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
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