Amazon emails sellers to gauge how Trump’s tariffs impacting enterprise

Amazon is reaching out to third-party retailers, who account for almost all of merchandise the corporate sells, to gauge how President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are affecting their companies.

Members of Amazon’s vendor relations group started contacting some U.S. retailers final week, in accordance with an e-mail seen by CNBC. The e-mail asks how the “present U.S. tariff scenario” has impacted sellers’ sourcing and pricing methods, logistics operations, and plans to ship items into Amazon warehouses.

“I wished to open a dialogue in regards to the present U.S. tariff scenario and the way it’s affecting our companies on Amazon, notably by way of logistics,” the e-mail says. “As of April 2025, we’re nonetheless coping with the repercussions of varied tariff insurance policies, and I imagine it is essential for us that you simply share present experiences and techniques.”

Representatives from Amazon did not instantly reply to a request for touch upon the e-mail, which was reported earlier by The Wall Avenue Journal. Business publication Fashionable Retail coated the e-mail on Monday.

Corporations of all sizes are digesting the impression of Trump’s new tariffs. Earlier this month, the president signed an government order imposing a far-reaching plan, however inside days he reversed course and dropped country-specific tariffs right down to a common 10% price for all commerce companions besides China, which faces tariffs of 145%, together with a fentanyl-related levy imposed in February and March. Inventory and bond markets have fluctuated wildly previously two weeks.

The levies on items from China may very well be notably burdensome for the hundreds of thousands of companies that depend on Amazon’s third-party market and supply a lot of their merchandise from the world’s second-largest economic system. Third-party sellers now account for about 60% of all merchandise offered on Amazon’s web site.

Some Amazon sellers instructed CNBC they plan to carry regular on costs for so long as they’ll to stay aggressive, however that the added value of the tariffs may in the end put them out of enterprise if they continue to be in place.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy mentioned final week that some sellers might find yourself passing the price of tariffs onto customers within the type of greater costs.

“I perceive why, I imply, relying on which nation you are in, you do not have 50% additional margin that you would be able to play with,” Jassy mentioned Thursday in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.

The tariffs have affected different elements of Amazon’s retail enterprise. Final week, the corporate started to cancel some direct import orders for merchandise sourced by distributors in China, consultants instructed CNBC. Some distributors of house items and kitchen accent gadgets had merchandise prepared for pickup by Amazon at transport ports, solely to study that their orders have been canceled.

Amazon shares are down 18% up to now this yr, whereas the Nasdaq has fallen 13%.