Amazon suffers onslaught from US President

Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - 09:35 by Mike Price

American e-commerce giant, Amazon, has been targeted by President Donald Trump in a series of social media posts which are critical of the firm, causing its share price to dip by six per cent, according to Reuters.

Trump complained that the anti-competitive practices of Amazon were hurting the US Post Office, claiming that for each package that it handles, it is losing a little over £1.

Industry observers now fear that the president will hit Amazon with regulatory pressure in an attempt to curb its strong growth and make it pay its way when it comes to shipping costs.

At the time of writing, Amazon has not issued any official statement in response to these allegations, nor passed comment on the fact that its share price has been hit as a direct result of a handful of Trump’s tweets.

Insiders have pointed out that Trump has many business allies who are involved in bricks and mortar retail and are feeling the pressure as a result of the rise of shopping online, fuelled by Amazon.

Furthermore, Amazon chief exec, Jeff Bezos, is also the owner of the Washington Post, a paper which has reported on unflattering stories relating to the president’s activities.

It is certainly the case that Amazon has a questionable track record when it comes to taxes and competition. But in this instance, it seems that the claims being made against it are not grounded in fact.

The sizable contract that Amazon holds with the US Postal Service currently generates a profit for the latter, according to findings from the Postal Regulatory Commission. This ongoing deal has even allowed the price of normal postage to remain low because of the volumes involved, which suggests that Trump is pursuing a vendetta against the world’s best known purveyor of shopping online for different reasons.