you receive that post-sale receipt, you may have to do your own subtraction of the listed price(s) from the total price to determine how much tax you're paying before you commit to the purchase.
I think he means the display price. When you buy something for $100 and it ends up being $110 on checkout, the taxes are obfuscated on the display price.
I understand your point, but they should not be furious, just like a spoiled kid should not be furious because it got the wrong toy for birthday. People should be reasonable, and not furious that it's not going their way. If these people should be furious, they should be furious at themselves.
That's astonishing. And Amazon's stuff generally is often shitty and counterfeit, amazing to see it so popular. That doesn't bode well for local business. No wonder there is such wealth inequality in the country when one company is supplying everyone with stuff.
What is wrong with displaying this? It is an additional tax added to products, very much like sales tax. It is entirely appropriate to display taxes and similar fees on an invoice. It would be disingenuous to hide it.
I think people are reading an implication of "would be justified and righteous" into the use of the word "should" in the phrase "the White House should be furious" in the GP comment.
Yes, this is correct. Amazon showing tariff surcharge is a huge deal to Trump's approval rating due to the fact that 180m Americans subscribe to Prime, which means many people will directly see the effect of the tariffs.
But I think people got too angry too fast to understand my point.
Not to get into pedantics, but just to offer a helpful explanation, I think it's because you used "should" instead of "would". It's no big deal, but in your sentence, should implies reasonable, while would implies expected. (Even though should also has a usage where it means expected, that's only when you're unsure of something happening in the future, whereas this event has already happened.)
I hate being right. I remember years ago predicting that if MAGA got back in they’d levy a huge tax increase they’d call a tax cut and a huge spending increase they’d call a spending cut.
My other big prediction for years has been that it’ll be MAGA that will do mass gun confiscation in defiance of the second amendment. Let’s see how that one does. Of course all the MAGA folks would be fine with it because it's not mass gun confiscation by the "new world order" if Trump does it.
Surely, they should be happy to see their bigly beautiful tariffs, of which they are apparently so proud, prominently displayed to a grateful public?
Like, one can't have it both ways. "These tariffs are a brilliant idea and will make everything wonderful... HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT THE TARIFFS" is an utterly incoherent position.
The media, from the WSJ to the NY Times, across the political spectrum, the blogosphere, the social media, ALL of them have been LYING to Americans about the tariffs from day one, bombarding them with bullshit and lies and braindead idiocies, ceaselessly fearmongering, every day all day long, in their efforts to sacrifice everything, including the entire US economy, at the altar of high stock prices, fat corporate profit margins, and one-sided globalization. I have never seen anything like that. No wonder everyone is in a sour mood and all the soft data is shitty. But there is an economic reality out there: businesses trying to make their businesses work, and consumers making records amounts of money and spending it, and having fun.https://wolfstreet.com/2025/04/29/despite-all-moaning-and-gr...
It is hostile and political, do they break down their prices for other added costs, i.e. inflation, higher taxes? Never seen it before, so why do it here then.
Previously the US's effective average tariffs were in the 1.8% range, and a big contributor there was things like vehicles and agricultural products (ie things that people were unlikely to buy on Amazon). Most developed countries are in the 1-2% range; except for the post-Trump II US, effective tariffs in double digits are basically just for extremely poor countries and weird microstates. They just weren't a significant enough part of the cost base that they'd be particularly worth highlighting.
Inflation is not an input to price. It is an output of price. It would not be meaningful to say "this portion of this price is attributable to inflation" on some product listing.
Maybe I am missing something but sales tax is something that the seller pays. It's a % of the retail price and so they collect it from the customer, so it's added in and shown to the customer.
Tariffs are paid by the importer and I would think that they would put that into the price of the good itself based on their desired profit margins etc. How would Amazon even know what to put for the tariff amount? It's not a % of the retail price, it's a % of the import price which the seller doesn't typically share with the end customer.
"What it costs now" - "What it cost in March" = "Tariff cost"
The math is not perfect, but to a good approximation (certainly a far better approximation than the administration's insane computation of international "tariffs") that will indicate the cost to the consumer of Trump's tariff policies.
So yes, if the importer eats a significant chunk of the tariff cost and doesn't pass it on to Amazon/the consumer, the computation will reflect that (as it should). And if they don't, it will reflect that too (as it should).
Chaotic: one might disagree on the magnitude of flip-flopping that can be labelled "chaotic", but the unpredictable on-again, off-again nature of the policies is well-described by "chaotic" I think.
Ill-conceived: if you can find me one serious economist who agrees with the Trump tariff policy (i.e. agrees on the goal, the means and the ends, and the match between them), I'll consider retracting this. Otherwise, yep, ill-conceived describes imposing tariffs without any apparent understanding of how they work or their likely effects.
As these tariffs are objectively likely to drive up costs, hurt user demand, and lower revenue for the company, I would argue that they have a duty to their shareholders and other stakeholders to push back against them and not be neutral. It is an action driven by business concerns rather than politics.
Also yes, taxes are listed as a separate line item.
We are not used to seeing corporate lobbying and campaigning done so openly except when it comes to news media. Join liberals like me who oppose corporate personhood and Citizens United and fight corporate political power.
So a customer should not know how much taxes are on an item they buy? How would one show inflation? What are you even talking about? Just say you're a MAGA fanatic and that everything Trump does and says is good and we can stop pretending to have a debate here.
