Author: CECILIA KANG, NICK WINGFIELD and DANIELLE IVORY / Source: New York Times
One of Amazon’s antagonists seized the moment last month with an unusual newspaper advertisement addressed to President Trump.
The ad, from a nonprofit that advocates less government, attacked a Defense Department technology contract that Amazon intends to bid on, calling it a lucrative handout for the company.A top think tank critic of Amazon’s market power also credited Mr. Trump on Twitter this month for blasting the internet retailer’s relationship with the United States Postal Service. And the head of a leading labor union said more Americans in both parties should speak out, as Mr. Trump has, about Amazon’s harmful effect on jobs.
As Mr. Trump has become Amazon’s basher in chief with his frequent Twitter attacks on the company and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, the president has also become an unlikely ally for an array of Amazon critics. Most of them — from think tanks to advocates for local businesses — have struggled for years to build any momentum for their arguments, since Washington officials mostly held Amazon up as a beacon of innovation and shoppers saw little to dislike in its prices, selection and convenience.
Now “what Trump is essentially doing is telling the political ecosystem: Here is how you achieve your business ends,” said Blair Levin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former chief of staff for the Federal Communications Commission.
“He is signaling: If you want to go after Amazon, go ahead. Load up your guns.”But while Amazon’s opponents now have the country’s most powerful bullhorn on their side, they aren’t entirely comfortable with the association.
Some are concerned about the president’s motivations for his attacks, which people close to Mr. Trump have said are often triggered by negative coverage of his administration in The Washington Post, a newspaper owned personally by Mr. Bezos. Mr. Trump has mingled his attacks on Amazon and the newspaper in some tweets, including
Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, a think tank that has become a vocal critic of the power of tech companies, said he believed Amazon was worthy of action by regulators in part because of its power in the book market. But he also said he found Mr. Trump’s efforts to “personalize law enforcement” troubling.
“What he’s doing is a threat to democracy, but so is Amazon,” Mr. Stoller said. “That’s the dilemma.”
Still, early this month, after Mr. Trump launched another Twitter tirade against…
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