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President Trump Slams Amazon For 'Causing Tremendous Loss To the United States' (cnet.com)
President Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the e-commerce giant does not pay enough taxes, and strongly suggested that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business. From a report: The president took aim at Amazon's tax contributions, its use of the US Postal Service and practices that put "many thousands of retailers out of business!" The accusations aren't new. The tweet was likely prompted by an Axios story on Wednesday that claimed Trump was weighing "going after" Amazon over alleged antitrust activities or violations of competition laws. The Axios story appeared to contribute to a selloff of Amazon stock Wednesday, with Amazon shares dropping 4.4 percent, even though Trump's disdain for Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos, was already well-known. Bezos owns The Washington Post, whose coverage has been less than glowing about the new president, which may be a factor in Trump's attacks. Trump's tweet, in full: 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!
He uses his government position to go after personal grudges.
Putting retailers out of business? I thought we like the free market around here?
Not paying taxes? I thought not paying taxes was smart?
Hasn't Trump been the master of manipulating the tax code to his own benefit? Didn't he say during one of the debates that not paying taxes for multiple years, because of a bankruptcy filing, made him "smart"?
#DeleteChrome
Good luck proving that.
Given that all statements Trump made regarding Amazon are demonstrably false, i think they wouldn't have much of a problem if they so choose to.
they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments
Blame late-stage capitalisms race to the bottom on the state level. Without tax reform states like georgia, indiana, and missouri are basically 25-50 year shelters where companies set up shop, import H1B stem labor, churn out private profit, and leave with a superfund site to be cleaned up by taxpayers. you might get a high-rise with a name on it, or a city park/mural dedicated to the companies $important_figure or two, but none of that does anything to patch roads or fund schools.
use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.)
Blame...your own party. Republicans have been trying to deliver the killing blow to the USPS for 40 years. unable to sink it with future debt and price control, and unable to privatize it because private industries dont want the job, they've incentivised public private partnerships where companies like UPS hand-off to local carriers for last mile delivery. since every system uses barcodes and tracking exclusive to their supply chain systems, the USPS doesnt have any real tracking data to begin with and must handle these packages in a largely manual fashion. The whole end result is a package that takes 20 days to reach its destination half crushed with 40 labels and no customer savings. but hey! we "privatized" the post office!
and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
the 90s called and they want their destructive business practices back. Wal-Mart started this trend by bankrupting suppliers into offering products with no profit margin (vlasic pickle for example.) Fast forward and theres a wal-wart on every street corner offering cut-rate oil changes and flavourless apples the size of softballs for pennies. I mean, surely you didnt snore through the 20 years it took for a single american company to bankrupt every small business in the midwest just to show up and bitch about Amazon, did you?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Trump is not wrong on effects of Amazon and also its local tax-dodging, but his objections are tainted by his very clear political motivation. He is after Bezos as a revenge for The Washington Post coverage.
You can't sue POTUS, dumb shit.
Richard Nixon, is that you?
Besides, Trump is 100% right.
He is not. Amazon a) pays a shitload of taxes and b) it is not causing any loses to the US by using the USPS for deliveries. If anything, Amazon alone might very well be what's keeping the US Post Service afloat these days.
You're a fucking idiot then.
As if it wasn't obvious even at the time that Trump was vastly more corrupt and much more of a liar than Clinton.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I thought Republicans don't believe in the government picking winners and losers?
There is so much wrong with this tweet, and the entire line of thought. There are thousands of mom and pop places that consider Amazon a priceless tool in keeping their own costs down. Also, they are one of USPS biggest customers, and package delivery revenues are up. The reason USPS is losing billions has nothing to do with Amazon, and everything to do with first class mail and pension legal requirements. Most (all?) people pay sales tax on Amazon purchases these days, too, so a notion of an additional Internet tax is just stupid.
It's almost like everything Trump tweets is exactly wrong. SAD!
I don't agree with what the dude said, but I do find it interesting that folks tend to have missed a perfect opportunity to admire his speaking about making the rich pay their Fair Share(tm).
I mean, damn... if there was ever a time when the entire left-wing could've gotten together and said " Yeah! Make the evil corporation pay!!! "
Oh well. Mod this post on down for pointing that out, I got karma to burn off *shrug*.