The state of the American GoP is absurd. Everything is political to them, the Republican party are the ultimate "snowflakes". Science, basic facts, a minority or woman on some military website, pricing on your website ... I'm drinking coffee right now, that's probably offensive to them in some way.
At its core, I think it comes down to the language of morality that’s used. Differences aren’t framed as disagreements, but often as deliberate attacks for their own sake.
It goes further: the language often doesn’t just describe policies as harmful, but conveys them as evil or immoral, either directly or by implication.
This makes compromise almost impossible. In normal negotiation, sides might trade policy priorities—accepting cuts in one area to strengthen another. But when every issue is framed this way it’s no longer a deal making compromise. It’s compromising, moral values.
This is then especially a problem in primary races where a challenger can attack any and all bipartisanship as absolute failure.
I agree with your insight: the language of morality. This use of the language of morality seems to be a consequence of the 1980s subsumption of the Republican party by the US' evangelical christians, the "moral majority". By capturing the "values voters", the Republican party got its policies blessed or ordained by God. That means Republicans have to frame opposition in moral terms - it is, to them.
Per Newt Gingerich’s strategy, in the early 90s it actually became the de facto standard for the GOP as a whole to shift to this language. It was deliberate strategy, it didn’t happen by accident. It was pretty brazen and cynical too, with the title giving away the real intent:
“Language: a Key Mechanism of Control” https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
Newt literally said feels over reals.
He means that if he can make someone feel something is true, then it is as true as the truth.
He said this out loud on CNN years ago
Someone once pointed out to me that the only difference between "special interest" and "public interest" is who said it. I think about that a lot these days.
> This makes compromise almost impossible
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
― Barry Goldwater
I know many Christians who are willing to compromise in both business & government and hold nuanced opinions about a variety of topics. Sounds more like Barry has a bias and is projecting that bias
While individual Christians may hold nuanced opinions on a variety of topics, collectively, they often exhibit more uniformity in their views, especially in contexts like business and government. Barry Goldwater's point about their unwillingness to compromise stems from the belief that they are acting in the name of God, which can lead to a more rigid stance, as we have seen.
No... you've selected out the nut-bars, and many have self-selected themselves out to be able to actually conduct business.
That's not political Christians.
That's a different creature altogether.
i think the "language of morality" is a sign of the problem but not at the core of it. especially when the morality itself flip/flops every other day.
i think the core of it is tribalism mixed to unrelenting fear-mongering.
tribalism is probably unavoidable. meanwhile the world is becoming more and more complex and unknowable and "anxiogène" (anxiety inducing? i do not have a good word for this).
education is meant to fight this... and it has been under attack for a while now.
the failure to educate renders the world even more unknowable for vast and wide swathes of the population; and i am not talking about a rich/poor divide here, the "tech bro" stereotype fits right there. a "complete education" is not seen as valuable anymore.
many people will throw away a chance at a better world in exchange of a bad world that they "get", this is a natural tendency. especially when the going is bad for the common folk.
my unsubstantiated opinion is that those reasons are why you see more and more simplified speech, simplified world views, anti-intellectualism and other ills prevail.
politics being dominated by corrupt thieves, sycophants, and immoral lobbyists certainly did not help... not mentioning the state of media (social and traditional).
tldr: - people are afraid so stick to their tribes - people do not/cannot trust the institutions anymore - education and thinking itself is under attack - people are hurting so they cling to what they can
If those coffee beans weren’t grown in the United States, well then yes it is offensive to them.
It would be wild to see Kona coffee suddenly become as affordable as the rest of what Americans drink every day
And then the supply runs out, Kona prices shoot up further, and boom, America is great again or something
As far as tariff policy goes it would seem that way, although I kinda suspect as far as the Administration is concerned, they don't "really" care. I doubt there's as much ideology behind their actions as it would seem.
Reminds me of a dumb joke about modern videogames: Characters can have two genders, male and political.
"Amazon says displaying tariff cost ‘not going to happen’ after White House blowback" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-displaying-...
> I'm drinking coffee right now, that's probably offensive to them in some way
A real student of American culture would know that it's only truly offensive if it's a latte. (I can't explain why)
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Always ironic and amusing to find these for giveaway at a food pantry. Trickle down economics at peak performance.
For the price point I usually see them at, you can certainly do better, to be somewhat polite about it.
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> That's how it's always been.
No, sometimes one side is right.
Slavery was evil and immoral, full stop, just to cite an obvious one.
Unfortunately, but maybe fortunately, democracy isn't about what's right. It's about representing people. It's unfortunate when so many believe and perpetuate things that are harmful and terrible, and it's unfortunate when our democracy then ultimately represents those things, too.
I would prefer benevolent dictator myself, as long as they were aligned with my values. But that being an unreasonable ask, I will take imperfect democracy over no representation at all.
As my 'Violence in the political system' professor once quipped in an undergrad course -- it will end when a generation dies of old age.
Another argument in favor of Congressional term limits.
i've believed this unfortunate truth my entire life, and it's led me to very strongly and consistently reevaluate my beliefs and opinions, because i refuse to be part of an older generation that perpetuates harm due to ego and selfishness.
The counter-action to me is seeking out and sitting in discomfort.
