Trump hits out at online retailer
President Donald Trump took another shot at Amazon.com yesterday, tweeting that the online retailer pays ‘‘little or no taxes’’ and that it uses the US Postal Service as ‘‘their Delivery Boy’’.
Trump’s frustrations with Amazon are no surprise. He has accused the company of not paying enough taxes before, and in December tweeted that the US Postal Service should charge Amazon more for delivering packages. His latest missive comes after news website Axios reported that he had wondered aloud if there was a way to ‘‘go after’’ Amazon with anti-trust or competition law.
‘‘I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election,’’ Trump tweeted. ‘‘Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to
UNITED STATES:
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!’’
Amazon has grown rapidly since it launched in 1995 as a website that mostly sold books. It has changed the way people buy nappies, televisions and just about anything else. Toys R Us and other retailers that have filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business have said that Amazon’s low prices were hard to compete with. But industry analysts also say that some disappearing retailers were slow to adapt to the shift to online shopping.
Seattle-based Amazon has fought for years against collecting sales tax, but now collects it in states that have a sales tax.
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said some Amazon users did not pay sales taxes, such as third-party vendors who sell their goods through the site.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
As for the US Postal Service, it has lost money for years, but online shopping has led to growth in its package delivery business. Amazon signed a deal in 2014 with the service to deliver packages on Sundays.
A spokesman for the US Postal Service declined to comment.
Analysts at Stifel said Trump’s tweets on the topic did not seem detrimental to Amazon. The company’s stock, which has risen more than 65 per cent in the last 12 months, rose 1 per cent to close at US$1447.34 yesterday.
Trump has targeted Amazon for other reasons in the past: its founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and Trump has called the newspaper ‘‘fake news’’ and a ‘‘guardian of Amazon’’ after it published unfavourable stories about him or his administration.
White House spokesman Raj Shah said Trump’s tweets were not about Bezos, but that mom-andpop shops and bricks-and-mortar stores were having trouble competing with fast-growing Amazon.
‘‘Tax policy, and other policy, has to catch up ... so those who are competing with Amazon are on a level playing field,’’ Shah said on Fox News show Fox & Friends. But he also said: ‘‘We’re not laying out specific policies.’’ – AP