Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Warns Consumers Could End Up Footing the Bill Over Tariffs | Video

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy released his annual letter to shareholders on Thursday and quickly followed it up with an appearance on CNBC where he discussed the impact that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could have on American consumers.

While speaking with “Squawk Box” co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin, the executive predicted that third party sellers might end up increasing their prices due to the tariffs — but reiterated multiple times that Amazon is going to try to keep prices low.

“It’s hard to know what’s going to happen, there’s a lot in flux right now. We spend all our cycles trying to figure out how to have the right customer experience, so we know customers care a ton about selection. We’re going to try and do everything we can to keep prices as low as possible for customers and we’ll shift things as quickly as possible,” Jassy said. “We’ve done some strategic forward inventory buys, to get as many items as makes sense for customers at lower prices. There are some cases where we have deals that were negotiated that weren’t done where we’ll renegotiate terms to make it easier for customers to have lower prices.”

“We’ll have to see how it all plays out, but if you made me guess, I’m guessing that sellers will pass that cost on,” he admitted. “Depending on which country you’re in, you don’t have 50% extra margin that you can play with, so I think they’ll try and pass the cost on. It’s so early right now, but we haven’t seen any change in consumer behavior.”

With that said, Jassy also noted that his customers haven’t really slowed down on their purchases in response to the tariffs just yet.

“It is such little data at this point since the first set of tariffs came out and yesterday there was a pause. But we have seen… people have not stopped buying and certain categories we do see a little bit of people buying ahead,” he said. “It’s hard to know if it’s an anomaly in the data, cause just a few days or how long it’s going to last. But we’re going to do everything we possibly can to keep prices low for customers.”

As for the rest of Amazon’s businesses, the CEO said he doesn’t foresee the company slowing down either.

“Every finished good that has any degree of complexity in it has parts from all over the world, and that’s been true for a while. In our AWS business, really starting about five years ago, we very significantly diversified our supply chain, so we have components that are from everywhere, it’s not just one country,” Jassy explained. “But we have such high demand right now for AWS and AI growth is so significant, that we don’t see any attenuation in demand and we’re going to keep building.”

The post Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Warns Consumers Could End Up Footing the Bill Over Tariffs | Video appeared first on TheWrap.