The worst of the consumer impact from Trump’s tariffs is yet to come, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
“We did a lot of pre-buying in the early part of 2025 to enable us to try and keep prices as low as possible for customers,” Jassy told CNBC on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And that supply has run out in the fall.”
As a result, tariffs are starting to “creep in” to some product prices, the Amazon chief said, as sellers decide between choosing to pass on the higher costs to consumers or absorbing them to drive demand. But the list of places that are willing to absorb that impact shrinks as prices soar.
“Amazon’s consumers overall, I think, have fared well, but we’ll have to see what happens in 2026,” Jassy said. “We are going to do everything we can to work with our selling partners to make prices as low as possible for consumers, but you don’t have endless options.”
The tariffs have taken a toll on the global economy and possibly worsened an already tight American job market, as the automotive industry, gadget makers, and even libraries have spent the past year trying to contend with its repercussions.
In a report published on Monday, Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy claimed that foreign exporters only absorbed about 4% of the tariff costs, while 96% of the burden was passed on to American importers and consumers.
“Ultimately, these findings mean that US companies will be confronted with shrinking margins and consumers with higher prices in the long run. Countries that export to the US will sell less and will be under pressure to find new export markets,” the report said.
Trump also completely disrupted the global order with the tariffs by targeting long-time allies like Canada and inadvertently pushing them closer to China.
Trump’s trade war is one of the top talking points as global government and business leaders take the stage in Davos for the annual forum. Ahead of his scheduled speech on Wednesday, Trump stirred more controversy by announcing a fresh set of tariffs on European allies.
Over the weekend, Trump announced 10% tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands set to start on February 1 and rise to 25% on June 1, if fellow NATO member Denmark does not allow the U.S. to take control of Greenland.
Then on Monday, he threatened France with a 200% tariff on French wine and champagne, unless French President Emmanuel Macron joined his “board of peace,” a US-led governance structure of international leaders that Trump has put together to oversee the devastation in Gaza.
The President’s tariff approach is based on a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which grants the President powers over international commerce in the case of a national state of emergency. Many legal experts believe that Trump is misusing this power, and the Supreme Court is hearing a case on the legality of this basis.
If the court does decide that Trump overstepped his authority, not only could Trump’s numerous tariffs be lifted, but the administration might have to issue refunds to the companies that paid the price.
A decision could take weeks or even months. The Supreme Court issued several decisions on Tuesday morning, but the tariff decision was not one of them. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier that a decision against the tariffs was “very unlikely,” in a conversation with Fox News in Davos. The Supreme Court is currently dominated by conservative justices, but the court appeared skeptical of the tariffs in a hearing in November.
Even if a decision is made against the tariffs, it’s unlikely that Trump’s stance will change.
Trump’s trade representative Jamieson Greer told the New York Times in an interview last week that Trump would just use other legislation to impose tariffs if his reliance on IEEPA is shut down by the Supreme Court, such as Section 301, which he already utilized in his first administration.
“The reality is the president is going to have tariffs as part of his trade policy going forward,” Greer told the New York Times.
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