Okay, meanwhile, there's a vast difference between some politician's ramblings, and the issuance of an executive order, a bill (viz. Congress), or regulatory guidance memos.I wonder if anyone out there knows that?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
1. Since when is it the personal job of a sitting POTUS to 'rein in' any legitimate U.S. based business, regardless of size?
2. Considering Donald Trump's personality, as he demonstrates it to be, I find it much more credible an idea that what he's really all upset about is the fact that Amazon/Jeff Bezos is orders of magnitude more successful a businessman than he is, and Trump is throwing one of his typical temper-tantrums over that fact.
3. Trump claims to want to 'make America great again', and bring back jobs for American citizens from overseas. However intentionally damaging Amazon, who employs at least 341,000 people, will likely cause some of those people to lose their jobs; how is that going to make us 'great again'? (It won't)
4. Meanwhile, the guy who allegedly knows 'The Art of the Deal', and claims to be such a successful businessman, can't even keep things coherent in his own Cabinet, hiring and firing people left and right at a furious pace, and appointing cronies and yes-(wo)men to top positions instead of the people who would be best for the Country as a whole; how the actual fuck can you run the government of ostensibly the most powerful Country in the free world when there is no consistency whatsoever to the people who are making it run?
Seriously, folks, all poking the Trump supporters with a stick aside: this clown has got to go, before he completely wrecks this country.
Of course even if he left office today, it'll still likely take a full decade to repair the damage done to everything -- and we'd be stuck with Mike Pence, which in significant ways would be orders of magnitude worse. Can we just all wish real hard that a meteor falls from the sky and kills them all at the same time?
Why not actually demonstrate, then.
Tell me what's good about the richest man TO EVER EXIST has employees on food stamps, and delivery drivers pissing in bottles to make deadlines
Tell me what's great about a CEO who would rather leave ambulances outside to rush heatstroke victims to hospital, rather than provide a safe air conditioned environment.
Tell me why Amazon is good, and why Microsoft, Bell, and Standard Oil all needed to be broken up.
because they keep getting bought up in Bain Capital style leveraged buy-outs and then saddled with debt that prevents them from adequately competing with Amazon. To cut costs they turn their stores into dirty little warehouses. This is what happened to Toys R Us. And they were one of the lucky ones. They survived 13 years before the debt crushed them.
If Trump doesn't like the post office subsidizing Amazon there's a really, really easy solution: raise the rates. Problem solved. And if he doesn't like how they treat their workers he could raise federal minimum wage and drop the work week to 30/week before overtime kicked in. The latter might require congress to act but it's popular enough that if he'd stop attacking them on Twitter and take congress to task for not doing anything for the working man he'd have it done in a week. Especially if he did it right before mid-terms.
But this is all just a distraction. And an political attack on a company run by people that don't particularly like him. It'd be funny watching to rich and powerful guys in a pissing match if their actions didn't effect me so drastically.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah, if only he could have gotten a massive tax reform bill through congress... if that happened there would be a clear opportunity to actually do something about amazon not paying any taxes.
Oh wait, that did happen... so either the new tax plan fixes this problem in which case what is trump bitching about, or it doesnt' do shit to fix this problem and he is just being a blowhard to distract from other shit.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
See, here's the problem: for purposes of what you just said, it doesn't matter if what he said is true or false; he's using his political position (i.e. POTUS) to affect a private corporation. That can't possibly be allowed.
You're a fucking idiot then.
As if it wasn't obvious even at the time that Trump was vastly more corrupt and much more of a liar than Clinton.
How do you qualify that? Your shit doesn't smell as bad as my shit? They're both shit, they both stink, and whether one stinks more than the other is a matter of perception.
Regardless of the validity or lack thereof of anything you just said, it is not the job of POTUS to 'rein in' any legitimate corporation, nor is it ethical for POTUS to even be commenting on it. Trump is the one who needs to be 'reined in', hell he needs to be on a short leash, and have his goddamned Twitter privileges taken away.
If they want to go after someone that is abusing the USPS it's the Chinese sellers that use international postal law to get the USPS to pay the expensive last mile.
^^^^ This.
Gah, it pains me to have to defend Amazon, but seriously, why is it so hard to understand why a company who ships 600 million packages per year gets a bulk discount?
