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Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

punchbowl.news

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Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#301

Post by conductr »

rsynnott wrote: post #248
conductr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a million reasons besides tariffs a cost may increase. Sellers with no tariffs will just increase prices to pad profits if they’re given an opportunity to let Amazon pin it on tariffs. There is a lot of evidence supporting the theory that this type of manufactured inflation is what drove the recent pandemic era inflation. Corporate profits alone are the best indicator of this occurring. They raised prices by…

> Sellers with no tariffs will just increase prices to pad profits if they’re given an opportunity to let Amazon pin it on tariffs Well, realistically they'll do that _anyway_. If you decrease price competition, prices go up. That is the order of things.

A lot of things go counter to economic theory. If you’re an American company used to selling 30% above Chinese competitors, you likely can’t ramp up production quickly or will hesitate to make the decision but will likely increase your prices simply because you can and partly because you’re used to the charging x% over Chinese goods. You may even feel being price competitive with China lessens your perceived value, quality, etc. in the consumer’s minds.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#302

Post by neogodless »

umvi wrote: post #261

I'm seeing other stories now that this punchbowl news article is made up (ex: https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2025/apr/29/hsbc-t... )

To elaborate:

“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.” — Jeff Stein

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#303

Post by acdha »

mrits wrote: post #125
acdha wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? Usually short term price fluctuation would be in response to something like a sudden change in market demand or something like a natural disaster lowering production but nothing like that seems to have happened other than the largest tax increase in U.S. history and the demand shock from the federal cuts should be lowering prices, not raising them.

Price fluctuation doesn't usually depend on market demand or natural disasters. How you got that idea is beyond me.

All I’m talking about is basic supply and demand: if prices suddenly go up significantly, that usually means that there is either a big change in demand or the supply has become limited and buyers are having to pay more. A big natural disaster can cause that if it affects agricultural supply, shipping, or factory production (e.g. years ago, flooding in Thailand caused hard drive prices to double[1]).

My point was simply that since nothing like that has happened, prices spiking is almost certainly due solely to the tariffs.

1. https://www.techspot.com/guides/494-hard-drive-pricewatch-th...

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#305

Post by insane_dreamer »

neogodless wrote: post #226
reverendsteveii wrote: post #215

"This is hostile and political." --The President. No, Really. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/white-house-blasts-amazon-ov...

Technically Karoline Leavitt said it.

She speaks on behalf of the President.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#306

Post by garciasn »

bloudermilk wrote: post #258
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #256

I was just talking to a couple friends of mine, about this, yesterday. They run a medium-sized manufacturing business that has almost all their work done overseas. Another friend of mine was just laid off, as a transportation broker, directly because of the tariffs. The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. I feel as if this was not well thou…

It’s as if these policies were created without any concern for the well being of SMBs and consumers.

s/SMB.*$/anyone./g

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#307

Post by Clubber »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #299
Clubber wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't sales tax, this is tariff. Not sure if they are any laws regarding that or not. It might be like shipping and handling: $20. The shipping is probably $5, the handling is $15. The handling is just a fee they charge to sell it to you. They want you to think it's shipping that's why they put "shipping" first. Uber Eats calls it "taxes and other fees," which are mostly fees, but they want you to think it's tax…

Even if they can get away with it I don't think this will work so well. So upon check out you're just getting a fee and sometimes it's egregiously high and sometimes it is nonexistent? If you're buying a $100 item (and let's say a $50 cost basis) that has three versions: US made, Japanese made and Chinese made you could get a $0 fee, a $5 or a $50 fee. And at the same time you know that retailers could be just comple…

>So upon check out you're just getting a fee and sometimes it's egregiously high and sometimes it is nonexistent? If you're buying a $100 item (and let's say a $50 cost basis) that has three versions: US made, Japanese made and Chinese made you could get a $0 fee, a $5 or a $50 fee.

It would be more obfuscated than that. They're scummy, I didn't say they weren't clever. A company probably wouldn't make the exact same product in three different countries and Amazon probably wouldn't stock all three, they'd just pick the version they could make the most money on. Also, they probably wouldn't make the difference obvious, just a few cents or dollars here or there. They would say the tariff is $5, when it really was $4.50 and they'd just round up. At scale that really ads up.

>Seems like a very fast way to completely lose the trust of your customers.

Most of them lost trust a long time ago. I mean, what companies do you trust? I don't trust very many, if any.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we should all trust Amazon...

Edit: Amazon said displaying tariffs was never approved and won't happen. More junk news.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-displaying-...

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#308

Post by mindslight »

weakfish wrote: post #137
Aurornis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices are always set by supply and demand. The price will rise until it gets high enough that the product of sales * price falls. It has always been that way. Businesses haven’t been selling goods and services out of the goodness of their hearts at an arbitrary price. It’s always supply and demand. Tariffs are expected to reduced demand because they increase prices. This is why the stock market is down and nearly ev…

I am so tired of people echoing “supply and demand” like it’s Econ 101. The modern market is infinitely more complex with infinitely more ways to create inefficiencies that don’t respond to simple supply and demand.

The problem is that focusing on supply and demand ignores all the ways markets are sticky and not efficient. Asserting that markets are efficient is equivalent to asserting that P == NP.

It's especially galling because if markets actually worked this way, then central planning would work as well.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#310

Post by sethd »

bluGill wrote: post #225
sethd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an independent, let me just say: fuck that. Trump and his voters are to blame.

All the democrats who ran with a candidate who couldn't convince other independents to vote for Harris, or convince all the potential voters who stays home to come vote are also to blame.

I did vote, but not for Harris or Trump. :)

Would I have voted for a Democrat or a Republican if they ran the "right" candidate? I suppose anything is possible, but given the history, I would consider that to be very unlikely.

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