AMAZON WORRIER
Trump’s Bezos beef, China rancor spook marts
President Trump’s escalating war of words against Amazon is slamming the stock market.
The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 458.92 points Monday, to 23,644.19, as Wall Street digested headlines about trade wars with China and stepped-up regulation of the tech giants like Amazon.
Shares of the Seattle e-commerce giant plunged 5.2 percent, to $1,371.99 — bringing the stock 14 percent below its March 12 high of $1,598.39 — as Trump repeated his claims from last week that Amazon has been taking advantage of the US Postal Service.
“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed,” Trump said in a tweet Monday morning.
“Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country … not a level playing field!” Trump added.
Trump has long criticized Amazon, led by Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, but his jabs intensified over the last week following an Axios report that said he was “obsessed” with regulating the company.
How the USPS actually fares in its business relationship with Amazon is not fully known.
Representatives from Ama- zon declined to comment on Trump’s comments.
“President Trump’s comments are consistent with industry sources we have spoken to in the shipping industry, who often label Amazon’s deal with the USPS as a sweetheart deal,” DA Davidson & Co. ana- lyst Tom Forte wrote in a note.
“An argument, however, could be made that the USPS was losing billions before it expanded its service offerings for Amazon and would, still, likely lose billions if Amazon discontinued its use of the USPS tomorrow,” Forte said.
However, one source familiar with Amazon pointed to a 2006 law that mandates that USPS prices cover its costs, seemingly negating the president’s comments.
Meanwhile, the broader market was also in pain Thursday with the major indexes down in the first trading day of the second quarter as tradewar fears intensified following China’s announcement Sunday that it would implement tariffs on 128 US products.
In addition to the Dow’s drop, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively.
Facebook was down 2.8 percent, while the other “FANG” constituents — Netflix, Apple and Google parent Alphabet — were down.
“Trump said trade wars are ‘easy to win,’ well, the market doesn’t think that,” Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial, told The Post.
Monday’s trading was a troubling sign for the first day of the new quarter.
The market is “accelerating on the downside, which is a bad sign,” Cardillo noted.
Although he expects good news when first-quarter corporate results begin to emerge in two weeks, the market has been stifled as companies are unable to buy back their stock in the weeks leading up to when they report earnings.
“This is an ugly day and certainly an ugly start to the second quarter,” Cardillo said.
“Earnings season is going to be a cushion for the market, but until [corporate earnings] come in full force, there’s going to be more selling,” he added.