Trump Personally Complained To Jeff Bezos About Amazon’s Tariff Idea: Reports

When President Donald Trump heard that Amazon was considering displaying the added cost of tariffs on certain items ― putting their impact on full display ― he personally called Jeff Bezos to complain, several outlets reported Tuesday.

“Of course he was pissed,” a senior White House official said of Trump to CNN. “Why should a multibillion dollar company pass off costs to consumers?”

Sources also confirmed the call between Trump and the Amazon founder with CNBC and Politico.

Trump’s outrage may have worked. Shortly after the call, Amazon issued a statement downplaying the plan first reported by Punchbowl News, which would have involved showing the dollar amount tariffs have added to the price of an item next to its total price.

The arrangement “was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties,” a company statement said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also delivered some harsh words for Amazon during a press conference Tuesday, calling the plan a “hostile political action.”

Not long after the reported call took place, a company spokesperson said the idea had been dropped entirely.

“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” spokesperson Tim Doyle said in a statement to HuffPost. “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”

Amazon Haul is the company’s spinoff site that sells items $20 and under.

Trump’s 145% tariff on China is slated to have a major impact on the costs of consumer goods in the U.S. and has already sent the stock market into a downward spiral.

The president has defended the tariffs as an unpleasant necessity, saying earlier this month that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

The pushback on tariffs ― which economists and finance leaders have said may cause a recession ― is a sensitive issue for Trump, whose popularity may depend on them.

A CNN poll found Monday that a growing majority of Americans believe Trump’s policies have made the economy worse. Fifty-five percent of those polled said that so far, the president’s actions on tariffs have been bad policy, and only 28% called them good policy.

As the blowback has mounted, Trump has suggested he wants to negotiate with China to bring the tariffs down, saying last week that “145% is very high and it won’t be that high. It’s not going to be that high.”

“It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero,” he added.