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Assuming for a moment that the purpose of tariffs is to shift consumer spending away from foreign imports and towards domesticly manufactured products,
Shouldn't you want retailers to break-out the tariff cost into a seperate legible line item?
A story broke this morning that Amazon was going to start labeling products with the tariff charged on each item to make the price changes legible to the consumer. From the perspective of a protectionist economic policy, this is a good thing. It makes it unignorably clear which items are made in China and which items are made in America. It also shows the direct monetary incentive for you the consumer to but the Made in America item over the Made in China item.
From the perspective of whatever the hell the Trump administration is trying to do, this is a disaster. I understand that governments would prefer the populace not be particularly mindful of how much money they pay in taxes, but it is another thing alltogether to hear this articulated by the press secretary as something that they think makes the administration look good to the public. The official line from the MAGA infuencer types on Twitter is that retailers are doing this as a distraction from the fact that they sell cheap slop from Asian sweatshops, but this is actually highlighting the fact that they sell cheap slop from Asian sweatshops.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these,Hanania was right again.
You're getting lost in the details (which are mostly lies from both sides), when this is a case of simple conflict theory. Amazon thinks, correctly, that if they label the products with the tariff this will make people angry at Trump. Trump realizes this and opposes it.
But is making people angry at Trump a reason for Amazon to do something or a reason for Amazon to not do something? According to Reuters, the proposal was to show tariff costs for a program I hadn't previously heard of, "Haul," which I gather is $2.99/month access to extra-cheap crap. Tariff costs are more salient to those customers, so it makes sense to consider showing them to that self-selected group, while implementing it for the broader Amazon inventory and third-party marketplace would be more trouble than it's worth.
I think part of the reason for the idea is to put pressure on Trump to back off on the tariffs.
In that case, why would they only do it for the cheap crap?
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