Did the person in charge of the disastrous Mulvaney Bud Light commercial campaign go to work at Amazon? In a potentially bizarre move that can only be attributed to insidious insularity in the Amazon Spheres, Amazon considered disclosing the cost of U.S. tariffs next to prices for its products.

Initial reports erred towards headline-grabbing “truthiness” rather than updated facts. In fact, it turns out that Amazon is not considering displaying a tariff surcharge on the main site. However, there was some initial confusion about their inclusion on their Amazon Haul store, which offers deep discounts on cheaper products—often dumped on us by China.

It now seems that Amazon has relented to pressure from the White House, which included Karoline Leavitt describing the proposal in stark terms, such as “a hostile and political act.” Now, even Amazon’s Haul site won’t include tariff listings. What’s alarming, though, is that such considerations reverberated so long, likely surviving many strategy sessions before President Trump had to take his precious time to intervene.

YouTube screen grab (cropped).

How did it get that far? Consider this: a spokesperson said, “The team that runs our ultra-low cost Amazon Haul store has considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products [emphasis added].” In a way, that could’ve been even worse than their main site because the price differential would be greater and duly noted by price-conscious consumers. A preponderance of their marketplace sellers are Chinese manufacturers.

It’s often hard to discard bad ideas that have misguided momentum in the C-Suite, but a call from Trump to Bezos will do the trick. I wonder if, during the call, President Trump congratulated Bezos on the recent launch of the satellites that are bound for the Kuiper internet constellation. Hint-hint. Their purpose is to provide speedy, low-latency, broadband internet services. Turns out that the U.S. government, NASA in particular, is partially subsidizing that.

Who knows? Maybe DOGE may pay them another visit. Hint-hint. Who knows? Maybe competitor Starlink(SpaceX) may get a more favorable launch schedule. Whatever carrots and sticks the master negotiator dangled before Bezos, it worked – Amazon backed down.

Fortunately, Bezos is very business-savvy. Displaying tariff surcharges on Amazon’s low-cost Haul Site would have been a peevishly petulant pricing practice. It is wise to play the long game, and to suck it up for now! Heck, Amazon has a ready-made excuse, if needed, should margins tumble on their next quarterly earnings report.

Meanwhile, Trump, as always, was gracious in victory:

In the meantime, Amazon should do its patriotic duty and align itself with the administration’s herculean efforts to finally bring balance, fairness, and rationality to world trade economic systems. In the long run, that will be better for business than cozying up to China.

Consider this: Amazon brags about being customer-centric, but President Trump is ensuring it is America-centric.