Imho, the root cause of the observed behavior is that everyone prefers comfort over discomfort (physically, mentally, spiritually, etc.), and old people typically have the resources (time, money, etc.) to keep themselves in a comfortable state if they choose.
Unfortunately, comfort also means stasis.
Which is fine as long as the world doesn't change outside that bubble... but it eventually always does.
good lord do i have plenty of discomfort in my life, much of it my own making :)
Please do enlighten us with specifics.
The parties have largely flipped.
The Republicans have most of the power right now. Its natural for the party in that situation to politicize everything as part of a fight to hang on to, and grow, their power and control.
The Democratic party had been this way for most of my adult life.
The most charitable interpretation of your comment is that it is based on perceived power due to the party that controls the executive office, and that you came into adulthood at or near the beginning of the Obama administration (of course, that still means you grew up with Bush, Clinton x2, Bush x2).
Or you came into adulthood during or near the Biden administration - which would still mean you are aware of 2016)
That still leaves Republicans controlling the Presidency 1/4 of that time. Further, you, like many Americans, mistake control of the Executive Branch as controlling the government, but "control" involved the legislature, and Republicans, or Republicans and West Virginia Democrats, have controlled both houses in much more of my recent memory.
Judging which party had power by outcomes is much more effective than only consider political seats. Going back at least to the beginning of Obama the major changes pushed through have heavily favored Democratic policies rather than Republican.
Gay marriage, reversing don't ask don't tell, and the ACA are all policies that the Republicans were very opposed to. The overturning of Roe v Wade is the only major Republican win I can think of (maybe I missed some), though that is a decades old fight and one that in my opinion Democrats setup for failure by never pushing it passed a single supreme court ruling.
Political power follows culture, and for the recent past the majority public opinion has generally supported Democratic policies over Republican ones. That's changed.
The last time the parties flipped was in the 70s and 80s. I was only alive for the tail end of that and paying no attention to politics, but my understanding is that the pattern was generally the same. At that time they flipped names as well, many democrats of the era moved over to the republican party. Maybe we'll see that again in the near future, but for now it seems like both parties are happier to keep the same brands while switch many view points (big business vs workers, state rights issues, limits on the executive branch, etc)
I don't like the state of the Republican party, but I'm also sick of this stereotyping and strawmen.
I think many, if not most, Americans agree that the tariffs are excessive and are going to cause issues.
I would love some examples of Republican elected officials pushing back against the tariffs (both economically and as an arrogation of Congressional power) and flexing their legislative power. Likewise I'd like to see some of them standing up for civil liberties, the Constitution, and against actual corruption in government like the president's memecoins.
They didn't seem to think so when they voted for Trump.
Who could've known that the tariff man would impose tariffs? Maybe his mini trade war with China in 2018--for which he had to bail out farmers--should've served as an indicator of what was to come.
Show me a republican that doesn't fit the stereotype.
I'll engage.
So far, I haven't found many bonafide Republicans willing to say, "This is bad enough to make me regret voting for Trump", or even to have not voted for, or voted against Trump.
If you are one of these conservative/Republicans, do you fit into any of the above categories?
I lean conservative in many respects, and voted for a 3rd party.
I mean, he’s just doing the things he said he would do and now all you voters are surprised that he’s trashed your retirement and your life and health will be worse? And it’s going to last decades.
One thing I can't stand about the current administration is just how much they resemble a schoolyard bully. It's never their fault, they are always the victim, and they cry their actions have repercussions. Why is it hostile and political to display the tarriffs to the consumer? Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if a local politician introduced a new sales tax and then got mad at the businesses for showing the new tax to consumers?
The thing that really bugs me is that I'm 43, I'm getting older, I'm open to conservative ideas. I want to see ideas debated in the public forum. And most of all, I want to see leaders inspiring people with like an optimistic conservative vision. Family, personal responsibility, etc. I could totally see some version of a conservative platform that I would vote for. But man, there's no way for these people.
That's the tragedy of a two parties political system...
It's astounding how self-victimization works so well for demagogues. Some people will buy that they're under constant attack and irrationally sympathize with them.
Evidence suggests that approximately 30% of people think this way, which makes them a plurality in terms of their game-theoretic behavior.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
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When was the last time the White House spokesperson for a different administration publicly called the free market actions of a private company "hostile"?
I'm sure an example, or something like it, could easily be found to make a whatabout argument. The INSANE difference, in both volume and degree, of "comparable" things is the fact they'll never accept. They'll just double down. It's a death spiral.
This is pointless equivocation.
Trump is turning all the dials up to 11 and that does actually make a difference. Some administrations / governments using bully tactics some of the time does not mean we can't call out one that uses bully tactics all of the time at high intensity and without concern for the broader impacts.
I don’t really care who wrote the playbook. I care who is using it.
I think there's more to this than Amazon being annoyed at the stupid taxes raised on imported goods. Same with price labels on items with and excluding tax; people just like the lower numbers better, and stores that don't show low numbers will lose customers even if they operate at the same price point.
Studies have shown that consumers will gladly visit restaurants that don't include tips in their prices over restaurants that do, even when the prices are exactly the same.
In a country used to not seeing the total price on store goods, hiding the tariffs away as a "+145% tariff" label makes perfect sense. Just raising the total cost and hiding the tariff, what the American governments probably would prefer, would put Amazon at a disadvantage against other stores that do show the split.
