‘Woah’: Amazon claps back at White House for calling the company ‘hostile’ and ‘political’

The Trump administration has demonstrated its remarkable talent for manufacturing outrage over things that never actually happened. One might think after surviving four years of a Trump presidency already, America would be immune to the administration’s knee-jerk reactions, but alas, here we are.

The latest tempest in the MAGA teapot erupted Tuesday when Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt launched into a blistering attack against Amazon based on a report from Punchbowl News claiming the retail giant planned to display the added costs of Trump’s tariffs on product pages. Leavitt declared Amazon’s supposed plan “a hostile and political act,” apparently after personally consulting with President Trump himself on this matter of grave national importance.

She went on to question why Amazon hadn’t implemented similar labels during the Biden administration when “inflation was at its highest level in 40 years”—a curious deflection considering tariffs and inflation are entirely different economic concepts, but I digress.

The only problem? Amazon says it never planned to do any such thing on its main platform. In a swift response, Amazon released a statement clarifying that only its discount “Amazon Haul” team had considered displaying import charges on certain products—and even that hadn’t been implemented anywhere. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site,” the company stated flatly to the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein.

The bizarre confrontation highlights the increasingly tense relationship between Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which has apparently cooled since January when Bezos donated a cool million dollars to Trump’s inauguration festivities and scored himself an invitation to the exclusive Capitol rotunda event. When reporters asked if Bezos still supported the president, Leavitt conspicuously declined to answer, saying only, “I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos.” Translation: it’s complicated.

Of course, all this drama is playing out against the backdrop of mounting economic concerns about Trump’s aggressive tariff policies, which have reportedly caused container ship traffic from China to plummet by as much as 60% since early April when the administration jacked up levies to 145%. Bloomberg News warns these reductions “haven’t been felt by many Americans yet, but that’s about to change.”

The administration’s hypersensitivity to any potential criticism of its tariff policies suggests they’re well aware these measures might not play well with consumers once the economic impacts fully materialize. As my grandmother used to say, “When people get this defensive, they’re usually hiding something.”