Every time Trump has gone off on Amazon
Tax cuts might be the name of the game for the Trump administration, but the president has no intention of letting Amazon's Jeff Bezos off easy. With a tweet early Thursday following an Axios report that the president is "obsessed" with the company, Trump's anti-Amazon sentiment bubbled up once more.
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018
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Trump's Amazon ire is nothing new, but seeing it surface through tweets means that going after the company might again be at the top of his mind. Still, historically, that doesn't indicate a policy shift is in order.
As Politico reported, the White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah dismissed the assumption that Trump versus Bezos is a war of personalities or an issue entangled with the president's distaste for the Bezos-owned Washington Post.
"You have a huge company that’s done amazing things, in Amazon, spring up in a very short amount of time, and, really, tax policy and other policy has to catch up to that so that way, those who are competing with Amazon are on a level playing field," Shah said.
"A lot of people have made this, with respect to Amazon, about personalities and the CEO at Amazon — we’re talking about Jeff Bezos here. But this is really about policy."
Trump's tweets reveal a different story, one that conflates Amazon, Bezos and The Washington Post and frequently rails against all three.
The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
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Remarkably, if you go back far enough, Trump seemed to implicitly praise Bezos's business acumen by quoting him.
"If you never want to be criticized, for goodness' sake don't do anything new." -- Jeff Bezos
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2014
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The criticisms didn't really ramp up until 2015, after which time he became preoccupied by Amazon's deal with the USPS and the financial relationship between Bezos, Amazon and the paper.
The @washingtonpost loses money (a deduction) and gives owner @JeffBezos power to screw public on low taxation of @Amazon! Big tax shelter
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
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If @amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag. The @washingtonpost scam is saving it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
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The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2017
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It's hard to read the Failing New York Times or the Amazon Washington Post because every story/opinion, even if should be positive, is bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2017
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The @washingtonpost, which is the lobbyist (power) for not imposing taxes on #Amazon, today did a nasty cartoon attacking @tedcruz kids. Bad
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2015
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So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News. They are as bad as ratings challenged @CNN. Lobbyist for Amazon and taxes?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
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Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
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Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt - many jobs being lost!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017
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While the USPS/Amazon deal has reportedly come up with Trump plenty of times, the president appears to be sticking with his impression of the situation. "It's been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon," a source told Axios.
In reality, although Amazon could exit the deal and make arrangements with other delivery services, the deal is likely more essential for the USPS. The postal service loses money every year (and continues to do so), but parcel post deliveries (i.e. Amazon orders) are one revenue stream on its way up into 2017. In 2017, revenue from package deliveries went up 11.8 percent as first-class mail, historically the real money-maker, declined.
Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017
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As a source told Axios, Trump could leverage antitrust or competition law to go after Amazon, but that policy has yet to materialize. Until then, his recent volley toward Amazon appears to be just another verbal rant against a perceived enemy; this one just happens to own the sometimes second most valuable company in the world.