On another note, Apple got very upset at Facebook when they tried to pull the same trick regarding the 30% Apple tax. In that case, Apple forbade Facebook from making it explicit how much of the transaction was a tariff raised by an external party. Same trick, but different outcome (because Apple can force Facebook's hand).
If we want capitalism to work at its best, the masses of decision makers that power the invisible hand require as much information as possible. I'm definitely not a fan of government using politics to obfuscate economic details of a tax, but I am also very much not a fan of captive market makers, like Apple, Google, or Visa, being able to unilaterally and forcibly bury this information.
Prohibiting retailers from offering a different cash price (Visa/MC) or preventing app owners from charging 30% more than they do on their own website to cover the marketplace costs (or preventing them from allowing the app to funnel them elsewhere for subscriptions that span much farther than the app alone) are all the dark, informationless side of capitalism.
Ignoring tariffs for the moment... No one should be shocked that Amazon would do this.
Remember back when it was controversial to apply sales tax to online shopping? The biggest lobbyist against it was Amazon, which they marketed as fighting for the market against the government. Then they got big enough to survive a reversal ... and swung the other way to weaponize the law against their smaller competitors.
They've done a lot more than this, including creating their own brands to inject into a successful niche product or segment. They did all that off of sales/product data they aggregated from all sales on their platform.
Amazon is a dirty player in the market, and everyone should remember that.
This is not really a related issue other than "tax". Amazon's policy around applying sales taxes is just a distraction for this issue.
> controversial to apply sales tax to online shopping
You know, they had a point though. California wanted a washington corporation to collect taxes for it.
They could not fight it because they were in another state.
It struck me as basically "no taxation without representation".
But previously it also seemed like Amazon leadership was cosy with the administration.
Wouldn’t hiding it also be political? Seems being transparent is closer to behaving neutrally to me.
Neutral behavior is not desired. The admin desires to take unilateral, unchecked action without repercussions, while controlling the narrative. Enact tariffs while publicly stating "everything is fine."
"Why are you making us look bad by sharing the facts of the actions we're taking?" is how you can think of this. Never assume rational and good faith behavior from bad faith actors. Watch what someone does, not what they say. The words are free and meaningless.
100% you’re either a militant conformist or an enemy.
Amazon has now backed down and will hide them, so it seems the strategy works.
Well, in the literal sense it would be neutral to be transparent, but "political" in the sense that the White House is using means "you're being mean to me."
It’s such bare hypocrisy, but it’s just another reminder that they have no actual beliefs aside from power, so everything they do or say is fair game.
That's what I would think. Though, as other users have pointed out, Amazon is being selective about what what they show. If they really wanted to be transparent and neutral, they'd need to show everything that makes up the price (how much the seller/manufacturer gets paid, what Amazon's cut is, how much goes to the payment processor, etc.)
Personally, I think it would be pretty great if they showed all that, but I don't see that ever happening.
Isn't this different? This tariff isn't a seller's cut, it's a tax, and when I look at my Amazon invoice I see the taxes I paid.
Yeah, I agree it's different, but it's all selective transparency. They're willing to be transparent about things they can directly blame on the government (tax, tariffs) but not other things that influence the price (Amazon's markup, the payment processing charges).
It would be better if they showed all of that, IMO.
No, that's not the same thing. Tariffs are taxes collected by customs agents (no matter how much this administration wants to pretend they aren't), and taxes already show up as itemized additions to your receipt, unlike margins and seller fees.
To me that just means they're already doing selective transparency. They treat government influences on price as different than other factors that influence the price.
Every receipt I’ve ever gotten in my life has separated tax, and I don’t recall I’ve ever seen seller margins or anything like that on a receipt before.
Yeah, I'm not saying Amazon is the only one doing this. But I am saying that if they're saying that consumers deserve transparency, this just scratches the surface.
There is no neutrality.
No, seriously: "political neutrality" as a concept is inherently and fatally flawed.
The closest you can ever attempt to come is either
a) maintain/support the current status quo—this is obviously a big problem for anyone the status quo is not serving
b) tailor whatever you're saying/doing to try to cleave to the exact current center of the political landscape—this is obviously going to be very fraught and highly subjective; no one actually does this
Anyone who says they're "apolitical" or who tells you to make something "politically neutral" is nearly guaranteed to be just a beneficiary of the status quo advocating for preserving it, often without even realizing that's what they're doing.
Ultimately, it's much more honest and positive in the long run to be honest about your own biases and, yes, be as transparent as possible.
This is false. Or at least it's almost totally false.
I can try to judge things by whether they are true or false, accurate or misleading, good or bad ideas, regardless of who said them.
Yeah, I fail sometimes - partly because I do have biases, and partly because I don't have infinite amounts of time and energy to dig in to find out the truth. Still, I don't judge what the administration says by which brand of administration it is. I prefer my news sources to be straight rather than slanted.
And I can say that without being a supporter of the current status quo. I find Trump's bullying to be reprehensible.
interesting, out of curiosity did this lead you to not see his bullying and behaviors coming?
did this lead you to deny yourself the bigger picture of past behaviors, context, etc…?
What have I said that made you think that I ever supported Trump? I didn't, ever.
What made you think that I was blind to what he was? I could tell what he was before he was elected the first time.
"I can employ reading comprehension and bullshit detection skills on any text" is not the same as saying "any text is neutral", nor even "it is possible for a text to be neutral".
