Furious Trump calls Jeff Bezos over ‘politically hostile’ Amazon plan to advertise tariff surcharge on goods
Amazon said it has ruled out a plan to display a tariff surcharge on product listings after its founder Jeff Bezos got an angry call from President Trump and the White House called it a “hostile and political act”.
The e-commerce giant said Tuesday that it weighed showing import charges on its discount shopping site Haul, but said the idea “was never approved and is not going to happen.” Amazon said it had never considered displaying the charges on its flagship shopping site.
That’s after President Trump placed an angry call to billionaire Bezos over a that Amazon had planned to display “how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs – right next to the product’s total listed price.”
Amazon decided on the label because it “doesn’t want to shoulder the blame for the cost of President Donald Trump’s trade war,” according to the report, which cited an anonymous source.
A source confirmed to The Post that Trump had placed the call to Bezos, which was . In a Tuesday briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Seattle-based web giant of being “China-aligned” over the Punchbowl report.
“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” Leavitt said. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?”
But an Amazon spokesperson told The Post that the initial report wasn’t accurate.
“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle told The Post. “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”
“Punchbowl News stands by its reporting,” a spokesperson from Punchbowl News said in a statement.
Before Amazon’s denial, Leavitt said she “just got off the phone” with President Trump about Amazon’s reported plans to add the label, though she added that she “will not speak to the president’s relationships with [company founder] Jeff Bezos.”
The dustup comes just days after Trump praised former foe Bezos, saying the billionaire mogul has been “great.”
In an, Trump described the transformation of once-adversarial relationships with Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg into partnerships grounded in mutual “respect.”
The president credited Bezos and Zuckerberg for adjusting their companies’ policies in ways that align with his administration’s values.
“They’ve been great,” Trump said of the tech moguls.
“It’s just a higher level of respect. I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know me at the beginning, and they know me now.”
In response to Trump’s April 2 announcement of significant tariffs on goods from China, Amazon sellers have increased prices on numerous popular items, including home appliances, electronics, and clothing.
Nearly 1,000 products sold on Amazon have seen price increases since mid-April, as US tariffs on Chinese imports ripple through the retail sector.
According to SmartScout, a price analysis software firm, the average price jump across those items is close to 30%.
The increases span a broad range of consumer goods — from phone chargers to women’s apparel — with brands like Anker, a leading seller of mobile charging accessories, raising prices on roughly a quarter of its Amazon-listed products.
“It’s one of the first concerted efforts I’ve seen where nothing explains the price hikes other than tariffs,” said SmartScout CEO Scott Needham .
Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, made headlines just before the election when he blocked his newspaper’s editorial board from publishing a prepared endorsement of Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Bezos has also implemented an overhaul of the Washington Post’s opinion page which has seen an exodus of left-leaning commentators after the mogul stated his preference for touting “personal liberties and free markets.”
Just hours after the change was announced, Bezos joined Trump for a private dinner, signaling a sharp departure from the tensions that defined their relationship during Trump’s first term.
