Amazon Stock Market Value Drops $5B After Trump Tweet
Amazon’s stock market value plunged by more than $5 billion following a tweet by Donald Trump that criticized the company. The president took to Twitter on Wednesday to slam the e-commerce giant for job losses in the U.S. and for its tax collection policy.
“Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt — many jobs being lost!” Trump wrote in a tweet. The company’s stock fell by 0.9 percent just minutes after the message was shared.
The company has previously been criticized for its policy on taxes. Amazon pays state sales tax in the 45 states that have such a tax but has allegedly not done so in the case of third-party sales, in which other sellers use Amazon to sell their products. Trump has criticized this tax procedure.
It is not the first time the president has hit out at the company. He previously claimed that CEO Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post to gain political influence, and he claimed at a rally in February 2016 that Amazon would “have problems” if he became president, CNBC reported.
Trump has previously criticized Bezos on a number of occasions, with the pair trading barbs throughout Trump’s election campaign. Trump later described the Post as The Amazon Washington Post and lashed out at the CEO for stories run by the paper.
“The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad,” Trump wrote on July 24 on Twitter.
“So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News. They are as bad as ratings challenged @CNN. Lobbyist for Amazon and taxes?” he added.
Trump himself has come under fire over a tax issue, refusing to turn over his tax returns during the election campaign and since then. He has declared that avoiding paying federal taxes for 18 years makes him “smart.”
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