As of 2:47 EST, Amazon shares are down over $78, a loss of 5.4%.
https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/historical
Amazon shares are nose-diving as President Trump hammers the on-line giant over unfair business practices. Trump made a very real threat earlier today, including the use of legal terminology to hint at what’s in store for Amazon. The criticism offered by the president follows other very strong language used by the Commander in Chief on March 31 of this year.
From Twitter:
Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump Apr 2
“Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country...not a level playing field!”
Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump Mar 31
“...does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a “lobbyist” and should so REGISTER. If the P.O. “increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion.” This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!”
As readers can see by the latter of the two tweets, Trump called Amazon’s deal with the US Post Office a “scam that must stop.” Like Alphabet Inc and Google, Amazon has control over large sectors of industry and they leverage their advantage in one sector – or several – in order to benefit their other businesses. Google has already been found guilty antitrust activities and has been involved in other large-scale litigation.
From Wikipedia:
On June 27, 2017, the company received a record fine of €2.42 billion from the European Union for "promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results."[345] Commenting on the penalty, New Scientist magazine said: "The hefty sum – the largest ever doled out by the EU's competition regulators – will sting in the short term, but Google can handle it. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, made a profit of $2.5 billion (€2.2 billion) in the first six weeks of 2017 alone. The real impact of the ruling is that Google must stop using its dominance as a search engine to give itself the edge in another market: online price comparisons."
What do you think about Trump lashing out at Jeff Bezos of Amazon? Do you think they and Google should be broken up? Do you know about Google/Alphabet’s history of anti-trust lawsuits? What are your solutions?
Please comment, vote and keep this message alive by resteeming. Thanks for reading!
Sources:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_litigation
nasdaq.com
futurism.com
Curated for #informationwar (by @openparadigm)
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Great news for the citizens of the US. Hopefully, Pres. Trump will be persistent in his efforts at end corporate welfare, but he seems fickle and to be without overarching political vision. Quite ironic that an ennobled merchant is enacting political policies to reign-in mercantile excesses.
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There is no nobility in America. However, just as in places where such linger, merchants are yet the worst of us. Ironic indeed!
Curiosity impels me, does China have service from Amazon, or is there a similar national company(s)? I am quite interested in China, as you might have guessed from my sig, although you couldn't tell it by my education. I know but little, and wonder much. I have heard Baidu replaces Google, and Wechat similar apps in the West. What of Amazon?
Thanks!
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Someone once said something to the effect of, "perfection is a constantly moving target." The same goes for education. Those of us interested in the truth yearn to learn something new every day. Often, the less we know about a topic, the more time we devote to it in order to get up to speed.
I've heard of Baidu and other knock-offs. I recently heard that Russia has their version of Facebook - and it reportedly has a far superior design and user experience...less intrusiveness, etc. I've not yet done the kind of in-depth research on Amazon that I did with the my Google Series. Their model is much more retail-focused, as you know.
If you like Chinese culture and have not yet checked out these 2 great Youtube channels, check em out: Serpentza and ADV China
As for your question on Amazon in China:
In China, Amazon has ten operations centers across the nation, and boasts 400,000 square meters of logistics-oriented floor-space. Not quite as big as the 1.47 million square meters throughout the US, though. But Amazon reports that only 57 percent of its revenue comes from its American operations. From: https://www.techinasia.com/amazon-china
Thanks for reading, voting and commenting @valued-customer
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China has Jack Ma's Alibaba that is a mimic of Jeff Bezo's Amazon. If you recall, Antfinancial, the finance service arm of Alibaba attempted to acquire Moneygram last year. It was blocked by American regulators on the grounds of national security. What many may not know is that Jack Ma is persona non grata in CCP, as he has close political ties with and support from the Shanghai clique, which are efficiently being purged by Xi's new government. Jack Ma's Alibaba is doomed unless Jack Ma agrees to a forced retirement in Vancouver or something, allowing a Xi functionary to assume control of Alibaba and purge the company of "counter-revolutionary" elements. It is likely that Xi's government heartily assented to the Trump faction blocking Moneygram acquisition, as both parties had mutually beneficial political objectives.
Unleashed merchants tend to reach beyond their station. Many of the 18-20th century "revolutions" are but mercantile financial revolt against their betters. When weak political authority meets unrestricted mercantile ascendancy, terrible things happen.
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That's an efficient analysis from an angle we rarely see, @soo.chong163. Thanks!
And someone tried to tell me the other day that communism in China is over. Things seem to be reverting to the old ways pretty quickly. There is not a great deal of info coming out of China as it is, but some may be interested in ADV China. It's a Youtube channel featuring American and South African nationals who moved to China. Learned some things from the shows those 2 guys produce.
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Truer words were never spoken.
Thanks!
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good news sir
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i sell a lot of books on Amazon, but I hate shopping there. Don't get it! It's about time they face more crackdowns, the largest corporations shouldn't get away with paying no taxes.
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Amazon didn't have to collect sales taxes for most of their existence. I believe it was as recently as 2016 when they finally had to start adding sales tax. Until this point, they had a pretty significant advantage over every other selling organization, since this gave their customers a cost reduction to choose their business to buy from. I've been saying this for years. That Amazon got an advantage they should not have gotten.
Now I'm not anti technology or anti change or progress, but massive numbers of jobs are permanently lost with stores shutting their doors and they were single handedly caused by Amazon mowing them down.
Today Amazon is working to put every sector out of business it can. They have a pharmacy business in Japan they are trialing to avoid local backlash. They are going after auto parts business in the US. Believe it or not, I read they are the largest clothing seller now. They just entered the grocery business with their Whole Foods purchase.
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While Amazon not having to pay local sales taxes is an advantage, it's a natural advantage brought by their business model, which is clearly sound.
It also illustrates why sales taxes are bad for business, and shouldn't be suffered anywhere. While Amazon had an advantage over businesses dependent on particular local jurisdictions, I believe you should rather advocate to those jurisdictions that they should abandon their sales taxes because they amount to tariffs against their local businesses.
Regardless, Amazon is clearly not intended to be of benefit to humanity, which is the only reason I reckon corporate charters ought to be granted, and plenty else you state is true as well.
Thanks!
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And they're opening up satelite stores to improve their physical presence and add even more dominance over the market. Well, we can just refuse to buy from them. Refuse drones and automatic cars - that's going to be a big one for us. We cannot let these greedy stateless creeps innovate us right out of our existance.
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The relentless corporate "integration," or the death of small business, is all about funneling every last cent that they squeeze out of us into their greedy hands - Massive centralization. Anyone past the age of 30 should be able to see the contraction of our economy over the last couple of decades. It cannot be sustained.
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Amazon is an egregious example of corporate greed that clearly shows all the reasons we should repent of creating of common cause zombies with political clout. People are people, and do not gain another set of rights and access to our political system simply by banding together in a joint venture.
Granting corporations the status of legal persons has befouled American jurisprudence, and set precedent for the rise of robots. Citizens United is but one example of the injustice that misruling has caused.
No non-person, and corporations are not persons, has rights. Laws according them such rights are unjust and need to be struck down, with rational and truthful recognition of what such ventures actually are instated.
To fail to do so not only imperils our actual and natural rights, it has already eroded them to the point of existential threat. Only by reversing that grave error might we regain what we have long lost the power to effect, and do require in a just nation. People alone, not joint ventures, nor machines and programs, have the right to free speech. AI will all too soon give us cause to weep and gnash our teeth in regret should we continue to tolerate the adulteration of our counsel with weighting commercial interests and electromechanical eructations equally before the law.
Thanks!
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Said with poetic clarity. Well done!
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