'Revealing': Columnist says White House attack just exposed Trump's 'weakness'

President Donald Trump and his administration are sensitive to "deep vulnerabilities" on the economy — and nothing reveals that more clearly than the administration's furious response to reports Amazon will display tariff costs in consumer transactions, Greg Sargent wrote for The New Republic.

The instant the news became public, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt condemned the move as a political ploy to hurt Trump, and Trump personally called Amazon's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to scream at him. Shortly, the company appeared to back down, stating they had only proposed this for a select service and didn't plan to roll it out to all users on their general site.

"You might be tempted to see this as another sign of Trump’s fearsome strength: He merely hinted at unleashing the power of the government on Amazon, a company worth $2 trillion, and it immediately fell into line, right?" wrote Sargent. "Naah. This little saga is better seen as highly revealing of Trump’s weakness right now, both on tariffs specifically and more generally. The last thing that Trump and his propagandists can tolerate is the spectacle of voters being told basic facts about his tariffs. Which puts Trump at the mercy of those who will tell the truth about them."

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The fact is, Sargent noted, even if Amazon was cowed into not transparently breaking down the price increases due to tariffs, "people are still going to have to pay higher prices for these tariffs on an enormous range of consumer products, whether Amazon labels them as such or not. And the ability of the White House to manage this problem — either by browbeating the private sector into not raising prices, or by flooding Americans with propaganda about how 'other countries' are the ones paying the tariffs in a much-needed global rebalancing — is actually quite limited."

As a case in point, he wrote, just last month Trump threatened automakers against raising prices in response to tariffs — a move that just shows "Trump himself knows that importers and domestic manufacturers using imported parts — and not 'other countries' — are the ones who will pay the tariffs."

And automakers didn't commit to obey this at all, holding out until Trump capitulated and announced he would make some carveouts in the tariffs for them.

To that end, he said, even if Amazon isn't willing to disclose the tariff costs, other businesses can do so, and operating in numbers, Trump can do nothing to stop them.

"Slap his name right on those added costs, just as Trump put his name on those 2020 stimulus checks," said Sargent.

"Just look how infuriated Trump grew at the prospect of one company — admittedly a giant and influential one, but still — telling consumers the truth about his policies," Sargent concluded. "The wildly disproportionate response to Amazon from Trump and Leavitt wasn’t a sign of strength and power. It was a display of deep, enduring weakness, just waiting to be exploited."