I usually hate corporations and everything they do, but one thing Slashdot has taught me is that corporations operate to make the most money at the least cost, period. Trumps problem is really with the way capitalism works today, and I certainly hope he decides to make wise changes in that regard.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
A trickle-downer who signed a huge tax giveaway to corporations is complaining that a corporation doesn’t pay enough taxes? Haha what?
Don’t the trickle-downers always tell us that companies like Amazon, etc. paying more in taxes mean less jobs? So other than being butthurt over the Washington Post, shouldn’t Trump be glad that this “job creator” is only paying the bare minimum taxes to maximize hiring and shareholder return?
Hypocrisy. Thy name is Trump.
Wait, wut?
Trump Brags About Not Paying Taxes: "That Makes Me Smart"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBZR1-onmAo
Trump is good at misdirection and baiting the media and the public-at-large. When he says "look over here at this naughty Amazon", he's not serious; he's really trying to divert attention from some fjnork-up someplace else.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Exactly! The same would be true of any courier service. If you do a LOT of shipping, you will get discount rates. Buying any good or service in bulk will almost inevitably lead to discounts on pricing, and if it doesn't, then you should go elsewhere for your good or service.
This whole attack on Amazon, on top of the Trump Administration's attacks on free trade and the threat of tariffs, makes me think Americans voted in a 19th century president. The whole idea that somehow because a business is disruptive to pre-existing business models as somehow representing a bad development is something I would have expected from any pre-Theodore Roosevelt president.
My view is that Amazon's disruption of retail is not only inevitable (if Amazon hadn't done it, someone else would have, and Amazon is hardly the only one causing the disruption, eBay is up there too), but a good thing. The retail industry has basically remained static for years, and even the "revolutionary" giants like Walmart and Target (with their highly sophisticated JIT inventory systems) had been resting on their laurels. Consumers, to a large extent, were captive to whatever the retailers wanted to sell them. Along comes new retail markets like Amazon and eBay, where consumers now have a much higher level of control, where the feedback between buyer and seller is far more direct, and all of sudden even the traditional giants are seeing sales targets slipping.
So really, Trump isn't a Capitalist at all, maybe more of an old school Mercantilist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
but seriously, why is it so hard to understand
Because Trump supporters aren't interested in facts that contradict their Dear Leader's narrative of lies or his propaganda arms.
Average cost != incremental cost.
As long as they are charging more than incremental cost, they _are_ making money. The delivery guy on the route is a sunk cost.
You should know this...it's not like your a kid.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh I see POTUS along with the director of HHS calling out an entire industry for price-gouging everyone is the same as a narcissistic 5-year-old having a temper-tantrum on Twitter against a single company? Bullshit, and your red underwear is showing, pull up your pants.
I'm not sure. I don't think Trump has any real philosophy, I would be truly surprised if it was anything more than "Bad = Washington Post = Jeff Bezos = Amazon". I really think it might be just that simple, Why now? Well Trump can't attack Stormy Daniels, so he's taking his wrath out on someone else who bothers him...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This. A 4oz package i ship to someone next door to me (or anywhere in the US) costs me $2.66 (with a commercial discount). A 4oz package from China (to anywhere in the US) costs the Chinese company .17 cents.
For these dipshits complaining us "leftists" should be on board with everyone paying their fair share but aren't... it's not that we don't think that, it's just that we seem to have a better idea of what the problem is than shit-for-brain idiots who only listen to grab-them-by-the-pussy-Trump.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
"The president can't speak against an abusive corporation, doing so is illegal."
Look at yourself, saying this shit.
The absolute state of the left.
The problem, anonymous coward, is that the corporation isn't abusive in the ways that Trump claims they are. Yet here you are essentially supporting the assertion that the President should be allowed to tell lies about a privately owned company and specifically target that business for burdensome regulations, potentially for the sole reason that the President believes the owner is a political enemy of his.
Is there no abrogation of conservative morality that you won't stand for?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Can we hold coal companies to the same standard, or allow them to chew up their employees, spit them out when they're too broken down to work, and then welch on their pension obligations?
