President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office started with what seemed to be a fresh, fast-escalating spat between the White House and Amazon over tariffs.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, came out swinging in her press briefing Tuesday morning, accusing Amazon of being “hostile and political” after a report — disputed by the company — from Punchbowl News saying that the online retail giant would start displaying the exact cost of tariff-related price increases alongside all its products.

Displaying the import fees would have made clear to American consumers that they were shouldering the costs of Trump’s tariff policies rather than China, as he and his top officials have often claimed would be the case.

Bezos ‘is very nice’

After the report was published, Trump spoke about it over the phone with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, according to three people familiar with the exchange. Amazon spokespeople hurriedly issued denials that the policy was going into effect, and by Tuesday afternoon, Trump was back to praising Bezos.

“Jeff Bezos is very nice,” Trump said to reporters as he embarked on a trip to Michigan for a rally commemorating the first 100 days of his second term. “He solved the problem very quickly. He did the right thing. Good guy.”

This arc between Trump and Bezos that played out over just a few hours seemed telling. The Amazon mogul is among the billionaires who have gone to ever new lengths to get in good with this White House. Trump, in turn, has managed to woo such billionaires by promising he would be better for business. And yet, at the first sign that Bezos might be prioritizing his businesses interests in a way that would harm Trump’s political fortunes, the White House did not hesitate to lash out publicly.

And it seemed to have had the desired effect.

Leavitt had ripped into Amazon on Tuesday morning while standing beside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. She said that she had just been talking on the phone with the president about the Punchbowl report, and she also asked aloud in her briefing why Amazon had not done such a thing when prices increased during the Biden administration because of inflation.

Behind the report

Afterward, an Amazon spokesperson said the company had considered an idea similar to the one in the Punchbowl report, but only on a new, experimental part of its site, Amazon Haul, which competes with Temu, a Chinese retailer. Temu primarily ships directly to consumers and has begun displaying “import charges” to reflect the end of a customs loophole that had exempted low-priced items from tariffs.

“Teams discuss ideas all the time,” the spokesperson, Ty Rogers, said in a statement. He said the concept was never under consideration for the main Amazon site.

De minimis tariff loophole

The loophole that Temu is reflecting has allowed American shoppers to buy lots of cheap goods from mainland China and Hong Kong without paying tariffs — and businesses filling customs forms — is closing Friday.

Since 2016, items worth $800 or less could be imported into the United States without the recipient paying tariffs or even filing the paperwork typically associated with purchases of foreign goods. The loophole is known as the de minimis exemption. Trump is eliminating the exemption only for goods from mainland China, the largest source of de minimis shipments, and Hong Kong.

And prices have already gone up.