My statement says nothing about the ability of any particular reader to use their learned skills of discerning fact from falsehood to judge what is true. It says that even if you (for any value of "you", including me!) think what you are writing is "neutral", that is, at best, and with 99.9% certainty, because it conforms to the current status quo and/or your unconscious assumptions and biases.
This is political, so are the tariffs. It’s the same cat and mouse game with local/state regulations on restaurant staff compensation and ‘service fees.’
No love for Amazon in general, they’ve been gaming the system for a long time, but it’s not hard to see why they would do this. Prices will go up, this an easy way to deflect the blame (and to be fair… it’s an accurate deflection).
I've seen gas pumps that prominently enumerate all the taxes included in the price, which were more than 50% in some European countries. It's a bit political for a business to call attention to otherwise-hidden taxes in the prices of its products, but both rational and fair.
Ohio has those stickers, mandated by law (2017 Ohio Fuel Tax Transparency Act). A Republican legislature passed the law, signed by a Republican governor.
Republicans used to have some semblance of ideology that you could kinda count on them sticking to occasionally... ish. That's all gone now. It doesn't even matter what they said 5 minutes ago, hate big tech?, next thing you know they hand big tech the purse strings of government.
Their ideology is power.
The writing has been on the wall demographically for decades. Their base has been shrinking, fewer people are religious, white folk are losing status. It’s become harder and harder to win an election for turn since GW Bush, and even that went down to the courts.
Many districts are only red due to blatant gerrymandering. But even that gets harder to wield so what seems to have happened is that while they still can ostensibly win an election, they crank the wheel and destroy the rules so that they never have to compete on a level field again
One of their biggest ideologies fell apart when the 2008 financial crisis occurred. The Tea Party picked up the remnants and spiraled.
I think including the taxes on fuel would be good, as it'd show people the ridiculous amount of money they're paying to maintain the infrastructure their cars use (though fuel taxes often don't come close to covering road maintenance).
Such a system could get complicated quickly, though, and showing the profit margin also wouldn't be of interest to many salespeople. Making fuel price total up to €2.09/L is easy if petrol were only taxed at €0.7891/L, but the 21% VAT being applied to the total sales price after the per liter tax (and the 9% profit margin) makes the math a tad more complex.
I don't think you could call those taxes "hidden" though. Anyone can look up how much tax they pay. It's not like taxes are sent out in secret to gas pumps every day.
When my state jacked up fuel taxes a few years ago, some local gas stations started printing the $/gallon that went to taxes on stickers on the pumps. Seems like a good thing: more information is always good, as long as it's correct. Same thing would be true of this tariff info -- good if correct.
It didn't last on the gas pumps, though, because ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
> ultimately people don't have a choice -- most have to drive to get to work -- so they get used to it.
I don't think the intent of gas stations displaying the taxes is to convince people to use less gas. It's to create political pressure to reduce the tax.
The party of small government and deregulation sure likes to to have the government regulate how private businesses and citizens should behave.
The party of free speech for those who agree with me.
The party of law and order for those I do not pardon.
The White House calling somebody "hostile and political". Hmph.
Every accusation is an admission for them.
The tarrifs are an exception from the normal rules about keeping politics out of things, because they're non-toxified by partisan culture war. They came so far out of left field that nobody was pre-trained to interpret criticism of them as an attack on their identity.
As an environmentalist, I am generally in favor of gasoline tax to pay for road maintenance. Without getting into the nuance of that position - I do not disagree with the fact that gas stations in my area break down the added cost per gallon into federal, state, and local tax per gallon. In fact I support it, transparency is important.
White House should change their perspective: “Amazon changes pricing information to promote zero tariff USA Made products by highlighting products with no markup”
Conservatism is the fear of everything: change, new ideas, people that don’t look like us, education, science, the list goes on and on... Why do you think they love their guns so much? They are scared.
You can’t go back to “the good ol’ days” because THEY’RE GONE!
I see a lot of comments here and in the other thread talking about Amazon's high profits on retail sales, so I looked up the last earnings report.
For the year of 2024, Amazon made a 5.5% operating profit on non-AWS revenue. This is before taxes and, I think, before leases on buildings and property.
https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2024/q4/...
the cry-baby-ness of the US Far Right is really something to behold. they seized control of the federal government and are now looting it and pushing all their deeply stupid hobby horses, but still they can't stop whinging about people merely noting what stupid stuff they're doing.
wah wah wah. if you don't won't people calculating the costs of your tariffs, perhaps don't introduce the world's worst tariff regime?
The truth is often hostile to idiots and charlatans
AliExpress, Temu, Shein, etc. should slap a "I did that!" Trump-sticker on their checkout page.
Dunno, something like this: https://imgur.com/a/Z2hmyou
How long before the White House makes a "deal" with Amazon that somehow shields Amazon specifically from tariffs affecting their prices in exchange for removing the display; just shoveling US taxpayer money at them (after all we're saving billions that we used to spend on things like cancer research). Then we'd be at a place where Amazon's prices end up being dramatically lower than every other seller in the US, further entrenching their monopoly status, and taxpayers would actually be footing the bill. Talk about picking winners and losers...
You'd think Amazon's $40M bribe, I mean "Melania documentary" would be enough to get them a pass
Amazon has every incentive to show tariff rates to the customer. They don't want to be the bad guy overcharging in the transaction.
