Amazon News: TikTok Takeover, Tariff Chaos & Seller Margin Squeeze

Amazon News: TikTok Takeover, Tariff Chaos & Seller Margin Squeeze Unknown Speaker: Welcome, fellow entrepreneurs, to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 1: All right. There we go. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Amazon Seller News Live. Got Danan with me today. So Danan, I appreciate you joining me. Speaker 2: Always. Speaker 1: And we've had a lot of news the last couple of days. Obviously, a lot of it related to Donald Trump's tariffs and the effects that's going to have. Definitely going to be talking a lot about that today, but also talking about some TikTok news because that deadline, the new deadline is tomorrow as of the live. So April 5th when the new buyer is supposed to be revealed for that. So we'll see what happens there. The Diminish Rule actually is going into effect now finally as well along with the tariff increases. And then some interesting news about price raises from Amazon sellers as well. I appreciate everybody out there joining us. I already see a comment from Rudy. Hello, Rudy. Nice to see you. I appreciate you joining us. If you're out there watching during the show, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, opinions, throw them in the comments. We'll bring them into the show and talk about them or whatever the case may be. But without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the news here. Let me move over to the share. So Amazon makes a surprise bid for TikTok amid looming U.S. ban. Amazon and Applovin have reportedly submitted last-minute bids to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations as the app faces an April 5th deadline to sever ties with its Chinese parent company. The move comes amid national security concerns and legislative pressure to sell or face a nationwide ban. Amazon's interest is especially notable for Amazon sellers as TikTok has become a key source of influencer-driven sales and product discovery that often drives traffic to Amazon listings. If Amazon succeeds in acquiring TikTok, it could create powerful new advertising and conversion tools directly tied to product listings on the platform. So before we jumped on, we were talking about who all is in the bidding for this. And so I used a little AI power from Grok here to find out who the known bidders are. And we've got a total of 13 actually. So we've got Jesse Tinsel from employer.com who supposedly has bid up to 47.5 billion. Project Liberty, which is includes Mr. Wonderful, has supposedly bid $20 billion. And then unknown bids, we've got Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Andrecene, Horowitz, Blackstone, Elon Musk, Steven Mnuchin, Applovin, Perplexity AI, Tim Stokely from Zoop, and Bobby Kochik. A good number of people that are in the running to potentially buy TikTok. What are your thoughts, Danan? Speaker 2: I want to know what the rest of them bid. I did a little bit of AI snooping myself while you were looking this up. It's super hard to, I think it's hard to figure out what exactly is going on here. We're only getting little bits and pieces of data because according to what I found, it's worth somewhere between $84 billion and $300 billion. So, you know, that's like... Speaker 1: Yeah, I would definitely argue towards $300 billion. Speaker 2: Yeah, you think so? Speaker 1: With the traffic and the, the opportunity they have with e-commerce, I think so for sure. Speaker 2: Yeah. And, and so, but, but we're not talking about like $84 and $300, you know, the spread between 84 billion and 300 billion is greater than most countries. GMV, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: So, um, I, I'm, I'm, I hope that one of the bidders gets it and everything works out because the craze, not the craze, but TikTok shop reminds me of the 2014-15 Amazon gold rush, except The path to revenue is even faster, it feels like. Now, I haven't personally implemented TikTok shop, but I was just at Prosper and I was talking to my friend, Michelle Barnum Smith, who, if anyone doesn't know who Michelle Barnum Smith is, you need to find her and talk to her about TikTok, because if I'm not mistaken, TikTok has her teach agencies how to sell on TikTok. So, but she's not part of TikTok. So, um, she's, she's, she's absolutely brilliant. Um, the, the value of that, the ability to leverage influencers, man, I just, I don't know if this is a flash in the pan or not because All brands are leveraging influencers now, and I feel like we've shifted from using, like doing super professionally shot commercials and segwayed over to influencers because it's a more real review of the product, except it's not anymore. And so I feel like these shoppers are going to catch on to the fact that this is just a bunch of junk. And I'll give you an example of that, of the first time that happened for me is there's a desk, a sit-stand desk from a company called Secret Lab, right? And it's the greatest desks and slice desks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I couldn't find a single, not a single one video that wasn't obviously an influencer video where they got this desk for free. Because all I was trying to determine was when the desk is up, how much wobble is there? Until I found a competitor that does builds desks, did a side-by-side comparison, I was like, oh my God, I nearly dropped almost two grand on this desk. And based on that one video went, no, that's not what I want because I have to have cameras and stuff attached to it. So TikTok shops great. But I just wonder if it truly is worth that amount of money from a TikTok shop perspective. But no question about it, probably right now it is. Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say just by the number of eyeballs they have on the platform, it's worth a lot more than what they're saying they're bidding. Now, these are just public numbers that they're putting out there, so I'm sure there's a lot behind the scenes that's happening. Speaker 2: Maybe that's the down payment. Speaker 1: I haven't really sold on TikTok. I know people who have and talk very highly of it and the effects that it has. It's harder Well, it's different than Amazon because it heavily relies on the influencers. So it's very hit or miss depending on the virality that you can get on those videos and stuff that you're doing. But, you know, I always say that I want more competition for Amazon. More competition is good. So one thing I would definitely say, I don't want Amazon to win a bid for TikTok. Because that eliminates that competition. I don't know that Amazon would do very good at running a social media platform. They've tried to create it in-house and it's been really bad. Speaker 2: I was just going to say that. Yeah. Speaker 1: I don't really want them to take it and ruin it. I'd prefer some other third party that's going to keep it going like it is and improve it and build that platform. Speaker 2: Who was it that bought that? Who was it that bought Jet.com? Was that Walmart? Speaker 1: Walmart, yeah. Yeah, they destroyed it. Speaker 2: Absolutely destroyed it. And I'll bet you're absolutely right. Amazon would do precisely the same thing. Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, so somebody else who is able to keep improving it would be better. My preference is the group that Mr. Wonderful is a part of, which is, what are they called? They're called the Project Liberty. They're a consortium of different individuals that are raising money. I don't know how likely they are. Grok thinks that they're like the second most likely after Jesse Tinsel from employer.com. But we'll see what happens. My question, though, with the e-commerce side of TikTok is how well it will do at scale. Right now, it's relatively small compared to Amazon, right? I don't know how well it scales when all of a sudden you've got, you know, 3 million, 5 million, 10 million sellers on TikTok all trying to create videos and stuff, flooding the platform. You're only going to be able to get so many viral videos, right? So, it's going to be difficult to scale that, I think. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I'm just going to find out from, I'm asking Gemini to give me some, uh, some stats about TikTok shops. So gross merchandise value, according to it, it has reached 33 billion in 2024, which is more than double. So the year in 2023, they were 11.09, 11 billion. So they've seen Double, triple, they've tripled in size. Speaker 1: Okay. So those bids make sense with that value or what they've sold. That's what they sold last year, you said? Is that just TikTok Shop or is that advertising and everything? Speaker 2: Well, it's TikTok Shop's global GMV, their gross merchandise value. To be totally honest, I actually don't know. Yeah. Yeah, that's global. And I don't know all of the metrics that are included in GMB. I should actually define that for myself because I don't know. Is that the value of merchandise sold or is that the value that they acquire based on the merchandise sold? I mean, it's gross. So it's obviously it's not net. Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see how much TikTok shop actually sold in 2024. Yeah, because that will give us an idea. So yeah, so that is TikTok shop is $33.2 billion. Yeah, in 2024 gross merchandise value. So that's gonna be the sales price is what I'm thinking on that. Speaker 2: 9 billion in the US. According to this. Yeah. Speaker 1: So, I mean, that, that makes those bids a little more in line, right? With, uh, a multiple of sales. Cause, uh, you know, 47 billion, 30 billion, 20 billion. That's not necessarily taking into account the eyeballs that you have for advertising and stuff like that. Uh, but the income that they're making from TikTok shop, it would take that into account. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: It's going to be interesting tomorrow. The prediction I didn't say from Grok is that most likely outcome tomorrow is the announcement of a deal with a credible buyer such as Oracle or a consortium, which would be like the Liberty Project. Enabling TikTok to remain operational in the U.S., at least temporarily. This scenario fits the urgency of the deadline, Trump's stated intentions, and the administration's effort to broker an agreement. If a deal isn't fully ready, a close second possibility is a deadline extension, but given the stakes and momentum, a deal announcement appears more probable. So that is utilizing all the worldly power of Grok servers to come up with that prediction. So we'll see how accurate that is. Speaker 2: My prediction, ridiculous prediction, is that Truth Social is going to swoop in and put a bid in and then acquire TikTok. Speaker 1: That would be funny. That would be funny, but I don't know about that. We'll see. Yeah, I don't know. I'm kind of leaning towards another deadline extension, to be honest, I think is what's going to happen just because there's no news about anything today that I've seen so far. The deadline is tomorrow. I don't know what's the odds they're going to announce it on a Saturday. I would think if they're going to do it, they do it on a weekday. Speaker 2: I believe that the Saturday is a strategic day because nobody works Saturday and Sunday and they've got two extra days to fly over to wherever they're going to fly and have some highfalutin champagne and oysters and strike a handshake. You know what I mean? Speaker 1: Yeah, perhaps, but we'll see. You know, the big thing for me is I really don't want Amazon to acquire it. I see the benefit for Amazon sellers if they did and they were able to incorporate it properly. Speaker 2: Um, but I think that's an impossible ask. