You’re not allowed to tell Americans the truth about tariffs.
That was Karoline Leavitt’s implicit message to Amazon on Tuesday. And it goes for anybody else who might be inclined to let Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid in on the dirty little secret everyone with a college degree understands intuitively: You pay the tariffs. Not China. Not Europe. Not Mexico. Not Canada. And, for the most part, not US corporates either. Rather, you, the consumer, pay them, in the form of higher prices.
That’s the inescapable reality of import duties, particularly steep ones that corporates can’t absorb without taking a hit on the bottom line and hurting shareholders. The only way to get around that reality is to lie. Fortunately for… well, for himself, Trump’s quite adept at lying, and even more proficient in bald-faced, cruel, shameless lies like the one he’s feeding the Cracker Barrel base about the tariffs.
According to Punchbowl, Amazon was considering displaying “how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs right next to the product’s total listed price.” In simpler terms, the company was poised to “show how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the price of each product” because Jeff Bezos “doesn’t want to shoulder the blame for the cost of President Trump’s trade war.”
I’ll go ahead and dispense with the obvious joke, although I should probably save it for the end and make it a punchline: Bezos should’ve thought about this before he engaged in what I called “anticipatory obsequence” late last year by killing WaPo‘s Kamala Harris endorsement. He’s since gone even further in a fruitless effort to placate Trump, overhauling the Post‘s editorial page so it reads more like the Journal‘s.
If Amazon were to show US consumers how much the tariffs are costing them, there’s a real risk the spell might start to break. I realize that sounds like wishful thinking, but if we learned anything from the Biden administration, it’s that when prices for everyday goods and services are rising rapidly, nothing else matters, not even plentiful jobs.
Trump was furious with Amazon’s alleged plan. Leavitt accused the company of plotting to engage in “hostile and political” action against the government. She was joined at a press event by Scott Bessent, who’ll probably regret his presence the same way Mark Milley regretted participating in Trump’s infamous “Bible walk.”
Bessent’s now complicit in an attempt to bully corporate America into concealing the impact of the tariffs on American consumers, which is to say he’s a participant in a coverup designed to keep voters in the dark about the reality of Trump’s policies.
Amazon, sniveling cowards that they are, claimed this wasn’t actually going to be implemented. It was discussed in a narrow context, but “was never approved and is not going to happen,” according to one of Andy Jassy’s lackeys.
My question is: Why not? Why not show Americans what’s actually going on here? Is everyone just going to commit Seppuku for the sake of a feeble-minded demagogue determined to pursue a policy platform that everyone knows is ruinous? Have we all no sense of decency at long last? Is it never enough? Are we just going to throw away everything for this one man’s vainglory?
Apparently so. This is, it would appear, the end. All of this — a two-and-a-half century project that resulted in the richest, most powerful nationstate the world’s ever known — falling virtually overnight to a man who can only spell his own name because he likes to sign autographs.
I won’t sugarcoat it: This is pitiful. If I had children, or just any personal stake in the fate of the planet, I’d be at wits’ end by now. But I don’t. So carry on, I guess. Burn it all down, America. Throw it all away for Mr. “Hamberders.”
“Cracker Barrel base” LOL – love the imaginative metaphors
I often question why I shouldn’t quit the corporate life and go into teaching, but I figure I owe it to my kids to give them the financial resources they’ll need to not be completely beholden to AI or whatever Trump does to our country. Maybe that’s the wrong example to set for my kids or a convenient excuse for not taking a leap, but given the uncertainty, I’ll feel better knowing I am at least insulating them somewhat from the consequences of AI and Trump.
Obviously, that could all go sideways in a hurry with nothing I can do, but at that point, it doesn’t matter either way.
Bezos maybe regrets not reading ‘Art of the Steal’ seeing he just got fleeced for $100 million to the Donald and $40 million to his ‘genius immigration’ wife.
She is cute, though.
I wrote out a myriad of crude, unpleasant comments and observations about Leavitt, then deleted them. The summary of those thoughts are an abject, no she’s not.
Thanks for your passion H! Along with what is happening in the US, the world conflicts are increasing at an alarming rate, tensions growing. More dictators less democracies, US isolation and stupidity, look out! I reflect on the team djt assembled to deal with it, maybe correct to say create it, and I cringe. I think back to the 4th grade when we had “duck under our desk” atomic bomb drills during the cold war….
I am still “reeling” from reading and processing ‘Ghosts in the Recursion Fields’- so the issues presented in this post, at this moment in time, seem trivial- in comparison.
I’ve ordered toot a few times from Amazon that that I’ve had delivered either in Japan or Europe and in all cases the website shows estimated import taxes upon purchase so what we’re actually saying is that Amazon is refusing to apply its global policies within the US for fear of political reprisal. So it’s wrong headed and inconsistent.
Oh, why are you folks fussing over this? A distinguished professor was quoted on MarketWatch as saying that Amazon not publishing the info is a GOOD sign!
““I think it most likely means that their price increases are going to be much more limited,” said Nicholas Economides, a professor at NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. A tariff-related price disclosure would have been cover for Amazon on more sizable hikes, he said. If you are increasing the price of goods by 10% or more, a tariff label could help you sell that price to the consumer because that kind of increase is too large to be absorbed on the seller’s side, Economides said.”
As a sometimes adjunct faculty member, this is precisely the sort of nonsense that makes me question the very notii it on of tenure.
I am confirming that you know that Baron is an NYU freshman.
Given the plunge in consumer confidence you outlined in the previous article, I’d that even the Cracker Barrel base is clueing in even without Amazon’s help. Not that excuses Jeff Bezos one iota.
Seppuku…Not many ppl know what that means. Several thoughts related to the administration but don’t want to cross any lines.
The Cracker Barrel base will take notice when the shelves in Walmart start looking a bit bare in a few weeks.
Tariff uncertainty has already blown a big hole in the Trans-Pacific supply chain. It’s not theoretical. Fewer ships are on the water and lots of orders are being held in Asian ports. The question is how long the disruption will last.
Expect panic buying in random categories (this is what the pandemic taught us) and news stories about no more toasters on the shelf.
I thought one rule of US politics is that the president always owns inflation even when they did nothing to cause it. Or is that non-Trump presidents only? I guess we’ll see. Exciting times!
Voters will figure it out. The less worldly and informed the person, the more closely attuned they usually are to prices of things they buy – on account of usually having less money. Just about everyone, no matter how ill-informed, knows about Trump’s tariffs. They’ll put two and two together.
I dunno. Seeing lots of MAGAt comments that they will gladly pay the tariffs if they don’t have to pay income tax. The same people who pull 2 illegal U-turns and cross 4 lanes of traffic to get to the gas station that’s 3 cents a gallon cheaper, as that is a very fine way to save 50 cents.
Trump narrowly won voters making under 50K. Whatever they might be saying now, they’ll soon notice they are paying more in tariffs than any future income tax reduction they may get can possibly offset.