Neither do local merchants when they collect a sales tax.
Neither does the homeowner when they rent their guest room on Airbnb.
Neither does Lady Gaga when she sells a ticket through Ticketmaster.
This isn't controversial. It's price transparency for the consumer and it helps them make better choices.
What's unusual is the White House attacking a private sector retailer for a reasonable choice that's clearly theirs to make. Seeing the "+145% tariff" on your checkout page would puncture a hole in the narrative we've heard for years from Donald Trump that "China pays the tax."
No, you and I pay the tax. And both the U.S. and China will suffer.
Facts are stubborn things.
I wonder if they're going to start fiddling with official statistics to show 'good' numbers for things like inflation or employment.
While senseless politics like this are going on that every person on HN is libbing out over - houses continue to be unaffordable, no universal healthcare, and wages will continue to stagnate compared to costs.
Y’all are blind as hell to the real issues. This football version of American politics is so nonsensical. Not an ounce of material analysis even in something that could be as material as this.
If White House enacted a different tax to, say, fund more highways, and Amazon decided to display that, then that might be a different matter.
But this is tariffs. Tariffs work by making imported goods more expensive, which makes them less attractive to consumers, which makes domestic goods more attractive in comparison. That's the whole fucking point of tariffs. To make imported goods more expensive.
Amazon is essentially running a free advertisement for White House, showing off how Trump's tariffs are doing their job!
Exactly what else did Trump supporters expect to happen? Ponies and rainbows? Well, probably not rainbows - it's gay.
Tariffs are on the import cost. Wouldn't putting this tariff display in, and the customer knowing what the tariff % is leak the import cost to the end customer? Typically you don't share what that internal cost is with the end customer.
Sales tax is different because it's on the retail price that the customer pays.
Price transparency != “hostile and political”
Typical gaslighting behaviour. If you have as many customers as Amazon and the price increases that noticeably, that’s them being by forced to cover their own ass versus taking the heat when they shouldn’t.
Hostile and political? Probably. It's also telling people the truth about how much Trump's policies are costing them, or at least costing them on those particular purchases.
This is self-defense by Amazon. "Don't blame us that things got more expensive." But yes, it's also political (that's kind of inevitable when politics is the source of the additional cost).
For the type of people in the admin, showing the truth is the biggest offense.
Close. Believing that truth exists is the greatest offense. Loyalty is the only meaningful virtue to this administration.
It would make some sense if they shown tariffs everywhere, not just in the US.
As long as they pretend the US is the sole country that does tariffs, it is both political and an insult to intelligence.
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027
The white house and this incompetent cabinet and the GOP enablers are the hostile party here.
Everyone should include a line item to display the cost of the tariffs to the American consumer.
If tariffs are so good, they should be happy that Amazon is doing free advertising of them on the Trump administration’s behalf. Why do they seem upset that people would know about the tariffs they’re so proud of? Such a mystery
I mean aren't tarrifs hostile and political? This has been stated by officials multiple times.
Amazon has now retracted the "policy"
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2025/04/cant-make-dumb-joke-any...
https://x.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1917221012560637966
> Why didn't Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?
Because the inflation under Biden was itself an accident. Trump is doing this on purpose.
Furthermore, if you buy the idea that the inflation was caused solely by handing out stimulus checks during a pandemic, then it's at least partially Trump's fault, too. Remember that Trump's the one who pushed for all this stimulus, because he was worried about his re-election prospects in 2020.
If you want a real criticism of this policy, it's that Bezos was spending $$$ to be at the Trump inauguration just a few months ago. Big Tech put their muscle behind Trump despite being the industry most reliant on foreign immigration and trade - the things Trump desperately wants to shut down. They did this because they're so shit scared of antitrust legislation that they're willing to break up America before America can break up them.
Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all, and Bezos didn't realize this. So instead of owning a broken-up business empire he's going to own no empire at all. Welcome to the bust-out.
> Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all
It this is true (it might be, it might not be), there's no particular reason why it needs to be the USA. Bezos and the current management structure and employees of Amazon in the USA might prefer if it was that way, but there's little about the company that requires it, other than its biggest market also being the USA.
Also: Bezos doesn't really own Amazon any more in any meaningful sense. He owns less than 10% of the stock.
I'll give you that Bezos is mostly gone from Amazon.
However, Amazon does need to be in the USA, even if it's not their host country, because they're a retailer. They make their money by buying goods and selling them to the people who want them.
Remember when Amazon used to only have one warehouse in one state, and relied on being able to ship things to get around sales tax? That didn't last - and not just because the law caught up with the loophole. They wanted to do next-day or same-day shipping that basically required them to have a warehouse in every city, and thus pay sales tax everywhere.
Amazon moving out of the US would make them equivalent to Temu or Wish in terms of convenience, and their sales would crater. Not to mention Trump is closing off the loophole those companies used, too.
> However, Amazon does need to be in the USA, even if it's not their host country
What I was responding to:
> Of course, it turns out Amazon needs a host country to survive after all
(emphasis mine)
> Remember that Trump's the one who pushed for all this stimulus, because he was worried about his re-election prospects in 2020.
The man had the first batch of checks from the treasury redesigned/printed just so he could put his big sharpie signature on the check, for self promotion purposes.
