Donald Trump accused Amazon of tax evasion. What can the president do with the company?

What's happened

twice since the end of last week US President Donald Trump has demanded full tax payments from Amazon and said "the US Postal Service will lose an average of $1.50 for each package delivered to Amazon." In total, the losses reach "billions of dollars," he tweeted. Trump also accused owner Jeff Bezos of illegally lobbying Amazon with the help of The Washington Post, which he owns.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980063581592047617

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/980065419632566272

• Last Tuesday, Axios reported on Trump's dissatisfaction with Amazon, as well as the fact that the president is thinking about opening an antitrust or tax investigation against the company. Trump is being urged to take action against Amazon by his friends in the real estate market, whose business is suffering from the move of retail to online, wrote Axios.
• After the publication, Amazon shares fell by 9%, the company lost $ 66 billion in capitalization. Trump did not deceive the expectations of journalists - on Thursday he wrote the first tweet criticizing Amazon, which puts "thousands of retailers" out of business.
• The president's main formal claim is an allegedly loss-making deal between the US Postal Service and Amazon to deliver goods, although federal regulators recognized the contract as profitable, adds The Guardian.
• Trump regularly makes claims against The Washington Post - he accuses the newspaper owned by Bezos of lobbying for the interests of Amazon and spreading fakes. In October, WP tweeted positively about Trump, and the president specifically tweeted about it. Trump's other favorite targets for "fake news" criticism are CNN and The New York Times.

What can Trump do?

• It is in the power of the president to achieve various audits of Amazon, including for compliance with antitrust rules. Amazon holds over 43% of the online retail market, but its share of the entire US retail market is less than 4%. Lawyers interviewed by the WSJ believe that Trump will have to change laws in order to initiate an antitrust case.
• Trump could also support bills to allow states to levy sales taxes on intermediary purchases or push for more U.S. mail fees. But the bills will have to get through Congress.
• Under US law, states cannot collect sales taxes from companies that sell their products through the mail and are not physically present in the state. Some states believe that with the advent of Amazon, this rule has become irrelevant - it gives the company an advantage over local retailers.
• As Bloomberg notes , another option available to Trump is to try to prevent Amazon from winning a multibillion-dollar contract from the Pentagon to upgrade cloud services. The results of the competition will be summed up in September.

What do I get from this?

If advisers don't talk Trump out of the war against Amazon, the standoff could be the main story in US power-business relations in 2018. Judging by the first assessments, there is nothing special for the president to cling to. For example, unlike other tech giants led by Apple, Amazon is not even among the top ten companies holding the most money offshore. It will be all the more interesting to watch Trump's attempts to punish Bezos.

Artem Gubenko