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For one exhilarating moment, it sounded like Amazon was about to make a gutsy pro-consumer move. On Tuesday, Punchbowl News reported that the company would soon show how much Trumps tariffs are adding to the price of each product by specifying it right next to the products total listed price. That act of transparency would have been reminiscent of past precedent-shattering Amazon initiatives such as its 1995 introduction of user-written reviewsincluding ones so stinging as to drive customers away from a product. And then Trump 2.0 reality set in. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked the idea of tariff disclosure as hostile and political, another confirmation that Trumps oft-expressed contention that American consumers wouldnt bear the cost of higher tariffs never jibed with basic economics. An Amazon spokesperson claimed the notion had been under consideration only for the companys Temu-like Amazon Haul bargain store and was not going to happen. Trump himself chimed in to say he had called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing. To be fair, its unlikely that Amazon could have introduced anything like a universal tariff line item for the 600 million-plus products in its online store. It only designs a few devices itself, giving it the requisite intimate knowledge of their supply chain. Mostly, the company is a reseller, and more than half of the transactions on its site are third-party sales it facilitates for other merchants. It surely doesnt know how much tariffs added to the cost of every random HDTV it sellsand if it did, presidential whim might change the math from day to day. Still, even if Amazon breaking out tariffs at the point of purchase turned out to be a fleeting fantasy, it was an instructive mental exercisemaybe even a powerful idea thats tough to unimagine once youve thought about it. Why should anyone care about the percentage of an items price represented by tariffsa form of taxation most of us have cheerfully ignored until recently, even though it has a 236-year history in the U.S.? First of all, a reliable accounting would counter misinformation spread by the president. Hes backpedaled some on his past stance that tariffs only burden manufacturers in other countries. However, absent dramatic developments such as iPhones suddenly going for $2,000, it may be tough to tell exactly what his increases are doing to our purchasing power. Explaining it on an item-by-item basis would help. But the impact of tariffs on my own wallet is just one reason why I crave hard facts. Trumps interpretation of global tradethat China is ripping off the U.S. because we buy more stuff from it than it buys from usis plainly ridiculous. His attempt to use tariffs to spark a renaissance in American manufacturing is already backfiring, given that factories here need parts produced elsewhere, and other countries are retaliating with stiffer tariffs on U.S. products. (Fun fact: A Corning plant in Harrrodsburg, Kentucky, exports the Gorilla Glass pervasive in phones and other devices.) All of this, I already know. Yet except for a few high-profile items like the iPhonewhose production Apple may ramp up in India to avoid tariffs on Chinese importsI dont claim to understand much about the endlessly complex tales behind the products I buy. The tariff backstory for individual purchases were considering making is arguably a more valuable data point than a superficial, potentially misleading Made in the U.S.A. or Made in China label. It would be a visceral reminder of how fundamentally connected the world economy is. Globalists and isolationists alike would get something out of it. Its not just tariffs. The more I ponder the situation, the less informed I feel as a consumer. I tend to take the Nutrition Facts information box on packaged foods for granted and rarely dig any deeper than the figures on calories and fat. But its hard to imagine life without that box. When I refreshed my memory about its history, I was startled to learn it came into existence only a little over 30 years ago, mandated by a 1990 bill signed by President George H. W. Bush. Before that, food makers got to choose what they disclosedor didntabout the products they sold. An equivalent box for other goods would make us all smarter. Theres plenty of fodder beyond tariffs: other taxes, product recalls, warranty information, carbon footprint, and on and on. In the unlikely event that a Nutrition Facts for Everything bill passes Trumps desk, hes not ging to sign it, so Im filing the idea away for future reference. In the meantime, I hope there are merchants out there willing to post tariff numbers, at least for certain products. Countless companies have spent this entire century trying to keep up with Amazon, often by copying its innovations. Heres a rare chance for them to gain an edge on the e-commerce behemoth by going where it wont. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Why online shopping feels like a chore in 2025A new Criteo study finds that most shoppers now view online shopping as functional, overwhelming, and even lonelysparking a renewed interest in in-store retail and personalized digital experiences. Read More Duolingo doubles its language offerings with AI-built coursesThe edtech giant launched 148 new classes developed by generative AI as it phases out contract roles and accelerates course creation. Read More This new app helps chronic latecomers stay on timeLately sends timed alerts, tracks progress, and gamifies punctuality to help users overcome time blindness and improve daily time management. Read More The NFT market fell apart. Brands are still paying the priceOnce a marketing gold rush, Web3 bets by brands like Nike and DraftKings are now ending in courtroom battlesand collapsing consumer trust. Read More Skype saved me in a war zone. Now it’s going awayMicrosoft is shutting down the app that helped me call home from Ukraine during a Russian invasion. Read More How to find and cancel forgotten online subscriptions that are costing you a fortuneYou can save a lot by ditching online subscription services such as apps and video, music, and news sites. Here’s how to do itfast. Read More
Category:
E-Commerce
Donald Trump had a message for Americas children this week: Two dolls is plenty. Somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are gonna be open,’ the president said while discussing his 145% tariffs on China. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.” Trumps new message of austerity oddly echoes Jimmy Carters era-defining “Crisis of Confidence” speech from 1979. Its a far cry, though, from the gilded lifestyle Trump is famous for and the promises he made on the campaign trail. Vote Trump and your incomes will soar, he told a crowd in Pennsylvania last September, without explaining just how hed make that happen. Your net worth will skyrocket. Your energy costs and grocery prices will come tumbling down. Still reeling from the persistent sting of inflation, a slim majority of voters proved amenable to Trumps message of imminent relief. According to a Gallup poll from October, 52% of voters said the economy would be extremely important to their presidential votethe highest number since the Great Recession election in 2008. After the election, two-thirds of voters described the economy as not good in exit polls. If Trump came into office with a mandate, as he repeatedly claims, it was a mandate to “Make Groceries Less Pricey Again.” So far, Trumps promised stratospheric incomes and subterranean grocery prices have yet to materialize. Instead, after Trumps tariffs, recession indicators are everywhere. Tariff surcharges are showing up in some receipts and websites, and pointedly not showing up in others. Meanwhile, YouTubers and TikTokers are going all in on homesteading as a way to thrive in lean times. Even some senior Trump officials are reportedly beginning to hoard groceries and supplies in advance of high prices and shortages to come. Trumps widely reported comments on frugal doll-shopping mark his starkest appraisal yet of the gale-force economic headwinds consumers are now facing. Previously, Trump had only hinted at the possibility of economic turmoil from his tariffs. Throughout his campaign, he framed tariffs as a cost-free way to stop foreign countries from taking advantage of the U.S., bring back domestic manufacturing, rid consumers of all that pesky inflation, and generally transform America into an economic Hercules. It wasnt until after the election that he refused to rule out higher prices as a result of his tariffs, and not until after hed already been re-inaugurated did he finally admit there will be some pain. For the past few months, Trump has been quiet about what that pain will actually feel like in practice. Will it be a pinprick or something closer to a shattered fibula? As recently as March, the president was assuring Americans, We’re going to become so rich, you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money. On Wednesday, however, following reports that the U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of his term, Trump finally defined the contours of hardship to come. With his statement promoting the two-doll lifestyle, Trump flatly relented that pain would take the form of higher prices, scarcity, and diminished buying power. His subdued confession sits in stark contrast to his first term in office. In 2020, when COVID hit, Trump seemed loath to ask Americans to make sacrifices. Trump left it to the states to decide whether to advise citizens to shelter in place or not. He also refused to mandate mask use, despite the advice of top immunologists. (I want people to have a certain freedom, and I dont believe in that, he said at the time.) Of course, it would be a lot easier to take at face value the president’s new embrace of American sacrifice and the two-doll lifestyle if it wasnt coming from a billionaire who thinks other billionaires deserve more billions. As the president advises parents on how to budget, his supporters in Congress are hard at work figuring out how much they can cut from Medicaid to ensure Trumps tax bill passes muster. It seems that part of the calculus guiding his tariff strategy is knowing he and his fellow billionaires will be fine no matter what.