Yet another attack on freedom of speech and the rest of our civil liberties by the current administration.
I fear free speech is in retreat
title now doesn't match what the article says -- this was never implemented
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Inflation doesn't make more profit (unless a greedy retailer hikes prices beyond inflation because they think they can hide it in the general inflation).
Yeah, about that...
https://www.fmi.org/our-research/food-industry-facts/grocery...
Interesting how grocery profits went higher than the prior 30 year trend when covid supply chain impacts happened, and have continued to stay on a higher trend in the high inflation years following covid.
Yes, the retailers are greedy and increasing prices beyond inflation, and they're quite successful at it.
Also no one was going to blame Amazon for inflation. There are still people in the US who are under the impression that the only reason they would be paying any part of the tariffs is due to corporate greed instead of that just being how tariffs work.
Passing the cost to the consumer isn't a requirement. Sometimes it's impossible and stay competitive with local business.
Say local business charges $110. Imported charges $80 but a 50% tariff making it $120. If the import charges $120, they won't be competitive on price, so if that was their only differentiation, they would need eat at least $10 in tariffs.
How would you even show it on the listing? That doesn’t make sense.. like >90% of what Cheeto says.
Why are you only blaming Biden? Trump put more stimulus into the economy than Biden did. Both are culpable if looking at raw numbers. Additionally, I would argue that PPP loans from Trump's CARE act were mostly a failure, transferring more wealth to the already wealthy and pushing up asset prices even further.
Inflation isn’t a tax…
It can function or be utilized as such.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage#Seigniorage_as_a_t...
The same result for the average poor sap, the only difference is who’s pocketing that price increase.
And you think the seller is pocketing inflation price increases? If you're really talking about inflation, there's nothing to pocket, because the profit after increasing the prices has the same buying power. And every other price increase is not related to inflation.
Inflation is a systemic issue that cannot be specifically identified. A tax is a deliberate fee that is distinct from the actual cost of items. Not showing the cost of tariffs would be a deliberate attempt to hide the price of that tax.
I am sure they would be happy to give back their salary increases as well.
White House should be furious. This definitely makes the Trump Administration look bad since it's a separate price added onto the final price. There are 180.1 million Amazon Prime US subscribers. This means potentially 180 million Americans will see the tariff effects directly. Not counting total US Amazon shoppers due to lack of numbers.
Edit: people are downvoting me because of the first sentence. All I’m saying is that if I’m the Whitehouse, I’d be furious too. I never said I think the tariffs are a good idea.
> White House should be furious.
Furious that Amazon is highlighting the WH's bullshit line that consumers won't pay for the tariffs?
Furious at themselves maybe, this is entirely their own fault.
You know that in most countries the taxes must be shown explicitly and be added in the final price? USA is the only exception.
Did you phrase this wrong? Taxes are always called out in every receipt in the U.S..
You may be missing the "and be added to the final price" bit, or interpreting it differently than it may have been intended.
In European countries with VAT, the price on the item / shelf tag / whatever includes the VAT. You don't need to remember what jurisdiction you're in and thus what percentage of sales tax you need to add on to the displayed price to know how much you'll be asked to pay when you check out. If the tag says 12 euro, 12 euro is exactly what you're paying at the register.
Sure, in the US, your receipt will tell you how much sales tax you paid. But that is information you're not given until the point of checkout. Additionally you may not have the explicit tax amount presented to you til you receive that post-sale receipt, you may have to do your own subtraction of the listed price(s) from the total price to determine how much tax you're paying before you commit to the purchase.
I think he means the display price. When you buy something for $100 and it ends up being $110 on checkout, the taxes are obfuscated on the display price.
I understand your point, but they should not be furious, just like a spoiled kid should not be furious because it got the wrong toy for birthday. People should be reasonable, and not furious that it's not going their way. If these people should be furious, they should be furious at themselves.
Are you saying that 50% of American households subscribe to Amazon prime?
This claims 180m subscribers 2024
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1223385/amazon-prime-sub...
That's astonishing. And Amazon's stuff generally is often shitty and counterfeit, amazing to see it so popular. That doesn't bode well for local business. No wonder there is such wealth inequality in the country when one company is supplying everyone with stuff.
What is wrong with displaying this? It is an additional tax added to products, very much like sales tax. It is entirely appropriate to display taxes and similar fees on an invoice. It would be disingenuous to hide it.
He's not saying it's wrong, just that it's expected for the white house to be mad for being called out. (Not that it's reasonable, but just expected.)
I think people are reading an implication of "would be justified and righteous" into the use of the word "should" in the phrase "the White House should be furious" in the GP comment.
Yes, this is correct. Amazon showing tariff surcharge is a huge deal to Trump's approval rating due to the fact that 180m Americans subscribe to Prime, which means many people will directly see the effect of the tariffs.
But I think people got too angry too fast to understand my point.
Not to get into pedantics, but just to offer a helpful explanation, I think it's because you used "should" instead of "would". It's no big deal, but in your sentence, should implies reasonable, while would implies expected. (Even though should also has a usage where it means expected, that's only when you're unsure of something happening in the future, whereas this event has already happened.)
I thought the White House response was reasonable. That’s why I used should.
> I thought the White House response was reasonable.
Reasonable in what sense?
Reasonable in the sense that a con-man doesn't want his con revealed?
Or reasonable in the sense that they have a principled position against the proposed action by AMZN?
