Mere hours after a blistering Briefing Room performance from PressSec Karoline Leavitt — who slammed Amazon as a “China-aligned” online retailer — the company backpedaled faster than a skinny-dipper who mistakenly waded into a piranha pool. Leavitt was responding to questions involving a Punchbowl News report that Amazon would break out the “Trump tariff” on the price of imported goods.
Punchbowl reported early Tuesday that “the e-commerce giant will soon show how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the price of each product, according to a person familiar with the plan.”
“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” Leavitt said. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Amazon did not respond to requests for comment from several outlets, including the New York Post.
But by midday, Amazon replied like Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella: “Never mind.”
Well, that didn’t take very long, but there’s more to the story.
Reuters reported Amazon’s claim — or was it a modified limited hangout? — that only “its low-cost Haul unit had considered listing import charges for goods in light of new U.S. tariffs but denied looking at such a plan for its main website.”
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products. This was never approved and (is) not going to happen,” the company told Reuters, adding that “teams discuss ideas all the time.”
But Nick Sortor reported that “minutes after President Trump called Jeff Bezos this morning, Amazon CAVED and backtracked on their plans.” Bezos isn’t CEO any longer, but he can still jerk some chains.
Whatever the truth is, what a shame Amazon isn’t sticking to its guns. As I wrote earlier today, breaking out taxes and letting consumers know up-front where their merchandise is coming from would be a big win. Even that, however, wouldn’t be enough to fix what’s wrong with the Amazon-China Connection.
Let me share a personal story about those alphabet soup companies you see selling cheap consumer items, often electronics, but also rip-off tools and such.
A couple of weeks ago, I purchased a new Mac mini and wanted a matching hub with a built-in SSD slot to go with it. Amazon had no shortage of hubs to choose from — but like walking into Hobson’s stable, there was no real choice at all.
Here’s a nice-looking one from an Amazon vendor named RayCue for $89.99 marked down from $109. Here’s an identical model from GIISSMO for the same price but marked down from only $99 and with a nifty $10 coupon. Here’s a third identical model from PULWTOP for just $84.99, also marked down from $99 but without the coupon.
Also, are they kidding me with some of these names?
The only difference between the three hubs is the packaging, the pricing strategy, and the stupid name.
Here’s how it works — and why they’re so cheap despite having some very nice specs.
There’s a factory somewhere in China, maybe using Uighur slave labor, probably using stolen intellectual property (IP), and certainly with a CCP stamp of approval. It churns out jillions of identical consumer goods, but it doesn’t export them. Export companies wink in and out of existence, set up shop on Amazon with some semi-random name, selling identical goods at near-identical prices.
Good luck getting customer service from Ubangiwangi when your widget dies before the warranty is up because the owner, the mysterious Mr. Chow, went out of business. He set up a new shop — BICHENCAMARO, this time — in the same offices, exporting the same garbage from the same factory.
The kicker is that I bought one of the cheap-o knockoffs from AOOOUIYA or whoever because it was that or nothing.
How is an American firm — or a company from Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea, for that matter — supposed to compete with fly-by-night exporters selling goods produced with stolen IP and providing no customer service?
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