US President Donald Trump has a longstanding personal feud with the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who happens to be about thirty times wealthier than him, and now that he’s taken up the Oval Office, that feud is spilling over into the American government. Now, this is a government that is supposed to be neutral and unbiased and democratic, so for its leader to personally attack the business practices of a corporation kind of undermines that.
Trump has made sure to point out that he’s been complaining about Amazon and its chief executive officer since “long before the election,” but this is not something he should be bragging about.
Some may say he's letting his personal troubles get in the way of things. He’s a politician who’s supposed to be impartial in things like this, but it can be said that he’s not really a politician – he’s an anti-government Washington outsider (reason that might have facilitated his election).
Anyway, Trump has tweeted now to slam Amazon yet again for paying “little or no taxes,” despite their immense profits and massive amounts of thriving business. The tax evasion by Amazon has been a widely known fact for years, but the consumers seem to just ignore it, because it keeps their prices nicely lower than all of its other retail competition (even if it means those companies going out of business) and the fact that it’s online and delivers to your door – within just one day if you pay a premium – is way too convenient to pass up.
Some believe this isn’t about taxes
Some business experts have suggested that maybe the thorn in Trump’s rump hasn’t got anything to do with the business practices of Amazon or their tax evasion or their coverage by the Washington Post (a paper which he has never seen eye to eye with), but rather his jealousy of Bezos’ fortune.
Jeff Bezos is worth approximately $118 billion, whereas Trump is only worth $3.1 billion – a figure which is dropping more and more every year. $3.1 billion might sound like a lot of money to us regular people, sure, but compared to $118 billion, it’s chump change!
Trump has also accused Amazon of treating the United States Postal Service as its “delivery boy,” which costs the US economy a “tremendous loss” every financial year.
This is not entirely true. In fact, since virtually no one bothers with snail mail anymore and just uses email to send documents and messages digitally – or just text, because that’s where we’re at – the US Postal Service relies on their parcel delivery services on behalf of the many, many Amazon orders in order to keep them afloat. These are just the cold, hard facts. Amazon can afford to treat the Postal Service however they want, because without Amazon, there would be no Postal Service.
President Trump accuses Amazon of ‘putting many thousands of retailers out of business’
Another one of the accusations against Amazon proposed by Trump is that they are “putting many thousands of retailers out of business.” While this may be true, it is simply because Amazon are doing things right.
They’ve found the tax loopholes that keep their prices ridiculously low and they have absolutely every product you could possibly want or imagine in the whole world and they’re online, which removes the inconvenience of going out and visiting a shop.
Trump said that Amazon is “not on an even playing field” and alleged that the Washington Post’s reporters, who he does not believe are very good at their jobs, are guilty of “lobbying” for Amazon and not taking its CEO Jeff Bezos to task for his shady practices, because he owns the paper. Corporate influence is a huge problem in the media. Trump’s favourite, Fox, is more guilty of this than anyone.
