President Donald Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ cozy relationship appears to have hit an icy patch.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed Bezos’ company on Tuesday morning after Punchbowl News reported that Amazon will roll out tariff pricing that displays “how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the price of each product.”
“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” Leavitt said. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? And I would also add that… Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm.”
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An Amazon spokesperson told The Washington Post that tariff pricing was never considered for its main website. Instead, the spokesperson claimed there were merely discussions about adding tariff information to products on “Amazon Haul,” which has been described as a “Temu copycat.”
“The team that runs our ultra-low-cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” Amazon’s statement said. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site, and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”
A spokesperson provided a slightly revised statement to CNN, stating that the tariff pricing policy being considered by Amazon Haul officials “was never approved and will not happen.”
Leavitt was asked in a White House briefing if Bezos, who donated $1 million to and attended Trump’s exclusive Capitol rotunda inauguration in January, still supports the president. She declined to say.
“I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos, but I will tell you this is certainly a hostile political action by Amazon,” she said.
Leavitt emphasized she had just gotten off the phone with Trump about Amazon’s planned move, which she said was “not surprising.” She then held up a printed piece of paper that showed Bezos and a headline from Reuters, which read, “Amazon partners with China propaganda arm.”
The Reuters article, about Amazon allegedly removing negative reviews of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s book, was published in 2021.
That was well before Bezos showed support for the president, jetting to Florida to meet with him at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024.
Bezos’ public embrace of MAGA came two months prior, in October, when he blocked the Post, which he owns, from endorsing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. That move led to an exodus of subscribers at the Post and the departure of dozens of longtime staffers.
