Who says name-calling doesn’t hurt? Amazon investors can measure the pain of President Trump’s Twitter attacks over the past three trading days in dollars.
They’ve lost a collective $260 billion as the e-commerce giant’s shares tumbled 2.8 percent since the president’s March 29 renewal of his social-media onslaught against the company run by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. It’s a bigger slide than the 0.9 percent decline on the S&P 500 index as well as drops of 1 percent and 1.7 percent on competitors Netflix and Walmart, respectively.
During that time, the president has argued that Seattle-based Amazon pays insufficient taxes, under-compensates the Postal Service for delivery of its packages and exploits the Post for lobbying purposes. Axios, meanwhile, reported that Trump has mused using anti-trust laws to rein in Amazon, which boasted a value of $935 billion before his most recent Twitter barrage.
While the numbers don’t bear out Trump’s claims about the postal service — or totally support his assessment of the company’s tax payments — the president has been unfazed.
“I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy,” he posted on Twitter on Tuesday. “Amazon should pay these costs (plus).”
I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy. Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2018
Although the Postal Service has reported net losses in every budget year since 2015, and did so again in the first three months of 2018, the loss would have been worse without growth of 9.3 percent, or $505 million, in the package-shipping and delivery business. The organization set a record on Dec. 18, delivering more than 37 million packages — the most in a single day in its history.
“We deliver more e-commerce packages to homes than any other shipper,” Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan told analysts in February. “We’ve averaged double-digit growth in our package-delivery business over the past three years.”
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018
As for income taxes, paid $798 million in 2017, including $211 million to states and $724 million overseas. The company’s U.S. tax bill was a net negative of $137 million, following a GOP-led overhaul that reduced the top corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. That compared with a federal income tax bill of $1.1 billion the year before and $215 million in 2015.
