Amazon stock falls after new round of Trump rants

Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc. fell on April 2 after a fresh round of critical comments from President Donald Trump and a Republican senator.
In his latest Twitter rant, Trump said “Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country….not a level playing field.”
Trump has been unrelenting in his criticism of Amazon in the past several days, on subjects from the Postal Service to taxes and retailing. In a pair of Twitter messages Saturday, Trump said Amazon “must pay real costs (and taxes) now!”
The president also claimed, citing reports he didn’t specify, that the US Postal Service “will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon” and added that the “Post Office scam must stop.” Amazon has said the postal service, which has financial problems stretching back for years, makes money from its packages because the company does most of the processing itself.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida jumped in with his own tweet on Monday morning, saying Amazon has brought Americans lower prices but could hurt competition in the long term. “Potential ‘new economy’ monopolies will require close monitoring,” Rubio said.
Amazon shares fell 3.9 percent to $1,390.90 in New York. The S&P 500 Index was down about 0.6 percent.
Amazon shed $53 billion in market value after Axios reported that the president is “obsessed” with regulating the e-commerce giant, whose founder and chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post newspaper.
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said that while the president was displeased with the e-commerce giant, and particularly instances where third-party sellers on the site didn’t collect sales tax, there were no administrative actions planned against Amazon “at this time.”
Still, Brad Parscale, who’s managing Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, hinted in a tweet late Thursday that the administration may act to raise Amazon’s postal costs, which are negotiated with the Postal Service. “Once the market figures out that a single @usps rule change will crush @amazon’s bottom line we will see,” Parscale wrote.
Amazon.com and the Washington Post have been regular punching bags for Trump. In July, the president mused about whether the newspaper was “being used as a lobbyist weapon” to keep Congress from looking into Amazon’s business practices.