The rumour mills in the USA suggest that President Trump wants to take on the mighty Amazon and curb its retail power. News source Axios says: “He’s obsessed with Amazon. Obsessed.”
There was a well reported spat between Trump and Amazon founder and CEO last year on Twitter. But once Trump took the White House, Bezos did have the grace to attend a meeting alongside fellow tech and ecommerce entrepreneurs, perhaps in a bread-breaking effort. But Trump has remained belligerent about Bezos, who also has media interests that he considers pedlars of “fake news”.
In particular, he reportedly considers Amazon a threat to his bricks and mortar real estate interest as it continues to take on main street retailers. And from a philosophical perspective he is also reportedly resentful that Amazon detrimentally impacts small businesses and takes trade away from them. The White House has countered this:
The president has said many times before he’s always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses and this is no different. He’s always going to look at different ways, but there aren’t any specific policies on the table at this time.
– Sarah Sanders, White House
It is reported that another one of President Trump’s objections to Amazon is its reliance on the state-owned USPS postal service and how it essentially subsidises Amazon’s operations. It is widely accepted, however, that Amazon has actually bolstered USPS and also encouraged it to take on Sunday deliveries.
The whole post office thing, that’s very much a perception he has. It’s been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon.
– Axios source
A lot of this is perhaps gossip but there is no doubt that Trump does have animus towards Bezos. How that will impact ecommerce merchants or affect laws remains to be seen.
4 Responses
Amazon has no competition and has consequently become too big, greedy and arrogant. Apart from the fact it treats sellers like dirt. (thought I’d get that in!)
I’m surprised Virgin haven’t created a platform that could be this competition. Big enough pockets anyway.
Im in full agreement with Trump and the previous comments by Steve Turner. Amazon are a massive greedy arrogant monster and is killing our high streets. The bigger thy get, the more they will gobble up our retailers and its customers. They treat sellers like pieces of s**t, completely ignoring any complaints, suspending accounts and hanging on to funds for no reason.
Why does the British public support this US monster before its own high street?
Helping 1000s of sellers over 100,000s of products avoid Taxes has probably caused this. High street or not, the evidence is plain to see and now the problem is no longer. ‘How to they sell x for 0.99p’. Its in every category and basically every product.
Small UK businesses are really struggling and the government has been neglecting this issue for far too long.
I’m a tiny seller on amazon but whether you like them or not at the end of the day they have only been so successful because the general public, all over the world now, like to buy from them. If they didn’t they would not be so successful. Across the USA now they are now paying sales tax and they are also cracking down on the non EU sellers who don’t have valid vat registration numbers, so Trump and the other posters on this article may not like them but I don’t suppose Bezos cares.