President Donald Trump has declared war on Jeff Bezos after Amazon announced it will include the cost of tariffs on the price tag for products.
The White House publicly slammed the retailer’s move as a ‘hostile and political act’ against America.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had just spoken to President Trump about the Amazon bombshell.
She said Trump’s message was clear: ‘This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.’Â Â
The president responded to the announcement that Amazon intends to show the tariffs imposed on countries such as China, in addition to the prices of products listed on the website.
Punchbowl News first reported the move citing a ‘person familiar with the plan.’Â
Leavitt expressed outrage at the world’s biggest online retailer, accusing them of acting in a partisan manner.Â
‘Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?’ she asked.Â
She also accused Amazon of serving as a willing tool of Chinese propaganda. Â
He mentioned that this development was not unexpected considering reports by Reuters highlighting Amazon’s collaboration with a Chinese propaganda organization. This serves as another justification, as per Leavitt, for people in the U.S. to opt for domestically made goods.
In December 2021, it was reported that Amazon had teamed up with a division of China’s propaganda machinery to establish a dedicated sales platform.
It removed their ratings system and comments for Chinese books that were receiving low responses.
The report noted that former press secretary for President Barack Obama, Jay Carney, served as Amazon’s global head of lobbying and public policy operations.
He traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials and helped draft a briefing document on ways to satisfy their demands.
While Trump argues that his tariffs will help return jobs and industry back to the United States, estimates show that they will cost American households significantly on every day goods and services.
The Budget Lab at Yale University estimated that American households could face additional costs of up to $4,400 a year, citing the unprecedented high retaliatory tariffs placed on China.
The White House continues to make minor adjustments to tariffs on China, urging them to come to the table for negotiations.
Trump’s new tariffs also heavily affect Chinese-born online shopping websites Temu and Shein, as the president eliminated the trade loophole allowing packages under $800 to come into the United States duty free.
The sweeping tariffs are also impacting Trump’s approval rating.
He has seen a drop in his approval rating in Daily Mail polling for the first time as he reaches 100 days of his second administration, with voters worried about how tariffs will impact their wallets.
The president’s approval in the Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll fell nine points from 54 percent on April 17 – when his popularity was at a record high – to 45 percent this week.
The decline is universal with voters increasingly concerned by issues that were critical to Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential election: rising prices and the economy.
Six in ten say the economy is bad or getting worse, including 49 percent of Republicans. Many believe food, and their favorite products, are getting more expensive.
‘He is pushing things like tariffs that will hurt us economically in the future,’ one male GOP voter from California, who backed Trump in 2024, told the survey.
However, Trump still has strong support from his loyal base with more than 50 percent approval among men, white Americans and Republicans.
It is the first time since the inauguration voters have indicate their views are becoming more negative, with Trump’s bold tariff policies sparking a furious international response and volatility in the financial markets.
The president has slammed polls that have his approval rating underwater as ‘fake’ and said on Monday night: ‘We are doing GREAT, better than ever before’.
Trump’s first 100 days in office has been jam-packed with policies that have upended tradition in the federal government.
Elon Musk’s DOGE has taken an axe to government spending in a bid to cut billions from a bloated federal budget.
Almost every day, Trump has been in the Oval Office signing a flurry of executive orders overturning decades of the status quo in Washington.
He has also sparked diplomatic shockwaves with threats to take over Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, and pulled no punches in his talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to end the war with Russia.
When asked to pick his biggest mistake, voters overwhelmingly said ‘tariffs’, while the ‘border’ was seen as the greatest success.
The Trump administration promoted its immigration crackdown on Monday by lining the White House driveway with dozens of mugshots of migrants who have been arrested.
