Amazon won’t break out tariff costs

After Punchbowl News reported yesterday that Amazon planned to display tariff surcharges at checkout, the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were so incensed with the e-commerce giant that it looked like they might start doing all their shopping at the mall.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt interpreted the reported plan to add tariff cost labels to products as finger-pointing over price hikes, deriding it as “a hostile and political act.” But after President Trump reportedly called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the company said that it never intended to mention tariffs on its main site:

• Amazon explained that it had mulled the prospect of displaying tariff fees for items on its ultra-cheap goods marketplace, Amazon Haul, like its main competitor, the Chinese bargain purveyor Temu, recently started doing.
• But a spokesperson told NBC News that the idea “was never approved and is not going to happen.”

Whether companies tell customers explicitly or not, tariffs are a major hit to sites like Haul, Temu, and Shein, which function as storefronts for cheap goods shipped directly from Chinese warehouses. They’re bracing for impact from Trump’s recent order excluding China’s exports from the de minimis exemption that allows small shipments to cross the border without tariffs.

Tariff surcharges are in

Temu isn’t alone in trumpeting tariffs’ impacts on price tags:

• Sex toys sold by the online intimacy products store Dame now come with a $5 “Trump Tariff Surcharge.”
• Jolie Skin Co., which sells filtered water showerheads, is building dedicated software to tack a “Trump Liberation Tariff” fee onto its checkout totals.
• Electronics manufacturer Crestron will charge customers a 12% fee to offset tariff costs, a level of pricing transparency that allows the company to adjust the fee if the administration introduces further tariff changes, it said.

But…being so forthcoming with tariff surcharges might work best for niche brands with a limited product selection, as opposed to e-commerce emporiums where people load their carts, experts told Bloomberg.—SK