Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#351

Post by conductr » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

DrillShopper wrote: post #330

conductr wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Amazon has the better return policy. HF has at times zero flexibility and I find I really have to pay attention to each item’s policy and weight the risk of failure (eg. A $5 hammer is low risk, $400 machine is too high risk). It’s not worth the mental math required while shopping. I only buy consumables there (HF) now, gloves, ropes, tarps, etc. Nothing with moving part, especially a motor. I’ve been left hol…

This seems like the exact situation a credit card chargeback is designed to fix.

I think HF technically tells you no refunds or that there's a restocking fee policy when you buy it so I don't think it would work. As a consumer, I'm used to companies like that making an exception when something goes overly wrong like what happened to me. It's not like I used it and it failed, I couldn't even assemble it. I spoke to the manager and he insisted he didn't even have the authority to wave the fees. It would require some regional VP or greater and I'd have to wait for him to return a message, and he hinted that he never approves it and it would all be a waste of time. I just gave up as I was in the middle of my project and just needed to get back to it. I stopped shopping here after that though.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#352

Post by xsmasher » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #336

blululu wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed in practice, but there is a key difference: sales tax is uniform for all products, import tariffs are not. As a customer I want to effectively compare prices between different options. For sales tax you can simply assume a uniform 9% bump. For tariffs the fee varies for comparable products. I would prefer knowing the full price ahead of times but I absolutely need to know the relative price ranking.

> but there is a key difference: sales tax is uniform for all products Sales tax is not uniform for all products depending on your state. My home state for example does not charge sales tax on food items and clothing. Some other special categories also have different sales tax depending on what they are - e.g. vice taxes for some items.

Technically right but doesn't change their point. Sales tax is uniform for comparable products, tariffs are not.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#353

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

StackRanker3000 wrote: post #340

ceejayoz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure those bananas are grown elsewhere. Yes. But the tariffs are on the import price, not the shelf price. The shelf price went up as if it were on the shelf price, because consumers won't realize/understand the distinction. (Hell, a good proportion of the population still thinks someone else eats the costs entirely.) We saw the same thing during COVID - "it's because of COVID / supply chain issues" was the…

But what do you mean by “warranted”? Businesses are free to set their prices as they see fit (with some caveats), and you generally expect them to do so in a way that maximizes profits. The prices before these tariffs were arrived at by some confluence of factors such as cost and competition, it wasn’t some universally agreed “fair pricing” scheme that determined them. So what does it mean for a price to be warranted…

> But what do you mean by “warranted”?

In this case, I believe many companies raised pricing more than they needed to, because people misattributed the source of those increases. If, say, ice cream doubled in price in normal times, people would cry foul. COVID gave an ironclad excuse.

> unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such)

I see very little evidence of this. We're great at innovating new ways to price fix without attracting (or successfully fighting off) regulatory attention.

Like outsourcing the price decisions to a third party…

https://www.propublica.org/article/senators-introduce-legisl...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/data-company-agri-s...

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#354

Post by DrillShopper » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #348

DrillShopper wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tariffs have the potential to drive tens of thousands of small- and medium businesses into bankruptcy, overnight. That is their goal - to drive out the small and medium businesses so that the president's donors can swoop in with private capital offers to enrich themselves.

No it's not. He's just a very unintelligent person surrounded by sycophants. Trump almost certainly doesn't even have an ulterior motive here. He has loudly proclaimed for decades his belief that trade deficits are the same as a subsidy or giveaway to the other country.

I never said it was explicitly Trump's goal, just that it was (with his knowing or not, and him not knowing is much more concerning) the goal of his administration (the people who really run the economic policy) here.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#355

Post by bigyabai » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:52 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #286

reverendsteveii wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank you for correcting me. the point still stands: it's really weird the way the government uses "political" as a pejorative when everything they do is, by definition, political. it smacks of doublethink.

Not if your point was that Trump Really Said It. You said one thing and it was wrong. And since it was in the second sentence of the article you linked, I assume you just read the headline.

It really is a direct quote from Donald Trump:

  White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier she had discussed the initial news with Trump and his response was: “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/apr/29/donald-...