Category:
E-Commerce
Andreessen Horowitz is done being another innocuous techie brand. Gone are the sans serif minuscules (lowercase letters) of its old a16z logo that tried to blend in, apologizing for their own presence. In their place is a flourished, Art Deco-style wordmark, alongside a giant gold coin featuring what looks like a female Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods associated with trade and wealth. The imagery, part of an ongoing rebrand that kicked off earlier this year, visualizes a marked shift at the investment firm. With cofounder Marc Andreessen’s 2023 Techno-Optimist Manifesto as its guiding ethos (“It’s time the build”), the firm has spent the past year cozying up to Donald Trump and growing its investments in companies that its sees as essential to the future of America, many of them defense tech and security startups. It’s now pairing this new perspective with visuals that seem straight from Objectivism, the 20th-century philosophy developed by author Ayn Rand. My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute,” Rand wrote in the appendix to her novel Atlas Shrugged, first published in 1957. No wonder the philosophy resonates so deeply with entrepreneurs and investors; these are creators who need to tune out the naysayers of the world in order to change it. But, of course, the flip side of Objectivism is that it prioritizes the individual at the expense of everyone else. Charting a16zs shift toward Objectivist principles For years, a16z was, like most of the Valley, liberal-leaning in both its endorsements and in its donations. More recently, though, cofounders Ben Horowitz and Andreessen have backed the Trump agenda, supporting his reelection with $5 million in donations and celebrating his ensuing win. Andreessen called the new administration a boot off the throat for him and his companies. Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, served as a keynote speaker at the firms recent American Dynamism Summit. Their reasoning has been that the country needs unbridled investment in technology above all elseand needs a federal government that will leave these companies and their founders unmolested by regulation. In a January interview with Ross Douthat of The New York Times, Andreessen described his growing frustration with the Biden administration’s regulatory approach to crypto, AI, and DEI issues. The Biden administration turned out to be far more radical than even we thought they were going to be, he said. But in Trumpwith his vocal support of crypto, AI, and military might, and his vows to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusionthe firm sees opportunity. Even, apparently, if it comes at the expense of free speech and other fundamental human rights. Where most of us might see deep moral conflicts, an Objectivist wears blinders, cropping out anything but their own vision. Perhaps that’s how Marc Andreessen can comfortably make proclamations like AI will eliminate most jobs but his own. And how Andreessen Horowitz can justify welcoming Daniel Penny to its investment team, who last made headlines when he choked to death a homeless man named Jordan Neely on a New York City subway. (Penny was acquitted on charges of criminally negligent homicide.) Another Objectivist tendency: to honor the singular visionary above all else. Perhaps that’s why were seeing a16z deliver unprecedented voting power for its own founders, like Mira Murati, who now leads AI company Thinking Machines Lab. The Strong Form of the argument, action or aesthetic is almost always better than the weak form. Yet for decades weve been told the opposite is true, argued a16z partner Katherine Boyle in a post on X earlier this year. Were entering an era where the Strong Form is now prized and on display all the time. Its going to be jarring to see this way of being in government and business but the good thing is, the strong form becomes infectious once it becomes acceptable to implement. You could almost imagine the same words on the back of a book by Ayn Rand. [Images: Nick Gatano] Why we equate Art Deco with Objectivism in the first place Rands The Fountainhead, the story of individualism triumphing over collectivism, was published in 1943, trailing the Art Deco movement by a few years. But Rand, Objectivism, and Art Deco are associated thanks to the work of illustrator Nick Gaetano. In 1981, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Rand’s second iconic Objectivist novel, Atlas Shrugged, Gaetano created new illustrated covers for 10 of Rand’s books, featuring heroic statues carved in simple, fluid lines. These guys are naked and statuesque,like Greek gods. I meant for them to be icons, he said in a 2011 interview. Ironically, Gaetano viewed The Fountainhead as anti-capitalist, and he likened the visionaries in Rands books to the writers and artists he knew, rather than captains of industry. I saw the capitalists as the enemy, he noted in that 2011 interview, adding, I see heroism as creative. I know that capitalism is their church, but I dont know what their vision of heroism is. When you get a project like this, you have to try to distill some kind of visual direction that gives meaning to the cover. Gaetano might have been only an accidental Objectivist (as Interview magazine once called him). But he nevertheless created an indelible visual link between Rands egoistic philosophy and the aerodynamic forms of Art Deco. And its that connection, it seems, that a16z picked up on. Im a fan of a lot of what a16z has helped usher into the world, from Instagram to Airbnb to Figma to Krea. But Ill never be a fan of Ayn Rand. That said, I have nothing critical to offer regarding a16zs rebranding. I think its superb in a way: A perfect manifestation of the firm’s values, and a dog whistle for the types of people its hoping to attract. This is an investment firm thats telling you exactly what it believes in: itself.
Category:
E-Commerce
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