India “is going great”, “I think we have an agreement on the duties”: he said it Donald Trump speaking with the reporters before leaving for celebrate the first 100 days to the White House with a rally in Michigan. The President of the US has also announced that he will visit Africa.
Tension between Trump and Bezos
The duties war raises the tension between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos. While Amazon launches the challenge in Starlink by sending its first lot of internet satellites in orbit, the White House criticizes the giant of online sales hard to be ready – according to the rumors of Punchbowl – to highlight the impact of the duties in the prices of its products. “It is a political act and a hostile act,” said the Karoline Leavitt spokesman, wondering why the company did not do so “when the Biden administration has made inflation to the maximum for 40 years”. The heavy criticisms were followed by Amazon’s denial. “The team that manages our Ultra Low Cost Amazon Haul store has taken into consideration the idea of indicating the import costs on some products. Hypothesis that has never been approved and will not be implemented,” said a spokesperson underlining the idea “has never been taken into consideration for the Amazon major site”. Amazon’s explanation, according to what reported by CNN, would have been preceded by Trump’s ‘frustrated’ phone call to Bezos, the billionaire in the front row at the oath of the president together with his future wife Lauren Sanchez. Jeff Bezos is a “good guy. It was fantastic, he solved the problem very quickly and did the right thing. I appreciated”.
Donald Trump said it. According to Punchbowl reported, Amazon was ready to highlight the cost of duties in the prices of its products. An indiscretion that has attracted strong criticism of the White House to the company. Trump then called Bezos and Amazon denied that he had never considered the idea. Trump and Bezos’ reports had stretched out with the second presidential mandate: if in the first four years at the White House the Tycoon did not spare criticism of the founder of Amazon, especially for his control of the Washington Post, now instead between the two there would be a real bond. Bezos has gone several times to Mar-A-Lago and has repeatedly visited the West Wing of the White House to meet Trump, in addition to having put the bavaglio on the editorial page of the Watergate newspaper, ordering that it is written only of “personal freedoms and free market”.
For Bezos, the stakes are high considering that the ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk is the major rival in its space race. After years of delay, Amazon has finally launched his internet satellites of the Kuiper project in an attempt to recover the lost land with Starlink. Bezos has invested more than $ 10 billion in the project and intends to use this network of satellites to provide internet access at very high speed from every corner of the world, including remote areas and war or disastrous areas. A not easy company given Musk’s spatial overflowing overflowing which, however, risks paying its proximity to Trump with Starlink. The clash between Trump and Bezos shows, according to many observers, the hard punch of the White House against any society that questions his moves. If Amazon had highlighted the impact of duties in the prices of its products, dozens of other companies would have followed the same way to defend their reputation from the possible anger of consumers against the increases, with the risk of feeding the criticisms of Trump and undermining his agenda. To try to mitigate the impact, Trump’s executive order arrives to loosen the pressure of duties on car manufacturers while the White House works on commercial agreements. “We are close to India, and we have a frame of understanding with South Korea. Negotiations are also good with Japan,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Beesent. To those who asked him for how the negotiations with the EU went, Beesent replied: “I can refer to the statements of Henry Kissinger, or who I call? Some European countries”, such as France and Italy, “have imposed unjust taxes on digital services for our internet providers. Other countries do not have them. We want to see these unjust taxes removed”.