President Trump’s 100th day in office started with what seemed to be a fresh and fast-escalating spat between the White House and Amazon.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, came out swinging in her press briefing on Tuesday morning, accusing Amazon of being “hostile and political” after a report — disputed by the company — from Punchbowl News saying that the online retail giant would start displaying the exact cost of tariff-related price increases alongside all its products.
Displaying the import fees would have made clear to American consumers that they were shouldering the costs of Mr. Trump’s tariff policies rather than China, as he and his top officials have often claimed would be the case.
After the report was published, Mr. Trump spoke about it over the phone with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, according to three people familiar with the exchange. Amazon spokesmen hurriedly issued denials that the policy was going into effect, and by Tuesday afternoon Mr. Trump was back to praising Mr. Bezos.
“Jeff Bezos is very nice,” Mr. Trump said to reporters as he embarked on a trip to Michigan for a rally commemorating the first 100 days of his second term. “He solved the problem very quickly. He did the right thing. Good guy.”
This arc between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bezos that played out over just a few hours seemed telling. The Amazon mogul is among the billionaires who have gone to ever new lengths to get in good with this White House. Mr. Trump, in turn, has managed to woo such billionaires by promising he’d be better for business. And yet, at the first sign that Mr. Bezos might be prioritizing his businesses interests in a way that would harm Mr. Trump’s political fortunes, the White House didn’t hesitate to lash out publicly.
And it seemed to have had the desired effect.
Ms. Leavitt had ripped into Amazon on Tuesday morning while standing beside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. She said that she had just been talking on the phone with the president about the Punchbowl report, and she also asked aloud in her briefing why Amazon hadn’t done such a thing when prices increased during the Biden administration because of inflation.
Ms. Leavitt said it was “not a surprise” coming from Amazon, as she held up a copy of a 2021 article from Reuters with the headline “Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm.”
Afterward, an Amazon spokesman said the company had considered an idea similar to the one in the Punchbowl report, but only on a new, experimental part of its site, Amazon Haul, which competes with Temu, a Chinese retailer. Temu primarily ships directly to consumers and has begun displaying “import charges” to reflect the end of a customs loophole that had exempted low-priced items from tariffs.
“Teams discuss ideas all the time,” the spokesman, Ty Rogers, said in a statement. He said the concept was never under consideration for the main Amazon site, adding: “This was never approved and is not going to happen.”
The commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, wrote on social media that this was “Good news.”
Mr. Trump’s aggressive tariffs on Chinese goods have kicked off an escalating trade war, even as his administration has backed off its broader global levies amid what it said were negotiations with dozens of nations on new trade deals.
Ms. Leavitt’s attack on Amazon was all the more noteworthy because Mr. Bezos has lately gone to great lengths to curry favor with this White House. Amazon donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund, securing seats for Mr. Bezos and his bride-to-be in the Capitol Rotunda for the inauguration.
Shortly before the election, Mr. Bezos quashed an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president in the newspaper he owns, The Washington Post. More recently, Amazon Prime added multiple seasons of “The Apprentice” to its streaming inventory. The company also cut a deal with the Trump family to make a documentary about Melania Trump.
In December, Mr. Bezos explained his Trump-ward turn while speaking at The New York Times’s DealBook Summit. “What I’ve seen so far is he is calmer than he was the first time,” Mr. Bezos said of Mr. Trump, “more confident, more settled.”
He added, “I’m very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation.”
Mr. Trump was asked about his relationship with Mr. Bezos in a cover story in The Atlantic magazine published Monday. “He’s 100 percent,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s been great.”
But when Ms. Leavitt was asked Tuesday morning whether the Amazon mogul could still be considered a Trump supporter, given the latest report, she demurred.
“Look, I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos,” Ms. Leavitt said, “but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon.”