Donald Trump wipes $5.7bn off the value of Amazon with single tweet

Donald Trump wiped around $5.7bn dollars off the stock market valuation of Amazon in less than two hours yesterday, with a tweet attacking the online retail giant for “doing great damage to tax paying retailers”.

Amazon’s shares lost 1.2 per cent of their value in pre-market trading after Mr Trump’s comments.

The President tweeted: “Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the US are being hurt - many jobs being lost!”

Mr Trump has previously criticised Amazon and the Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for its coverage. In June, Mr Trump tweeted: “AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes“.

In December 2015, Mr Trump accused Mr Bezos of using the Washington Post as a tax shelter to reduce Amazon’s tax bill. Mr Trump claimed that Amazon’s stock would “crumble like a paper bag” if it could not use this arrangement.

Mr Bezos owns the Washington Post via a holding company which is not linked to Amazon.

The President has repeatedly used his Twitter account to attack individual companies, often causing their valuations to crash temporarily.

Toyota shares plummeted within minutes of a negative tweet in January, vowing to stop the firm from moving to Baja California in Mexico, caused the company to lose around $1.2bn in value.

In December, the President took swipes at defence giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, claiming that both were charging the government too much for their services. Boeing’s value dropped more than $1bn, while Lockheed’s fell $3.5bn.

However, last week it appeared Mr Trump’s power to sway the markets may be lessening after an attack on Merck chief executive Ken Frazier failed to shift the pharmaceutical company’s share price.

Mr Trump tweeted: “Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to lower ripoff drug prices!”