President trump is mad on Twitter this week about Amazon, retail and technology giant, whose founder and CEO also owns the Washington post.
In a series of tweets spread over several days, trump has accused the company of the many inaccurate misdeeds, including not paying their fair share of taxes, sweetheart of the Internet with the postal service of the United States and setting the Washington post is a de facto lobbyist for the company.
The story is of interest because it once again raises one of the most frightening prospects trump era — that trump seeks to go beyond the venal corruption involved in his hotel in the form of systemic corruption, where the success or failure of business depends fundamentally from that of its owners and managers coincide with the regime. The fact that trump is clearly to inject the post into a discussion, of course, suggests that the desire on his part.
But nothing it seems is actually happening on the main strategic interests of the company Amazon. Instead, in a practical sense, the Amazon — like most major American companies are profitable trump corporate tax cuts and his careless approach to work, as well as law enforcement and trump the slate is very Orthodox conservative judges will protect the company from leftist aspirations to own antitrust laws against him.
To the extent that trump is indeed moving in the direction of systemic corruption seem to attract different companies and political questions — questions, he mostly don’t tweet about how Sinclair broadcast favorable treatment from the Federal communications Commission. The feud with Amazon, meanwhile, is all for show.
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Sinclair Pro-Trump news takes on local television. See if they have their own station.
Trump’s accusations against Amazon, explained
The charges of the President against Amazon, as written, contain basically three criticisms of the policy plus the undeniable observation that competition from Amazon, and companies:
- Amazon don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
- Amazon does not pay fair rates of the U.S. postal service.
- Amazon uses the ownership of Jeff Bezos after covert lobbying tactics.
March 31, these two tweets to sum up the results and problems.
Then trump reiterated Tuesday morning that he’s right about the problem of the USPS and senior management in the USPS makes a mistake.
On all these points, the trump offers a half-truth, which is bad by the standards of normal behavior of the President, but trump standards-it’s really more that the glass is half full situation.
- Taxes: under current law, the government can only charge an online retailer sales tax if the seller has a physical presence in that state. This gives Internet retailers a significant advantage over brick-and-mortar retailers and has helped Amazon in the past. However, the network Amazon’s, warehouses now so extensive that he didn’t actually pay sales tax in every state that has sales tax. But in addition to acting as the seller, Amazon also facilitates the “market” sales of third party companies that do not have to pay sales tax in States where they have no physical presence. Amazon market advantages CPA loophole from the physical presence, but Amazon condition for the first participant will benefit from the closure of a loophole, and the company’s official position is that it should be closed.
- Postal services: mail service the books of account of losses due to the requirement that it pre-Fund its pension obligations, and in a broad sense, the problem for the USPS business model is that it needs to take advantage of the lucrative monopoly on ordinary mail delivery, but the monopoly is becoming less profitable over time as people send in the mail. Sending with Amazon delivery business, on the contrary, is growing, and the USPS says its fact, to the “last mile” delivery for Amazon profitable. Both USPS and Amazon are working on an unprecedented scale, so that there is no situation to which it is directly involved to compare prices and it is at least theoretically possible that the courier could or should be charging more.
- The Washington post: the idea that the entire Washington post news involving hundreds of dedicated journalists is just a PR operation for Amazon-it’s ridiculous crap and call it lobbying operation involves a fundamental misunderstanding of what lobbying is about. It is probably fair to say that the desire to foster goodwill among the political elites and the reputation of a virtuous and civic duty in the figure one reason Bezos bought the post, although, of course, this situation almost unique in the history of American newspapering.
Remarkably, all charges trump isn’t aligning against Amazon — a company that has been controversial for a long time.
Trump is actually doing nothing on Amazon
The company had been pursuing for many years of complaints that he doesn’t treat its warehouse workers, while the new left school of antitrust advocates insisted on a rethinking of American policy in the area of competition in the target of the Amazon, although it is quite clearly leads to lower prices.
In practical terms, though, it is worth noting that trump is not so much about Amazon. Gabriel Sherman, reporting for vanity Fair “the war trump on Amazon,” says, “consultants are also encouraging trump to cancel billions of dollars in anticipation of Amazon’s contract with the Pentagon to provide cloud computing services.”
This is a landmark transaction, which has faced considerable skepticism from the Committee on Appropriations of the house of representatives last month. If the Republicans in Congress managed to bring the President to his side clashes with the Pentagon, which, indeed, could break the contract and the price Amazon some money. But Contracting dispute is unlikely existential question for Amazon or American democracy, and the opposition in the first place reflect to lobby Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and other competing providers of cloud computing.
