Given how much the far-right likes to throw around the term snowflake, they sure do spend a shit load of time whining. One hundred days into this administration’s term, it’s perpetually on the verge of taking its ball and going home.
Punchbowl News reported the rumor on Tuesday, April 29, that Amazon was kicking around the idea of displaying on its product pages the amount of each product’s price that was because of tariffs. Then the White House pounced.
“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” said White House press secretary/human loudspeaker Karoline Leavitt at a press conference later that day. Then Amazon, after finding itself in the unenviable position of being the government’s News Topic of the Day, explained that there’d been a mistake.
backtrackin’
“The team that runs our ultra-low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” an Amazon spokesperson said later that day to CNBC. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
The impact on Amazon’s business looks to be significant. Much of the goods it sells come from China, which is hit with an eye-watering 145% tariff, far higher than the already high tariffs slapped on goods imported from other countries.
“Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt asked rhetorically during the news conference.
Probably because showing inflation’s impact on the price of each pair of socks, drinkware set, and children’s puzzle is a lot trickier and more convoluted than calculating a tariff, which functions as an added tax paid to the US government by the person or company importing the affected goods into the US, not by the manufacturer or the country from which it came.
The White House sold the American people a steaming pile of lies when it implied that other countries would be paying tariffs. That’s not how tariffs work. It’s the American consumer who pays, which is exactly why the American government doesn’t want that fact rubbed in voters’ faces.
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