Why Amazon Should Thank Walmart. Plus, Meta Redefines Tariffs.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy needs to send a thank-you card to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon—because it looks like Walmart just helped bail out Amazon. President Donald Trump’s signal on Tuesday that he might reduce tariffs on Chinese imports from the current level of 145% followed a meeting the president held with McMillon and the CEOs of Target and Home Depot on Monday. They warned Trump that his tariffs were likely to lead to higher prices and empty shelves in U.S. stores, Axios reported. 

While Jassy wasn’t at the White House, I have no doubt he’s relieved someone else delivered the message. The irony is that Trump’s tariffs on China were probably going to hit Amazon harder than Walmart. Since Amazon relies much more heavily than Walmart on outside sellers who set their own prices, it’s likely that shoppers would start noticing price hikes on Amazon before seeing them on Walmart. Indeed, many Amazon sellers had already started raising prices in the weeks since “Liberation Day.” Plus, Amazon’s ad business, which brought in $56 billion last year, is made up mostly of merchants paying to boost their products in search results—the first kind of spending many sellers are going to cut when they go into survival mode. While Walmart also has a similar online ad business, it’s a much smaller percentage of overall revenue.