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Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

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Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#71

Over half of Amazon's third party sellers are Chinese companies who regularly false report to dodge tariffs on their products in ways that American competitors can't. Amazon claims to police them but they're extremely reliant on them at this point and the Chinese sellers just start up new brands if penalized. https://x.com/zackkanter/status/1908343624464576666

From your citations

> What kind of idiot US seller hasn’t had their Chinese factory also write in a lower value on the import invoice?

Why do people on X think Americans don’t cheat the system too?

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#72
Will Amazon also display the referral fee they charge the seller for the purchase ?

Its good to know if Amazon's cut is on the total price including the tariff or the price excluding the tariff. It'll help understand whether Amazon is profiting from the situation or not.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#73
post #34

[flagged]

A trade deficit is not inherently unhealthy Then even without that, your 6 biggest companies are Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta. Then the seventh is private equity. Then it's back to Alphabet again, and Broadcom. The trade deficit calculation excludes services, including but not limited to: software So even with countries where you supposedly have trade deficits you're not even sure that you really…

I don't think our middle class can survive if all we make is software. Europe and others maintained its industrial base through heavy protectionism and tax manipulation. We can do that too.

Feel free to use the tariff information differently or not at all. I also want to buy more American products and this information may help with that too. Even if they are more expensive and their quality is inferior.

You can choose to do otherwise and I don't have a problem with that.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#74

This may backfire. Will they also show how much their profits are costing consumers?

Where exactly do you think Amazon's profits are coming from? Over half of their profit comes from AWS, and the retail side does not appear to have substantially different margins than brick and mortar retailers (~3% net margin).

The case maker HYTE calculates 25% as net margin for brick and mortar stores for MSRP and says stores are tough and won’t allow any % less margin.

Update: oh and they also said stores won’t lower it because of the tariffs, making the stores more money.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#76
I'm fine with this as long as they include the tariff in the listed price.

I'm worried businesses are going to use tariffs as an excuse to have a fake list price, then hit you with massive hidden fees at the point of sale. Some sectors have been doing this for years - "service fees" at restaurants, "regulatory response fees" in the telecom industry, all sorts of nonsense in event ticketing.

Physical goods have mostly been spared this type of fake pricing - aside from sales tax not being included, but that's been universally true in the US forever so everyone is used to it.

Tariffs could be the end of that if businesses see sales plummet. Especially because these scams actually work - the reason restaurants give for not just increasing their menu prices is because higher listed prices drive people away.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#77

Maybe Jeff shouldn't have been so eager to jump on the Trump train.

The #1 rule of being extorted is giving in means you’ve shown you can be extorted. The extorter will never stop increasing the ask. Columbia University found this out.

It's pretty clear you don't know what blackmail is.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#78
post #20

The Red Coalition ad under the article hits a very ironic note: > You voted for American energy dominance—and the Trump Administration is delivering. From solar to oil & gas, they’re unleashing it all. More energy. More jobs. Higher wages. America is booming—because when we lead, we win.

Are we booming?

The Trump wrote, literally: We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.

You can't argue against that, he was right. It all did BOOM.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#79
post #8

Great! They should do that in every single country, for all tariffs.

Not an unreasonable idea. All UK receipts show VAT broken out (where applicable, not a tariff)

Prices shown should be post-tax post-fees all-in wherever possible, though. Otherwise you get Ryanair.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#80
post #15

Trump will certainly consider this provocation, so perhaps the news here is that Amazon considered this worth it, even given the inevitable retaliation.

Isn’t Trump the one doing the tariffs? Isn’t the point to get you to buy products without tariffs? I’d think this plays directly into what Trump wants.

The narrative has been that the 'other countries' pay for the tariff. Not the US consumer. So this may be an issue and not one that you can walk away from easily when the customer sees that it is added to their bill.
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