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Comment by coliveira | Hacker News Reader

This may backfire. Will they also show how much their profits are costing consumers?

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).

The fees they charge third party sellers are significant.

Yes, and the cost to reimplement the USPS so that you can get your order in a day is also significant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's about transparency and scamazon has none

My guess: No, they won't

That’s been public information for decades.

https://ir.aboutamazon.com/sec-filings/default.aspx

Indirectly… Tariff is based on their cost, not list price, right?

That requires you to know when the item was imported. The tarrif forecast is a harder business than mid level wizardry.

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.

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