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#356

Post by Technetium » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

News sure moves fast... "Amazon denies it planned to disclose cost of US tariffs on its website" - April 29, 2025 12:01 PM EDT: [1]

"Trump complained to Bezos before Amazon said it scrapped idea to display tariff cost" - April 29 2025 9:01 AM EDT: [2]

"Amazon denies tariff pricing plan after White House calls it "hostile and political"" - April 29, 2025 12:01 PM EDT: [3]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/white-house... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/white-house-blasts-amazon-ov... [3] https://www.axios.com/2025/04/29/tariffs-amazon-prime-day-se...

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#357

Post by rafram » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #350

rafram wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no more "as QoL in China improves." You start with this, but then the rest of your comment is totally unrelated. Could you elaborate?

China is already producing top-tier parts at the current set wages. Wages are unlikely to increase as quality of production goes up - it's already world class. That's the argument as I see it at least. I tend to mostly agree, with some carve-outs for highly specialized industry and general "social" differences in how business is typically done. At this point, if you need basic manufacturing - China seems unbeatable o…

In what economic model is wage growth determined by the quality of the work? That sounds very unrealistic to me.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#358

Post by neogodless » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #355

pessimizer wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if your point was that Trump Really Said It. You said one thing and it was wrong. And since it was in the second sentence of the article you linked, I assume you just read the headline.

It really is a direct quote from Donald Trump: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier she had discussed the initial news with Trump and his response was: “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/apr/29/donald-...

Thank you for correcting my correction! I didn't get that deep.

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#359

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #349

ceejayoz wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Googling says 27 tax jurisdictions in the EU versus over 13000 in the US. Cool, great place to start. Let's fix that. Both have similar land mass, similar populations, similar balance of federal-ish and state-ish and local-ish governance, similar cultures, etc. > And for what? Making the checkout process slightly more convenient for people who lack the mental ability to estimate their total? Surely handling 13k tax…

what are the unintended concecuences of your plan? Until you figure themout don't propose a change as it might be overall worse.

Proposal: Brick-and-mortar stores, at least, should have to list in-store prices inclusive of tax.

Unintended consequences: None?

Re: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

#360

Post by myrmidon » Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #274

myrmidon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the democrats did wrong-- what should they have done to win? I'm curious; I currently don't think that election was so easy for them, with having to run a different candidate, and the overton window shifting right (not just US; EU too).

1. Biden was clearly gone mentally well before they let on. He should have been taken out in the primary season. 2. Democrats believe that "anybody who's not the other guy" is a winning strategy despite it failing over and over. They think that a candidate that people are excited to vote for is not a necessity and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. They got beat with this strategy in 2000, 2004, 201…

I can see your point about it being better to switch candidates early, but this is mostly on Biden himself IMO; I can see publicly visible infighting against the current president doing even more damage to the party (long term and immediate results!), than being slow at picking the candidate.

> They think that a candidate that people are excited to vote for is not a necessity and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. They got beat with this strategy in 2000, 2004, 2016 (and now 2024). It barely worked in 2020.

Who, specifically, is "they"? I think either party just picks the candidate that can muster the most internal support and money, and those are both pretty good proxies for probability of success.

I strongly disagree with your examples. I think Al Gore was an excellent candidate (and he was very close to winning, too). 2004 was basically unwinnable for democrats against an incumbent after going through a crisis that fused the country together.

Trumps success I believe is mainly owed to a media landscape that is extremely helpful for populism in general, a bit of an overton "backlash" after achieving a lot of progressive goals (LGBT, black president, environmentalism) and his success in building a cult of personality out of voters with conflicting beliefs (=> the whole anti-woke movement) as well as diametrically opposed interests (working-class voters that don't stand to profit from neither isolationism-light nor gilded-age-v2 policies).

I personally don't see the republicans holding on to the presidency either way, because in my view, Trump was basically heaping a lot of blame as central part of his rethoric, but after actually getting all the power, people are gonna expect results at some point. Blaming "deep state obstructionism" and "the media" is just not gonna cut it to justify mediocrity, and looking at present policies and past results, mediocrity is about the best I'd expect from him as administrator (thats simply not what he is good at).