When a company has to defend itself from its own government…
Amazon shed $5 billion on the stock exchange thanks to a tweet by US President Donald Trump, obviously not irreparable damage to a company whose value just keeps on going up: it has risen 56,524% since its stock market launch — but harm nonetheless, and all the more remarkable for the accusation being false.
The “incontinent president” accused the company of fiscal irregularities, when in fact Amazon has long paid its taxes in all the states in which it generates its sales. The accusation not only shows his recklessness and total lack of judgment, but also how ill-informed he is. Long ago, in response to increasing EU pressure, the company made the decision to adopt less aggressive fiscal optimization tactics, to report operations in each state or country and to subject them to the corresponding taxes, although the accusation of it not paying its taxes is a common trope among the ill-informed. It has to be said that an accusation against a company of avoiding taxes, from the only president who in recent decades has refused to make public his tax returns, smacks of hypocrisy.
Regarding accusations that Amazon is putting people out of work, President Trump may not have read the news recently, but Amazon has become one of the North American companies that generates more jobs, up to 50,000 in a single day, which is strange considering that it was reported even by Fox News…
What is Donald Trump’s problem with Amazon? On the one hand, his apparent disagreements with its founder, Jeff Bezos, who at one point offered him a seat in one of his rockets to send him into space, and who on the other hand, now owns The Washington Post, which unsurprisingly has taken a combative stance against Trump, totally justified. The president seems to have made Jeff Bezos the target of his senile delusions, and periodically launches attacks against him from his Twitter account.
This time, however, it is different. Although Amazon’s share price will obviously recover its losses, the president of the United States is using his Twitter account to cause damage to a US company, prompting analysts and the market to think they might expect some type of measures against Amazon. This goes well beyond the presumed role of a president who should not interfere with the operation of markets in such a specific way unless of some sort of irregularity, problem or national emergency, but it fits perfectly with his behavior so far, and that everything indicates that he intends to continue ignoring all the rules of politics and govern by tweet, as if that were somehow possible. I could not, even for a minute, imagine the president of my country using Twitter to attack one of its largest and most profitable profitable companies, and gratuitously inflicting such an economic harm.
None of this is surprising in the case of Donald Trump, admittedly. But with each passing day the White House becomes the source of greater intrigue and concern…
(En español, aquí)
