What could Trump's second term mean for Amazon?

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, Seattle’s largest employer has a lot on the line.

Even though Amazon, like other retailers, is likely to face higher costs if Trump follows through on campaign promises to raise tariffs, the tech and e-commerce giant is still set to benefit from an administration billing itself as pro-business and antiregulation.

Trump is largely expected to leave tech companies alone, rather than putting up guardrails around their advancements, including in artificial intelligence. The new administration could also scrap a sprawling antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of acting as a monopoly in the e-commerce industry. And, it will likely set up a National Labor Relations Board that is less sympathetic to unions than the current one appointed by President Joe Biden, which could affect an ongoing wave of unionization efforts at Amazon’s warehouses.

Amazon’s experience during Trump’s first term was largely marked by a feud between the president and Amazon’s founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos. It’s unclear if Trump will take a similar combative stance this time around. But, if not, Amazon, similar to other tech companies, may be set to reap the benefits.

“All roads are leading to Amazon. The mighty gets mightier in this administration,” said Sucharita Kodali, an analyst with research company Forrester who follows Amazon. “It seems like this is the time for the Amazon people to do a dance. I don’t see anything about the new administration that is going to hurt them.”

Amazon declined to comment for this story.

Shortly after the election results, CEO Andy Jassy congratulated Trump on X, writing “We look forward to working with you and your administration on issues important to our customers, employees, communities and country.”

Less regulation

Biden’s appointed Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan made a name for herself as an Amazon critic, starting in 2017 when she published an academic paper titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.”

As head of the regulatory agency, Khan ushered in an era of blocking mergers, filing antitrust lawsuits and promoting worker-friendly rules. Trump’s FTC is likely to take a different approach that pushes for less regulation and more business-friendly policies.

“Lina Khan was really about tackling Big Tech,” said Kodali, from Forrester. Trump has tech mogul Elon Musk in his ear, so “he’s likely to leave Big Tech alone.”

Following an investigation that started under the first Trump administration, the FTC sued Amazon in September 2023. It accused the company of promoting its own brands over competitors, preventing third-party sellers from setting discounted prices and forcing merchants to pay steep fees to Amazon itself. All of that, the FTC alleged, increased prices for consumers.

Amazon has denied the allegations, arguing that the FTC has targeted practices that are common in the retail industry and help spur innovation. The company lost its bid to drop the suit; a federal district judge ruled in October that the FTC had adequately alleged Amazon’s business practices could be anticompetitive.

The case is set to go to trial in October 2026, but the FTC could vote to end the case before then, said John Kirkwood, a law professor at Seattle University.

“There is a serious possibility that the FTC could cut back or even withdraw its complaint against Amazon,” he said. “It could be withdrawn almost instantaneously.”

That happened before, Kirkwood said. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Republican-led FTC dropped a case against IBM that had been in the works for years and accused the company of acting as a monopoly.

Big Tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft may also benefit from a regulatory environment that is more friendly to acquisitions and mergers, after Khan’s FTC largely blocked that type of consolidation.

The new administration could also change the future of noncompete agreements, which prevent employees from going to work for a competitor for a period of time. Proponents of the agreements, including Big Tech companies, say they help protect intellectual property, while critics say they prevent workers from seeking higher wages.

The FTC voted to ban noncompete agreements this year, but that rule is now stuck in legal limbo after a federal judge in Texas blocked the regulation and ruled the FTC had “exceeded” its authority. Now, the future of that rule is up to the courts, Kirkwood said.

AI and AWS

Like many tech companies, Amazon is betting artificial intelligence has the power to be “transformative” and is pouring resources into furthering its advancement, from investing in AI startups and building its own AI chips to introducing new AI features to help Amazon shoppers and office workers.

At the federal level, when it comes to AI, the “best thing that can happen, is nothing happens,” said Kodali.

The Trump administration could usher in an era of unrestricted innovation, rather than imposing guardrails on the companies designing new AI tools.

Trump issued an executive order with standards for developing AI at the end of his first term in 2020. Biden issued an executive order last year that set standards for AI safety and security and advised companies to protect consumer privacy and make sure the technology is equitable.

It’s unclear what Trump will do when it comes to AI, but after running a campaign that promised to cut back regulation, many expect he will scale back Biden’s executive order.

Trump “wants the U.S. to be a leader in AI,” said Jake Dollarhide, an analyst and co-founder of wealth management company Longbow Asset Management. “And he wants to make sure all steps are taken to give Big Tech companies, including Amazon, the opportunity to fulfill their goals … for global AI dominance.

“They just need the government to get out of the way.”

Amazon’s general counsel and senior vice president for global public policy David Zapolsky wrote in a July op-ed that, after working with the Biden administration on voluntary commitments to promote the safe development of AI, “it’s now very clear we can have rules that protect against risks, while also ensuring we don’t hinder innovation.”

In Trump’s first administration, Amazon accused the president of cutting its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, out of lucrative government deals because Trump didn’t like Bezos.

Bezos has since stepped down as CEO, though he still serves as executive chairman, and appears to have changed his stance toward the president-elect, which could help secure contracts for AWS and Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin, which is based in Kent.

In a congratulatory post on X after the election, Bezos wrote that “No nation has bigger opportunities.”

Contending with tariffs

Once he takes office, Trump wants to raise taxes on international goods coming to the U.S. to spur American manufacturing. He’s considered a 20% tariff on all international goods and a 60% tariff on products from China.

