Donald Trump’s tweet this morning about Amazon is the latest of many attacks against the Seattle-based tech giant and its CEO over the past few years.
Shares of Amazon were down slightly on Wednesday after Trump tweeted about the company “doing great damage to tax paying retailers.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/897763049226084352
Trump has publicly criticized Amazon, which plans to employ more than 280,000 people in the U.S. by mid-2018, and its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos since his presidential campaign. Trump’s first dustup with Bezos came in late 2015 as he took aim at The Washington Post; Bezos himself bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
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Beyond the tweets, Trump went on national TV to call out Amazon’s tax practices. He appeared on Fox News in May 2016 and said “Amazon is getting away with murder tax-wise.”
“He bought this paper for practically nothing, and he’s using that as a tool for political power, against me and against other people, and I’ll tell you what, we can’t let him get away with it,” he said of Bezos on Fox News in May.
Amazon collects sales tax on purchases in every state where it’s required, and the company supports national legislation that would require remote sellers to collect sales tax regardless of location.
According to Amazon’s annual report released in April, it paid approximately $412 million cash for income taxes in 2016, up from $273 million in 2015, $177 million in 2014, and $169 million in 2013.
Trump’s attacks at Amazon and Bezos revved up again this summer, starting in June.
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Amazon posted $38 billion in revenue last quarter, up 25 percent from the year-ago period. It employs 382,400 people around the globe.
TheStreet reported Wednesday that suing Amazon for antitrust violations “would require meeting a difficult and daunting set of criteria.” The company has a pending $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods; law experts say it’s unlikely that Trump’s administration would try to block the deal.
Bezos, meanwhile, tends to downplay Trump’s attacks. After Trump’s initial tweets in December 2015, for example, Bezos joked on Twitter that he would “reserve him a seat on the Blue Origin rocket,” another venture that the Amazon founder is pursuing with his private fortune.
https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/674008204838199297
In May of last year, Bezos said Trump’s remarks were “not an appropriate way for a presidential candidate to behave.” He tweeted “congratulations” to Trump after the election in November.
Some outlets speculated that a Trump presidency could be bad news for Amazon and Bezos, though shares of Amazon are up more than 30 percent since November.
Trump’s tweets about Bezos and Amazon before his presidential campaign had a much different tone.
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