Update (11:40 am ET): In a late-morning tweet, Sherman dropped a stray detail that he excluded from his original piece – but which doesn’t bode well for Amazon shares.
Sherman tweeted that “unlike Gary Cohn, Larry Kudlow agrees with Trump that Amazon is a ‘problem’, a source briefed on their conversations tells me.”
Unlike Gary Cohn, Larry Kudlow agrees with Trump that Amazon is a “problem,” a source briefed on their conversations tells me
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) April 3, 2018
Amazon shares have climbed off their lows for the day and are now essentially flat.
* * *
Update (10 am ET): Trump doubled down on his anti-Amazon stance Tuesday morning, once again declaring that Amazon is draining money from the US Post Office and that Amazon “should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!”
I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy. Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018
Shortly after, Amazon shares turned negative and was recently down 0.5%.
* * *
Amazon shares shed another 5% during Monday’s tech-led market rout, after Trump renewed his attacks on the company and its owner, Jeff Bezos, whom he’s accused of transforming the Washington Post into his personal propaganda outlet and demanded that it register as a lobbyist.
In a flurry of tweets, the president claimed that anybody who believes Amazon isn’t ripping off the Post Office is a fool (even as other more business-friendly Republicans have warned Trump that this isn’t necessarily true, and that he should be quiet before he wrecks the market rally he’s so proud of).
He also insisted, once again, that the company pays little or no taxes (Amazon collects sales taxes in 45 states, but third-party sellers using its platform often do not).
Meanwhile, the tempest (not in a teapot) that has engulfed Amazon may continue for one more day following the publication of Gabriel Sherman’s latest “inside the White House”-type story from Vanity Fair. In it, Sherman quotes several anonymous “Republican insiders” who told him that Trump remains committed to striking back at the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, whom he accuses of marshalling the Washington Post’s scathing coverage of his administration.
“He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” one anonymous source told Sherman. “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos,” said another. “Trump is like, how can I fuck with him?”
According to Sherman’s sources, Trump is pushing for the Post Office to jack up the shipping rates that it charges Amazon. As recently as the beginning of the year, Trump would never have considered such drastic measures – mostly because he had Gary Cohn in the West Wing repeatedly reminding him of Amazon’s role in driving the post-inauguration rally (it also has helped mitigate the harmful impact that email had on the Postal Service, Cohn would say).
“Trump doesn’t have Gary Cohn breathing down his neck saying you can’t do the Post Office shit,” a Republican close to the White House said. “He really wants the Post Office deal renegotiated. He thinks Amazon’s getting a huge fucking deal on shipping.”
But of all the punitive measures that Trump is considering to help stick it to Amazon, his advisers appear to be most amenable to the White House cancelling a pending multi-billion contract with the Pentagon.
Advisers are also encouraging Trump to cancel Amazon’s pending multi-billion contract with the Pentagon to provide cloud computing services, sources say. Another line of attack would be to encourage attorneys general in red states to open investigations into Amazon’s business practices. Sources say Trump is open to the ideas. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)
Trump has never been one to hold back while attacking his critics. He has savaged WaPo rival New York Times on many occasions, famously branding it the “failing New York Times.” But there’s an important distinction: No matter what the NYT writes about him, Trump will always retain a modicum of respect for the Gray Lady – after all, it’s his hometown newspaper. The same cannot be said for WaPo.
“Trump doesn’t like The New York Times, but he reveres it because it’s his hometown paper. The Washington Post, he has zero respect for,” one source said.
Trump also refuses to believe Bezos when the Amazon CEO says he protects the newsroom’s editorial independence.
“When Bezos says he has no involvement, Trump doesn’t believe him. His experience is with the David Peckers of the world. Whether it’s right or wrong, he knows it can be done.”
Regardless of what his advisors say, the newly emboldened president Trump isn’t backing away from his threats against Amazon. At the core of the issue is Trump’s old-school view of the American economy – he prizes the physical and the industrial over e-commerce and the transformative impact that the Internet had in pushing the US inexorably toward a services economy.
And to morally justify his crusade, Trump views it as a campaign to protect America’s small business owners (an integral part of the Trump base). Which is why if we were Amazon shareholders, we’d be very uneasy.
Bezos is a Piece-O-Shit.
All these guys are the same – an average guy – who makes it big. Then he becomes a know-it-all prick.
Fuck him – I’m 68 an I have a full head of hair.
Trump shouldn’t want a continuous market rally. Or upward swing. If he was a true patriot he would want this debt-funded mania to subside and allow reality to take its place back at the table of our nation’s economic future.
Amazon like its parasitic twin Tesla is a purulent scab on the back of the US taxpayer. Corporations that grow in size and share price while at the same time generate zero or negative profits can’t possibly be a part of capitalism. They kill legitimate businesses. Never use Amazon or buy a Tesla. The sooner they’re gone the better.
Maybe Tesla’s self driving cars could deliver Amazon’s packages.
That’s a really great idea.
Why not just shut down the Post Office? Problem solved.
It is, after all, a relic of the 18th century.
So is the US Constitution, but then both have proven to be failures.
In fairness, it’s got quite a few miles on it.
The Post Office is a losing proposition every year. They use the massive monies generated by their government-protected monopoly on First Class mail to cover the costs of the infrastructure that allows them to deliver packages at a far lower cost than their “competitors.” But even still, they are losing money. They offer FREE boxes for their flat rate service. I know of a company in California that altered their own packaging to make their product fit perfectly into a specific flat rate box. What is the REAL cost of these boxes, these deliveries, etc? An independent audit could reveal all of these truths.
I applaud and fully endorse the above suggestion regarding shutting them down completely. But if we want a fair transition, simply ELIMINATE the monopoly on first class mail delivery and allow FedEx, UPS, local, regional, and a vast array of carriers to deliver this subset of the overall mail market. Lysander Spooner, the great Anarchist writer, political philosopher, and entrepreneur, once operated the American Letter Mail Company that outperformed the USPS at far lower rates. Ultimately the tyrannical federal government put him out of business at the point of a gun and the prospect of jail. Time to give freedom a chance and to stop subsidizing ALL American companies who are taking advantage of a criminally-incompetent USPS.