Trump’s Amazon tweets met with sounds of silence
And that may be best course, experts say
WASHINGTON – President Trump has lobbed five Twitter attacks in a week against Amazon, claiming the online retail giant pays “little or no” state and local taxes and costs U.S. taxpayers “many billions of dollars” through cheaper Postal Service shipping rates.
Trump’s Twitter threats against the company — viewed in some quarters as a proxy battle in his war against The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — likely helped drive down Amazon’s stock this week.
But Amazon and Bezos largely have ignored Trump’s Twitter storm, demonstrating what some crisis communications experts say has been a key lesson for corporate America about Trump’s presidency: His social media screeds alone may not have much bite or lasting impact on a company’s share value.
“Most CEOs realize that this president, who is known to have no strategy, will move on to the next issue, so why elongate the pain” by engaging in a social media battle with him, said Richard Levick, chairman and CEO of LEVICK, a Washington-based crisis communications firm.
Harlan Loeb, who oversees a global crisis communication team at PR giant Edelman, said calls from worried clients soared in the weeks after Trump won the presidency and began to tweet his displeasure with individual companies. Early targets included Nordstrom for dropping his daughter Ivanka Trump’s fashion line (”Terrible!”) and Boeing for its contract to build a new Air Force One (“costs are out of control” and “cancel order.”)
By the eighth month or so of Trump’s presidency, “the call volume and agita had tapered considerably,” Loeb said, once corporate executives realized that Trump’s “talk tracks and walk tracks weren’t aligned.”
“The playbook now is less is more,” Loeb said. “Most companies are taking a this-tooshall-pass approach.”
Amazon, which has made Bezos the world’s richest man, has been a long-term focus for Trump. In late 2015, for in- stance, then-candidate Trump fired off a series of tweets about Amazon and The Washington Post, saying the retailer’s “stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag” if Amazon “ever had to pay fair taxes.”
At the time, Bezos responded on Twitter, promising to save a space for Trump on one of the rockets owned by his aerospace company, Blue Origin. As of Wednesday morning, Bezos had made no mention on Twitter about Trump’s attacks on the company.
Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener declined to comment about the controversy.
Post editor Marty Baron and fact-checkers have responded to Trump’s Twitter storm. In an interview with The New York Times this week, Baron said no one on the newspaper’s staff is paid by Amazon, and Bezos has no involvement in editorial decisions. Fact-checkers note Amazon collects sales taxes on the products it sells to customers in the 45 states that have them. Third-party sellers may have a different arrangement.
Markets, businesses rattled
Corporate executives’ silence in the face of Trump’s tweets, however, does not mean, they are not rattled by his statements and policies.
Companies expect government officials who have an issue with their corporate practices to pursue action through more formal channels, such as an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, rather than off-the-cuff tweets, said Erin Browne, head of asset allocation at UBS Asset Management. “The level of uncertainly about the outcome here and what Trump is trying to achieve is what concerns investors,” Browne said.
The country’s largest business group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also has signaled its displeasure.
“It’s inappropriate for government officials to use their position to attack an American company,” Neil Bradley, the chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, said in statement this week. He did not mention Trump by name. “The U.S. economy is the world’s most powerful because it embraces the free enterprise system and the rule of law, whereby policy matters are handled through recognized policy making processes.
“The record is clear: Deviating from those processes undermines economic growth and job creation.”
Eric Herman, a managing director at PR firm Kivvit, said companies at risk of earning Trump’s ire because of their reliance on international trade, foreign workers or other targets of his administration’s policies all have their “antennae up” and crisis plans at the ready.
“They are very, very cognizant that this guy has no impulse control and can fire off a tweet at any second, without warning,” he said.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a USA TODAY request for comment about the controversy over Trump’s tweets.
Amazon has been viewed as a front-runner to win a cloud computing contract with the Pentagon. Asked Wednesday about the contract’s status in light of Trump’s criticism, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “That’s not something the president is involved in.”
She referred questions to the Pentagon.
Few restraints on presidential speech
It’s rare, though not unheard of, for presidents to mention companies by name.
In a 2015 interview, Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama criticized office supply giant Staples over its health care policies. Staples shot back that he “didn’t have all the facts,” and Obama did not publicly criticize the company again.
But there are few limits on presidential speech.
While federal ethics rules prevent government employees from biased treatment of individuals or businesses, those rules don’t extend to the president, said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based government watchdog group.
Amey said this doesn’t mean the public shouldn’t demand more restraint from Trump. “Presidential power should never be used in such a manner,” he said. “The president should get to work lifting up our country rather than picking playground-type fights with those he doesn’t agree with.”
Kivvit’s Herman offered that there could be some upsides for companies that find themselves the subject of a presidential tweet.
“This country is so divided that, depending on what business you are in or where you are located, being attacked by Trump might help,” he said. “Is this attack by Trump going to hurt Amazon in the Bay Area of California or in Cambrige? I don’t think so.”
“I have a feeling that Amazon is going to be around a lot longer than Donald Trump,” Herman added. “It’s a very successful company.”