Amazon Doesn't Want You to Know How Much the Trade War Costs | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Doesn't Want You to Know How Much the Trade War Costs

bloomberg.com

46 pointspetethomas37 comments

Put aside the politics

It’s a terrible metric to show because it’s not like they are buying these things in single pieces - they get the products in bulk from Chinese suppliers presumably at a discount. I am not sure of the point of including this - it is sort of like when you go to a restaurant and they add some stupid service charge on your bill as a protest against something like paying their workers more because wage went up

You don’t get discounts on tariffs for bulk buying.

Huge buyers can and do negotiate discounts to place the burden on the seller. If you're buying 1 item, the tariff is your problem. If you're buying 99% of the company's output, the tariff is their problem.

And yet they still charge the same sales tax %.

Sales taxes are calculated on the gross, not the COGS, so it's not the same. It's also different by locality.

But yes, the same principle applies: huge retailers negotiate for better margin. Any tax on the retailer can be theoretically negotiated back to the seller.

I think the parent is trying to say that the tariffs are levied based on the importer's cost, not on their price, so its impact could be smaller on goods with higher retail markup.

Title: Amazon Doesn’t Want You to Know How Much the Trade War Costs

https://archive.ph/ye77C

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43831027

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43832588

Amazon's whole shtick is that people will pay more for free shipping. It would not make sense for them to suddenly flip on one of their core principles.

This sounds like an opportunity for a browser extension. Honey + tariff estimate = installed by everyone!

Keepa will show you the price history. That’s all people care about any way. It cost $5 six months ago and now it’s $10

One way or another, prices are going up. Your dollar doesn’t go as far. Trump can say whatever he wants about fair deals and fake news but the reality is inescapable for us

Listing the impact of tariffs on product prices is some of the strongest customer obsession the retail side of Amazon has shown in years. Shame to see Trump sabotage it.

You’ll see it in the wild soon enough. This is going to hurt business everywhere and owners aren’t going to just go broke without making noise

Well at least they seem to be aware that tariffs raise prices now.

The Trump team doesn’t seem to understand the severity of what they’ve done to the economy. Shipping volume is cratering and warehouses are being depleted. People are going to notice the upcoming price hikes and shortages no matter how the numbers are shuffled around on the purchase order.

But it will get better later you see. You just have to believe harder.

Just like one more tax cut for the rich and they'll be satisfied and create a swath of well paying middle class jobs for the rest of us.

Heh, I think I get your sarcasm. The problem with "later" is that we got 1 life to live, and if "later" means that I've gotta wait 10 years, sorry-not-gonna-wait.

As for harder.. nah.. we got history books telling us how these things play out (not well).

They understand. They are meeting their goals. Their goal isn’t the continued stability of the USA.

Oh it's a lot worse than that. Breaking decades-long international agreements unilaterally, and with insults and threats, means that any future trust and credibility has been destroyed. So even when the orange man is gone, it'll take many years to rebuild those relationships if ever.

Long term I think this may be good for the 95% of us non-Americans. It’s forcing us out of a cozy minima, building new supply chains and trading partners. All while everyone is eager to find someone else to buy and sell to, which makes it easier. Maybe it’ll be a net positive for the world as long as he doesn’t destroy the world in the process.

In a way this represents a redistribution of wealth away from the rich, which is what I think a lot of people want (though maybe they’d wish it wasn’t away from them)

I do not get how this is a redistribution of wealth away from the rich (rich spend a very small percentage of their income, middle class and poor people spend almost all of their income on necessities and maybe a bit of fun, so at the end of the day rich will come ahead)

This does none of that. The rich will only get richer, that is the trajectory, until there is a civil war. In the meantime this is only going to hurt the middle class on down and they will finally come to realize their orange "benefactor" is actually a stooge for powers much smarter than him who want to see the USA and democracy utterly fail.

They're talking about non-Americans. The rest of the world. We are all looking for new trading partners now.

It will surely hurt Americans.

It's hard to destroy international trade without destroying international trade in the process.

What exactly happened here, I mean, Amazon did something they knew would upset Trump, Trump got upset and Amazon backpedaled? Is the goal to let Trump feel like he got a win?

He's so easily manipulated.

I don’t think it was manipulation. I think Amazon upper management genuinely planned to go through with it until Trump got wind, yelled at Bezos, and then Bezos told them to stop.

I find it so hilarious that Andy Jassy is never mentioned when discussing Amazon leadership.

Oof, wow. I'm very much in the tech space and I literally had never heard his name before your post.

The goal for Amazon is to appear good to public.

I wish they threw their own BS back in their face and demanded an explanation why the GOP no longer believes in a low regulation, pro-business government.

Why should the federal government have the power to mandate business processes that reduce transparency? They don't want income taxes automatically filed so we can see what the government is "stealing" from the public. Can't have a VAT because that's hidden. But import taxes have to be hidden?

Republicans have long been opposed to showing prices with sales tax built in (like in many other countries) because they want people to be conscious of how much they are paying in tax.

But for tariffs? No no we can't let people see THOSE!

The hypocrisy is outstanding.

So a news site had some report that indicated that Amazon was considering displaying the cost of the tariffs next to the prices on their website. Trump responds to it as though it were fact. The headlines imply it's fact and not just a rumor. Now after Amazon representatives correct the record, saying that it was never approved, and journalists like this opinion writer act as though Bezos is changing his mind because Trump asked him to, and not because it likely wasn't going to happen in the first place. It's like they don't care about what actually happened, rather just about the story being compelling.

What actually happened? You speak with such authority, how do you know what “actually happened”?

For all we know, this actually was planned by Amazon and Bezos did intervene to change their mind.

Try to find original articles saying Amazon actually decided this. At most you find some random websites saying there are internal reports within Amazon saying they'd display the tariffs. And then more recent ones say an Amazon representative said it was never approved and not going to happen.

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