Amazon ignores Trump, expands lobbying efforts
WASHINGTON — Online retail giant Amazon is ignoring Donald Trump’s barrage of taunts and threats, focusing instead on expanding its reach into industries that the president’s broadsides haven’t come close to hitting.
Trump has hurled one charge after another at the company over the last week. He’s assailed Amazon’s contract with the U.S. Postal Service, accused the company of not paying enough taxes, and declared that its large lobbying operation gives it an unfair advantage. Much of this isn’t new for Trump, who suggested during the presidential campaign that Amazon could face antitrust scrutiny if he were elected.
Trump’s attacks have gone after what Amazon is best known for: rapidly shipping just about any product you can imagine to your door. But the company that CEO Jeff Bezos founded more than two decades ago is now a sprawling empire that sells groceries in brick-and-mortar stores, hosts the online services of other companies and federal offices in a network of data centers, and even recently branched into health care.
Amazon relies on a nearly 30-member inhouse lobbying team, which is four times as large as it was three years ago, and outside firms to influence the lawmakers and federal regulators. The outside roster includes a retired congressman from Washington state who was a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee.
“Amazon is just not on an even playing field,” Trump told reporters last week aboard Air Force One. “They have a tremendous lobbying effort, in addition to having the Washington Post, which is as far as I’m concerned another lobbyist”
Overall, Amazon spent $15.6 million on lobbying in 2017. That’s less than Boeing, Comcast and AT&T spent during the same period, according to political money website Open Secrets.
Amazon does not own the Post. Bezos does. He and the newspaper have previously declared that he isn’t involved in any journalistic decisions.
Trump’s charge that Amazon pays “little or no taxes” may have merit. Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the leftleaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said in February that Amazon “has built its business model on tax avoidance.” Amazon reported $5.6 billion of U.S. profit in 2017 “and didn’t pay a dime of federal income taxes on it,” according to Gardner.
The company declined to comment on Trump’s remarks or its lobbying operations.
Amazon has grown rapidly since it began in 1995 as a site that sold books. It has changed the way people buy just
about everything. It runs Whole Foods; it produces movies and TV shows; and it designs its furniture and clothing.
It is working with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to create a business that would lower health care costs for employees at the three companies.
Amazon Web Services is angling for a much larger share of the federal government’s market for cloud computing, which allows data to be stored and managed on remote servers.
Disclosure records filed with the House and Senate show Amazon is engaged on a wide variety of other issues, from trade to transportation to telecommunications. It lobbied lawmakers and federal agencies on the testing and operation of drones, which it wants to use for deliveries.
The $15.6 million Amazon spent on lobbying last year was $2.6 million more than in 2016, according to the disclosure records. The bulk of the money — $12.8 million — went for Amazon’s inhouse lobbying team. The nearly 30-member unit is led by Brian Huseman, who has worked at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.
Also in Amazon’s corner is former Rep. Norm Dicks of the firm Van Ness Feldman. Dicks was the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee when he ended his 36year congressional career in 2013. He represented the company on information technology and cloud computing matters, according to the records, which show Van Ness Feldman earned $160,000 from Amazon last year.