I get the feeling that you're being too clever by half with your phrasing.
I hate being right. I remember years ago predicting that if MAGA got back in they’d levy a huge tax increase they’d call a tax cut and a huge spending increase they’d call a spending cut.
My other big prediction for years has been that it’ll be MAGA that will do mass gun confiscation in defiance of the second amendment. Let’s see how that one does. Of course all the MAGA folks would be fine with it because it's not mass gun confiscation by the "new world order" if Trump does it.
people are downvoting me because of the first sentence. All I’m saying is that if I’m the Whitehouse, I’d be furious too.
Then why didn't you write that? 'Should be' reads to most people as conforming with some objective legal or moral standard.
From the perspective of the White House, they should be furious.
Please consult someone on the difference between 'would' and 'should', since my explanation is clearly insufficient.
Legal/moral standard depends on which side you are on. Right?
Again, I'm against the tariffs.
Surely, they should be happy to see their bigly beautiful tariffs, of which they are apparently so proud, prominently displayed to a grateful public?
Like, one can't have it both ways. "These tariffs are a brilliant idea and will make everything wonderful... HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT THE TARIFFS" is an utterly incoherent position.
Are they only doing this in the US? If so that seems blatantly political.
The media, from the WSJ to the NY Times, across the political spectrum, the blogosphere, the social media, ALL of them have been LYING to Americans about the tariffs from day one, bombarding them with bullshit and lies and braindead idiocies, ceaselessly fearmongering, every day all day long, in their efforts to sacrifice everything, including the entire US economy, at the altar of high stock prices, fat corporate profit margins, and one-sided globalization. I have never seen anything like that. No wonder everyone is in a sour mood and all the soft data is shitty. But there is an economic reality out there: businesses trying to make their businesses work, and consumers making records amounts of money and spending it, and having fun.https://wolfstreet.com/2025/04/29/despite-all-moaning-and-gr...
It is hostile and political, do they break down their prices for other added costs, i.e. inflation, higher taxes? Never seen it before, so why do it here then.
Like sales tax? Yeah they do.
If you buy something from not your local amazon and there are import taxes - yeah they show that too.
Have they shown tariffs before on their prices?, I don't think the US had zero tariffs before Trump increased them
Previously the US's effective average tariffs were in the 1.8% range, and a big contributor there was things like vehicles and agricultural products (ie things that people were unlikely to buy on Amazon). Most developed countries are in the 1-2% range; except for the post-Trump II US, effective tariffs in double digits are basically just for extremely poor countries and weird microstates. They just weren't a significant enough part of the cost base that they'd be particularly worth highlighting.
Inflation is not an input to price. It is an output of price. It would not be meaningful to say "this portion of this price is attributable to inflation" on some product listing.
Yes, they do. Taxes and shipping are separate line items on every Amazon invoice.
Maybe I am missing something but sales tax is something that the seller pays. It's a % of the retail price and so they collect it from the customer, so it's added in and shown to the customer.
Tariffs are paid by the importer and I would think that they would put that into the price of the good itself based on their desired profit margins etc. How would Amazon even know what to put for the tariff amount? It's not a % of the retail price, it's a % of the import price which the seller doesn't typically share with the end customer.
"What it costs now" - "What it cost in March" = "Tariff cost"
The math is not perfect, but to a good approximation (certainly a far better approximation than the administration's insane computation of international "tariffs") that will indicate the cost to the consumer of Trump's tariff policies.
So yes, if the importer eats a significant chunk of the tariff cost and doesn't pass it on to Amazon/the consumer, the computation will reflect that (as it should). And if they don't, it will reflect that too (as it should).
Have they shown tariffs before on their prices?, I don't think the US had zero tariffs before Trump increased them
How does that matter if the purpose is to show the effect of recent, chaotic, ill-conceived policies of the current administration?
"recent, chaotic, ill-conceived policies of the current administration"
So it's not political?
Recent: indisuputable matter of fact.
Chaotic: one might disagree on the magnitude of flip-flopping that can be labelled "chaotic", but the unpredictable on-again, off-again nature of the policies is well-described by "chaotic" I think.
Ill-conceived: if you can find me one serious economist who agrees with the Trump tariff policy (i.e. agrees on the goal, the means and the ends, and the match between them), I'll consider retracting this. Otherwise, yep, ill-conceived describes imposing tariffs without any apparent understanding of how they work or their likely effects.
Also, did I say it's not political at any point?
> Also, did I say it's not political at any point?
Then we agree!
As I understand things, in the US it’s very common to list things like sales tax separately, yes.
As these tariffs are objectively likely to drive up costs, hurt user demand, and lower revenue for the company, I would argue that they have a duty to their shareholders and other stakeholders to push back against them and not be neutral. It is an action driven by business concerns rather than politics.
Also yes, taxes are listed as a separate line item.
Disagree, as a consumer I want to know this
It is hostile and political. More reason for them to do it.
We are not used to seeing corporate lobbying and campaigning done so openly except when it comes to news media. Join liberals like me who oppose corporate personhood and Citizens United and fight corporate political power.
So a customer should not know how much taxes are on an item they buy? How would one show inflation? What are you even talking about? Just say you're a MAGA fanatic and that everything Trump does and says is good and we can stop pretending to have a debate here.
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That made sense. Excellent response.