I don't know what kind of bizaro world I've stumbled into where Republicans are defending a generous pension quasi government entity and democrats are defending the most cut throat capitalistic company in the US currently. Do we all just reflexively side either pro or anti Trump then proceed to rationalize that decision with whatever mental contortions are necessary to avoid any serious challenge to or growth in the way we view the world?
its totally hypocritical for Trump to complain about them not paying enough taxes. He should look in the mirror first and get all his rich mates to do the same before he moans about tax avoidance by others. All the countries that allow these global tax avoiding companies to operate in their backyard should all get together and sort it out so they pay their fair share of taxes locally
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
LOLOL... SERIOUSLY?!?
Most of them use ePacket now... a wholly USPS owned and operated service with depots in every major manufacturing hub in China.
So lets get this right... USPS sets up this system just for US Tech companies to get electronic parts and modules from China delivered cheap and quick... and you want to "go after them" for USING IT?
*Shakes head*
mnem
Now for something completely... the same old Western Corporate-Centric BS.
Do we all just reflexively side either pro or anti Trump then proceed to rationalize ...
Trump's problem with Amazon is really about his dislike of Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post (Jeff owns both) and the things the newspaper writes about Trump. Trump calling things "fake news" doesn't make them actually so...
Not trolling (really), but... to address your comments. The problem with Trump is that about 99% of everything he says is either flat-out wrong or easily-provably false. The safe, rational bet is to stand on the opposite side of whatever he's talking about.
The tweet in the TFS looks to be full of errors and/or half-truths, except for the part about harming retailers -- but is that really Amazon's fault or the people and retailers that sell through them. As to the other statements, Amazon *pays* the USPS to delivery things, albeit at a discount -- just like FedEx and UPS do for some last-mile deliveries. As for how much taxes Amazon and their retailers pay, that's on the State and Federal Congresses and the laws they pass. However, I have trouble believing that Trump and the Republicans want a rich person and company to pay *more* taxes, especially after the tax hand-job they gave their buddies and themselves in the recent tax bill.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I don't think he necessarily has to have an actual overt economic policy to be an old school mercantilist. But clearly his views on trade, whatever their source, are deeply rooted in very 19th century protectionist views, and the flip side to that was the general tendency of Gilded Age Administrations (and Congresses as well) to protect entrenched interests. I can only imagine traditional brick and mortar retailers feel much the same as Donald Trump does about Amazon, even if his criticism has more to do with his perception that Bezos must be driving the WP's reporting. I think Trump is just instinctively a Gilded Age-style president.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're missing some of the point. The US Congress has mandated the USPS to completely pre-pay into its retirement fund at (a) an accelerated rate for (b) all their employees, even ones who aren't even close to retirement. The USPS would be fine financially if they could pay into the fund more reasonably, like every other corporation does (that still have pensions). This was done by Congress partly to hinder the USPS and foster a case to privatize it -- 'cause "it's losing money". Seemingly, you've drunk their Kool-Aid.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When Trump was confronted about being a billionaire and not paying any income tax his comment was along the lines of "that makes me smart". So by his logic if Amazon is paying less in taxes that makes THEM smart.
On top of postal service being delegated in the Constitution, private companies can't compete with USPS... and they don't want to. Dipshits like you are too stupid to understand that. Every time conservatives have "privatized" something, the costs to taxpayers goes up in the form of subsidies, and the benefits go down. Now, if you hate this country.... like you seem to... and are literally too damn stupid to understand how things work, then i suppose that's ok. Problem is, for all your whining like a little bitch about this country, all you really are is a hypocrite. You complain about this country, yet you gain (and ue) benefits EVERY SINGLE DAY that you have purely BECAUSE OF THIS COUNTRY.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
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does not mean that Congress should do so
I love it when people think the private industry is what's best for public utilities and services. You've learnt nothing from the internet, you'll learn nothing after you mail gets delivered once every 2 weeks and you get charged not only for sending it but also for receiving it. Go capitalism.
Amazon is just Sears-on-your-iPad.
Continuing that point, Sears was a great retailer for a *long* time, but they failed to innovate and keep up with the changing landscape. I'm not sure their purchases of Kmart and Lands' End and sale of the Craftsman brand did them any favors in the long run. More recently Sears is basically owned and operated by a bunch of hedge fund people who seem intent on chopping it up, selling things off and picking the carcass clean.
Sears has a bigger problem than plunging sales
Sears workers describe decay in failing stores
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .