White House lashes out at 'hostile and political act by Amazon'

ft.com

25 points·JumpCrisscross··7 comments

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 appreciate the way "political" is a negative thing when other people do it. When we do it, it's just, ya know, a thing.

I'm no longer sure exactly what "political" means, or why it should be a bad thing.

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027

Not a duplicate, only related.

"Company might display tax amounts" != "Republican administration threatens to attack anyone who displays tax amounts."

Among other things, this newer news raises some constitutional issues: Should the US government be able to destroy your company because your invoice-billing system showed customers too many details?

No need to split up the thread. Additional links and discussion about the White House and the further developments from the course of the day are all contained over there in the large discussion. Want to add something, share it over there. The discussion is over there.

I used to think (10 weeks or so ago) that this administration acts like a bunch of high schoolers. Now I think they are acting like middle schoolers.

White House is a hostile political act.

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