That’s likely to lead to higher prices for consumers, as U.S.-based companies that rely on international goods have to pay the extra cost, according to the National Retail Federation. It estimated in a November study that Trump’s tariffs could cost American consumers as much as $78 billion. A $40 toaster would increase to $48, a $50 pair of athletic shoes would jump to $59.

For Amazon and its third-party merchants, who account for roughly 60% of Amazon’s sales, the impact of tariffs isn’t so cut and dry.

“There’s so many ways it could go. … There’s winners and losers everywhere,” said Lesley Hensell, the co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, which helps independent sellers navigate Amazon’s rules.

The winners? Amazon sellers who manufacture products in the U.S., as well as sellers who are struggling to compete with China-based manufacturers that can sell goods at ultralow prices on other marketplaces, like Temu and Shein. Amazon recently launched its own low-cost storefront, Amazon Haul, to compete with those e-commerce platforms.

Tariffs would “really hurt” Temu, Shein and Amazon Haul, Hensell said. “Frankly, U.S. sellers will be thrilled if all three of those get demolished, no matter how it happens.”

The losers? Amazon sellers who rely on China-based manufacturers that will either have to raise prices to cover the cost of additional tariffs or scramble to find new manufacturing.

It’s not a guarantee those sellers would turn toward U.S. manufacturers without any incentives in place to do so because it can be more expensive than manufacturing abroad, said Carolyn Lowe, CEO and founder of ROI Swift, another consulting firm that helps Amazon’s third-party merchants.

“I think the biggest thing is it’s going to be disruptive as folks all of a sudden have to find new manufacturers,” said Lowe. “The easiest thing to do is just raise your price.”

Amazon itself will also face tariffs, especially on its private-label brand Amazon Basics, which offers low-cost essentials that are largely made overseas, Lowe said. But, the company may not have to pass the cost of those tariffs on to consumers in the same way independent merchants would because it has other revenue streams, like advertising.

There’s also some skepticism about what Trump could actually put in place, despite his campaign promises.

“He talked a big game with tariffs in his first administration, and he only ultimately put them on a handful of goods,” said Kodali, from Forrester. Biden then kept some of those tariffs in place.

Dollarhide, from Longbow Asset Management, saw a silver lining: The tariffs could increase business for U.S.-based companies that make their own AI chips, like Amazon.

“Tariffs, indirectly, could be a boon to some of Big Tech,” he said.

The NLRB and unionization

Under the Biden administration, Amazon has faced an NLRB that is sympathetic to workers and critical of Amazon, its involvement in union elections and its CEO.

That could change under Trump, who, in his first term, built an NLRB that was friendly to employers, over unions. During his campaign, Trump even suggested that striking workers should be fired, despite that being against labor law.

“This result is a blow for every worker who depends on our elected leaders to fight for our jobs, our unions and our contracts,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a coalition of 60 labor unions that represents more than 12 million workers, said in a statement after the election.

“No one — not Donald Trump or (Vice President-elect) JD Vance, nor any one CEO — can stop solidarity,” she continued. “Organized labor is the path forward.”

Amazon has seen a growing wave of unionization efforts at its warehouses as workers have fought for protections against injury, COVID-19 precautions and more lax rules around paid time off and breaks.

Under Biden’s worker-friendly NLRB, Amazon employees have successfully fought what they say was Amazon’s interference with union elections. This month, the agency ordered Amazon to hold a third union election at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., after a judge determined that the company violated labor law.

The NLRB also closed the door on Amazon’s attempt to overturn the results of the successful union drive in Staten Island, N.Y., by denying the company’s objections to the outcome. A federal judge also ruled earlier this year that Amazon CEO Jassy violated labor law in 2022 when he said workers would be better off without a union.

This month, the NLRB made a precedent-setting ruling stemming from a case involving the union campaign at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse. The agency determined that mandatory “captive audience” meetings, in which companies argue against unionization, are illegal.

In response to those legal battles, Amazon has challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB, following a playbook similar to that of Musk’s SpaceX and Trader Joe’s.

Trump will have the chance to choose a new general counsel to lead one side of the bifurcated agency, as well as fill some of the board positions that make up the other side of the NLRB. The board currently has four members, three of which are Democrats.

President Biden broke with tradition when he took office in 2021 by firing Trump-appointed General Counsel Peter Robb in January, though his term was set to last through that November.

Warehouse safety

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened more than a dozen inspections at Amazon warehouses around the country during the Biden administration. In several citations, it accused the company of exposing workers to ergonomic hazards that put them at a high risk of injury.

If Trump follows the same path he did during his first administration, that trend is likely to change.

In the first three years of Trump’s first presidency, the number of enforcement activities and inspectors at OSHA steadily declined, according to a 2019 study from the worker advocacy group National Employment Law Project.

In that period, the study found, OSHA severely cut down on inspections related to musculoskeletal disorders, or MSDs, a type of injury caused by repetitive motions.

Amazon has come under scrutiny at the state and federal level for putting workers at risk of MSDs, though the company has seen injury rates decline in the last two years.

Washington state has recently enacted new laws meant to lower injury rates, by requiring employers to tell workers productivity expectations and expanding the state’s authority to set new rules for industries that consistently see a high rate of injury.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, and Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, who are both still in office, introduced the Warehouse Worker Protection Act to put additional safeguards in place at the federal level, but the bill did not move further in the Senate last year. Business groups pushed back on the legislation, arguing it would make it harder for businesses to operate and deny employers due process rights.

The incoming administration may also change the fate of a newly introduced OSHA rule that would require employers to put new safeguards in place to protect workers from heat-related hazards.