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BUSINESS Monday 9 april 2018
A25

Amazon ignores Trump's attacks as it molds a business empire

By RICHARD LARDNER to influence the lawmak- The company declined to
WASHINGTON (AP) — On- ers and federal regulators comment on Trump's re-
line retail giant Amazon is who can help determine its marks or its lobbying opera-
ignoring Donald Trump's success. The outside roster tions.
barrage of taunts and includes a retired congress- Amazon has grown rapidly
threats, focusing instead man from Washington state since it launched in 1995 as
on expanding its reach into who was a senior member a site that sold books. It has
a swath of industries that of the powerful House Ap- changed the way people
the president's broadsides propriations Committee buy paper towels, diapers
haven't come close to hit- when he stepped down. or just about anything else.
ting. "Amazon is just not on an And its ambitions go far be-
Trump has hurled one even playing field," Trump yond online shopping: its
charge after another at told reporters Thursday Alexa voice assistant is in
the company over the last aboard Air Force One. tablets, cars and its Echo
week. He's assailed Ama- "They have a tremendous devices; it runs the Whole In this Dec. 5, 2017, file photo, an Amazon fulfillment center is
zon's contract with the U.S. lobbying effort, in addition Foods grocery chain; the shown in a commercial development near Interstate-15 and
Postal Service as a "scam," to having The Washington company produces movies Tropical Parkway in North Las Vegas. Amazon is planning to
accused the company of Post, which is as far as I'm and TV shows and it designs build another warehouse distribution center in the Las Vegas
not paying enough taxes, concerned another lob- its own brands of furniture area. Associated Press
and declared that its large byist. But they have a big and clothing.
lobbying operation gives lobbying effort, one of the The company is in the midst Rean Cloud LLC, in Febru- is engaged on a wide va-
it an unfair advantage. biggest, frankly, one of the of launching an indepen- ary scored what appeared riety of other issues, from
Much of this isn't new for biggest." dent business with JPMor- to be a lucrative cloud trade to transportation to
Trump, who suggested dur- Overall, Amazon spent gan Chase and Berkshire computing contract from telecommunications. The
ing the presidential cam- $15.6 million on lobbying in Hathaway that is seek- the Pentagon. But the con- company also lobbied law-
paign that Amazon could 2017. That's less than Boe- ing to lower health care tract, initially projected to makers and federal agen-
face antitrust scrutiny if he ing, Comcast and AT&T costs for employees at the be worth as much as $950 cies on the testing and op-
were elected. spent during the same pe- three companies. Given million, was scaled back to eration of unmanned aerial
Trump's attacks have tar- riod, according to the po- the three players' outsize $65 million after Amazon’s vehicles. Amazon has been
geted what Amazon is best litical money website Open influence the alliance has competitors complained exploring the use of drones
known for: rapidly shipping Secrets. the potential to shake up about the award. for deliveries, but current
just about any product you Amazon does not own the how Americans shop for Lobbying disclosure re- federal rules restrict flying
can imagine to your door. Post. Bezos does. He and health care and the initia- cords filed with the House beyond the operator’s line
But the company CEO the newspaper have previ- tive sent a shudder through and Senate show Amazon of sight.q
Jeff Bezos founded more ously declared that Bezos the industry when it was an-
than two decades ago is isn't involved in any jour- nounced in January.
now a sprawling empire nalistic decisions. Trump's Amazon Web Services is
that sells groceries in brick- charge that Amazon pays angling for a much larger
and-mortar stores, hosts "little or no taxes" may have share of the federal gov-
the online services of other merit. Matthew Gardner, ernment's market for cloud
companies and federal of- a senior fellow at the left- computing, which allows
fices in a network of data leaning Institute on Taxa- massive amounts of data
centers, and even recently tion and Economic Policy, to be stored and managed
branched into health care. said in February that Ama- on remote servers. The CIA
Amazon relies on a nearly zon "has built its business signed a $600 million deal
30-member in-house lobby- model on tax avoidance." with Amazon in 2013 to
ing team that's four times as Amazon reported $5.6 bil- build a system to share se-
large as it was three years lion of U.S. profits in 2017 cure data across the U.S.
ago as well as outside firms "and didn't pay a dime of intelligence community.
federal income taxes on it," A partner of Amazon Web
according to Gardner. Services, the Virginia-based