On other fronts, where the trump really had something to do, there’s just nothing going on at all.
The U.S. postal service is under the control of nine members of the Board of governors are appointed by the President, for example, but currently, all nine slots free and trump has not appointed anyone to fill them. It also does not support any legislation in Congress that would force Amazon to pay sales tax on market transactions, and, in fact, it is not even clear that the bill, as this may damage the interests of Amazon, because Amazon does not pay tax on their first interest and many of its competitors do not.
Sherman also reports that trump is “open” idea “encourage[ing] attorneys in red States to start investigating business practices of the Amazon”. But in a practical sense, trump has been to fill the Federal judiciary with the Orthodox Pro-business conservatives, who give no indication of any interest in changing antitrust doctrine in such a way that will disadvantage the Amazon. And trump national labour relations Board elections were uniformly normal Pro-business conservatives are not interested in punishing Amazon for everything he does in front of workers rights.
In other words, while this is true in principle, that trump’s tweets without picking up a sad prospect for American democracy, the practical stakes of this conflict appear to be no more than one government contract for cloud services, and maybe not even that. All this naturally raises the question of why the President would choose high-profile fight mostly for show.
When trump really wants to intervene, things happen
On Monday, trump tweeted praise for Sinclair broadcasting, the national franchise local television stations affiliated with various networks, which increasingly turns to local news programs in the Pro-trump propaganda broadcasts.
Here trump did not say that there are issues of real politics. Sinclair is in the midst of trying to complete acquisition of stations Tribune broadcasting-3.9 billion and need approval from the Ministry of justice and the FCC. Sinclair has already received approval from the FCC to trump grip, complete with a special waiver from the rules which generally prohibit their activities KCFW in Kalispell, Montana, as a satellite hisi in Missoula. Sinclair is also asking for some waivers in accordance with the online rostrum.
In October, meanwhile, the Federal communications Commission abolished the long-standing rule requiring that broadcast TV stations to maintain a local TV news Studio — a huge boost to the unorthodox centralized model for Sinclair’s production of “local” television news.
Trump obviously never tweeted at all about these low-key, critical financial regulatory questions. But these subtle mechanisms for the regulation to state that the potential for corruption is greatest. The Amazon scandal, however, seems more bark than bite.
There is a way at all?
If you want to interpret the trump, as a shrewd operator, there is certainly some logic in his approach here. Struggle with Amazon kindle coalition problems for the Democrats, since the most vociferous critics of big machines not on the left and in the technology sector is also one of the Democrat clean the ranks of American industry. To the Democrats of the left angrier at the democratic establishment than it was one of the more effective political bargaining chip moves over the past few years, and gambit Amazon might be appropriate for this model.
Go for the interests of the Amazon in a more meaningful way — through antitrust law, Labor law, Tax law, that would trigger divisions within the coalition trump. Large policy changes will provoke fierce resistance from the chamber of Commerce and other business interests, while hostile tweets of Commerce of the United States, which is simply ignored by the business community, which greatly delighted the vast majority of policy trump.
On the other hand, Amazon is fundamentally a very popular company.
There are 63 million trump votes in America and 90 million Amazon Prime subscribers. A recent survey found Amazon to be the most reliable of the big technology companies in America with 66 percent of respondents said that they trust the company of Bezos — the results show that either political party can kill. Indeed, the annual reputation quotient survey Harris poll released on 13 March found that Amazon is literally the best reputation of any major company in America.
Efficiency trump fooled the heads of their opponents, in the end, can be simply related to the fact that his actions just don’t make sense. It is possible that he will lash out at Amazon, because he’s genuinely angry Bezos, and that it does so in a way that lacks efficiency policy, because it’s just bad to be President.
It is only because I know that there are nine vacant seats on the Board of governors of the postal service us, does not mean that trump knows, or someone in his inner circle bothered to inform him about this fact. He managed, in the end, have a rating below the net approval than any other President at this point in his term, despite what seems a healthy economy with low unemployment and rising wages.
Although it is certainly possible that history will remember about this Twitter feud as the beginning of a new and terrible autocratic era in American life, it seems equally likely that it will consider as an example the floundering incompetence which led trump to sink the polls and election defeat.
Sourse: vox.com
