[ethbr1]

> Given how Amazon tried to start showing the cost of the tariffs on their site, Trump publicly threatened them, and they backed down with hours...

The facts:

   - There was a report that Amazon was going to begin showing prices
   - Amazon clarified that was for their low-cost Amazon Haul site, not their main one
   - The White House griped about them at a press briefing
   - There were reports Trump called Bezos

The whole thing is murky at best.

[vlovich123]

Amazon has backed off on doing it for Haul after Trump’s press secretary publicly flamed them invoking a direct conversation with him:

> “The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle said in a statement. “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”

> Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon that Bezos “was very nice, he was terrific” during the call and “he solved the problem very quickly.” He added that Bezos is “a good guy.”

If this had already started being leaked to the press I doubt that it “wasn’t going to happen” and was likely past exec review at that point. Then Trump calls Bezos and Bezos overrules the team and PR damage control as if this was some rogue action. Of course it’s pure speculation but it fits the timeline of events we know about better and we know this administration is a completely unreliable narrator as evidenced time and time again (from Trump continuing to lie claiming a photoshopped photo with ms13 overlayed was actually his tattoos to claiming he’s spoken to the Chinese leader with China disputing that any conversations have been had)

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-displaying-...

[dialup_sounds]

"Leaked to the press" meaning one membership-based newsletter targeting DC insiders.

[ethbr1]

> Of course it’s pure speculation

This is what I was taking issue with.

And also, please don't do the currently en vogue thing of mentioning something unrelated to buttress an argument against Trump.

There's plenty of on-topic fuckups from this administration that you don't need to do the Fox News-style "and what about..." emotion bait.

[exe34]

The Great Leader does not lie. Reality itself is in the wrong.

[exe34]

How do you go from:

1. White House uses machinery of state to force the hand of private enterprise to hide impact of tariffs on prices.

2. Private enterprise acquiesces.

to "The whole thing is murky at best"?

It's pretty clear fascism to me. From wikipedia (while they are allowed to exist): "centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition".

[somenameforme]

Using "the machinery of the state to force private enterprise" is a rather hyperbolic way of describing a phone call. I do agree in general that the government should be much more strongly separated from private enterprise than it is, but a phone call to exert pressure is a ridiculously low standard of governmental pressure, not even just objectively but also what we've seen over the past several years in completely systemic practice.

[exe34]

> hyperbolic way of describing a phone call

A phone call is a bit of a coward way to describe the press secretary moaning about a hostile and political involvement of a (somehow) foreign government intervention to international journalists.

[somenameforme]

She was referencing this [1] article. And Amazon did indeed exactly what she said. They launched a side gig "Chinese Books", guided by the Chinese propaganda arm NPPA, at the behest of China exclusively in order to further their reach and business in China. That, while complying with ever more onerous requests of the Chinese government including removing reviews for certain Chinese books, granting complete control of "their" cloud services in China to Chinese government approved companies, and so forth.

It creates a reasonable argument that Amazon will do basically anything to get some of that sweet Chinese $$$, which makes their unprecedented foray into politics (at a consumer facing level), in a way that would be completely beneficial to China, look particularly bad. This still has nothing to do with using "the machinery of the state to force private enterprise" or anything like that.

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/amazon-partnered-with-ch...

[exe34]

Wait, because Amazon followed the law in China while doing business in China, anything they do in the US that the Orangefuhrer doesn't like is..... something beneficial to China?

The claim was that Amazon wanted to display the added tax due to the tariff separately, which is what the white house histrionics were in response to. There is no indication that only Chinese imports would have been labelled. China is not the only country that Trumpet added tariffs on.

He relies on MAGAs not knowing what a tariff is. He wants to blame price rises on Biden - if it becomes too obvious that the buyer pays the tariffs, he would lose a lot more support.

[dialup_sounds]

The point is that Amazon wasn't doing it in the first place.

[ethbr1]

One has to be careful, with faced with opposition that ignores facts, not to succumb to the same debasement.

We all have speculation about what might have happened behind the scenes -- but it's just that, speculation.

Disliking Trump isn't license to spin supposition as factual reality.

Hyperbolic phrasing for effect errodes respect for reality, regardless of which side it comes from.

(I realize there's a 50/50 chance I'm going to get a whataboutism spiel in response to this, focusing on your fascism phrasing, and how you believe it is supported. I'd encourage you to take a beat and instead consider places you were reaching past what facts supported in your original phrasing.)

[vlovich123]

> Disliking Trump isn't license to spin supposition as factual reality.

Evaluating situations in a vacuum and sticking just to confirmed facts isn’t a hallmark of being considered and knowledgeable. One must also consider patterns of behavior and Trump pressuring Amazon to change a policy of both consistent with all of this. Facts in order of events:

* fact: News report that Amazon is going to show tariff impact on their Haul product

* fact: press secretary blasts Amazon in the news indicating she’s repeating a conversation she just had with Trump

* fact: Trump had a phone call with Bezos

* fact: Amazon puts out a clarifying statement they won’t be doing it.

* contradicting fact: Amazon claims they were never actually going to do it

* pattern: quid pro quo is how Trump operates. see the Ukraine call that got him an impeachment in the first term trying to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for weapons

* pattern: businesses and politicians being yes-men to Trump.

So facts + pattern = reasonable hypothesis of what happened. If you have contravening facts I’d love to hear them but you can’t just stick your fingers in your ear and pretend you have to have a confirmed fact before building a hypothesis of the likelihood of what happened.

It’s like trying to pretend Putin isn’t the one murdering dissident journalists or opposing politicians or trumping up fake charges.

[exe34]

I'm not referring to anything behind the scenes, I saw the press secretary intervention and I was embarrassed for America. It's as pathetic as the president complaining about "bad numbers". I miss the times when the free world had an articulate leader.

[ethbr1]

> I miss the times when the free world had an articulate leader.

Watching historical debates and speeches just makes me sad about the disparity with modern oratory.

[ANewFormation]

Probably driven in large part by the expansion of the voting pool. Great political thinkers have no more appeal to the masses at large than Beethoven, Dostoevsky, or Linux.

So we get entertainers and silver tongued devils for politicians whose primary skillset tends to overlap heavily with that of conmen.

Speaking of figures with no mainstream appeal, Plato wrote extensively, and utterly prophetically, about this phase of democracy in The Republic, and how it will inevitably lead to tyranny. It's playing out as if from a script.

[ethbr1]

Trump's twice election certainly makes a case for universal voting, but maybe different individual vote weights?

Basic stuff, like if you don't know what 5 - 1/4 equals or what cells are. If not, maybe you shouldn't have as loud a say in choosing political leadership?

[enaaem]

The only murky thing is how far Amazon was in implementing it, but there is no doubt that the White House reacted furiously to it. This is a very sensitive issue for them, and companies should be aware that Trump is willing to make their lives very difficult if they show this information.

[InDubioProRubio]

Up next, a mysterious small company appears, releasing the AMAzing Plugin, that allows to compute the tarif addition on amazon.com. Totally unrelated

[marcusb]

Released yesterday: https://github.com/mergd/amzn-tariff