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big ask, but I think the competition is more important, um, to have competition for Amazon sellers and competing with Amazon for sellers, you know, forcing them to potentially lower fees and things like that to, to keep those sellers on their platform. Now that's a long ways down the road. I'm not saying TikTok shop is going to do that anytime soon or ever, but more competition is always a good thing. Agreed. Hey, Amazon sellers. Tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. Alright, cool. So let's go ahead and jump on to the next big story here. And that is all about some tariffs. Now this article is a little bit older than I thought it was, but I updated the summary here for everything that's going on in the last two days. New China tariffs could disrupt Amazon sellers and raise prices. On April 2nd, President Trump's Liberation Day, imposed a 34% tariff on Chinese goods atop a 20% levy totaling 54% effective April 9th. With China retaliating April 4th with 34% tariffs on U.S. goods, Amazon faces pressure as 25% of its first party items come from China. It must choose to absorb the cost or raise prices, risking market edge. Not sure what that means. These tariffs disrupt free trade, burdening businesses and driving up costs for consumers potentially. The policy risks fueling inflation rather than fostering economic growth. Amazon's third-party sellers, over 60% of its sales are hit hard. They scramble to renegotiate or shift sourcing as costs soar beyond margins. Sellers face supply chain chaos and price hikes amid the escalating trade war. Small entrepreneurs vital to Amazon's ecosystem suffer most from this trade interference, struggling to adapt to sudden cost pressures. So definitely in the strong opinions column there for the news. So what are your thoughts? Obviously, this guy leans more towards tariffs hurting rather than being helpful at all. But where do you come down on it, Danan? Speaker 2: You know, the majority of me thinks this is just a big old power play to move the needle in other areas. And so there's going to be basically Trump and his administration are dropping the hammer just like they did last time. Right. This is not the first time this has happened. And what happened last time? I said, okay, tariffs are going way up. All of us were up in arms, me included, and it equalized into something that worked, right? And we all adapted. I think this is no different. And look, I'm no economist. I'm very, very far from it. In fact, most of the economy that I have or own, I spend into things that everybody but me thinks are a bad investment. But, you know, it's, I just think that this is a means to an end, not a hard policy shift. That's what I think. Speaker 1: You know, I have, I've definitely learned to not, how's the best way to say it? To not freak out on my opinion of things that Trump does. He has a habit of figuring out how to make things work out and the initial impression is rarely what's actually going on behind the scenes. He likes the shock and awe approach to things. I agree with you on that. I think this is going somewhere other than leaving these tariffs on completely. I'm a little bit torn on the way they went about it because they're calling these reciprocal tariffs when they're not really reciprocal tariffs because the way they calculated the tariffs that other countries charge us is that they took the trade imbalance Um, divided by the total trade, I believe. So basically how much more they're sending us versus us sending them and then added in, um, the, some actual tariffs that they have, plus any value added taxes, plus the currency manipulation. And that's how they came up with these numbers. And so I'm not really a fan of that. I think they should have left out the trade imbalance because that really has nothing to do with tariffs or anything else. Having a trade imbalance isn't necessarily a bad thing. Other than the dollar amount, but yeah, especially since we're the largest country in the world, right? You can't possibly expect that, you know, Paraguay is going to have the same amount of trade coming to us and from us as you know, they're sending us kind of thing, right? You're going to have some kind of imbalance between us and smaller countries. But I do like the idea of reciprocal tariffs. So if they would have just focused on, you know, this is the average tariffs that this country charges us, plus these are value added taxes they're charging on imports, plus maybe figuring out some kind of currency manipulation equation in there if they're manipulating their currency to get better pricing. And using that number, it would have been a lot better. I know it looked a lot better and more practical, but yeah, I think you're 100% right. These are not going to stay, most of these. I've already seen news actually this morning that I've seen this on X. Argentina is in final negotiations to be the first zero tariff country. And then Vietnam is in negotiations to be the first zero tariff country as well. So this is his goal, right, is to negotiate with these countries to eliminate all of the tariffs. That's what he wants to do. So if that actually plays out the way that he probably wants it to, it could be an extremely positive thing. But I think we're, you know, kind of walking a tightrope as to whether it, you know, which way it goes, whether it blows up. In our face or not. So it's, we're just gonna have to wait and see. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, okay. So there's, there's a couple of schools of thought out there, right? One is, Hey, we're going to get rid of all income tax and the country is going to make its money based on, uh, I think a standardized sales tax and tariffs. Right. So that's one school of thought. Now we've got another school of thought, which is Trump's going to eliminate all tariffs. So there are no tariffs. And what happens if he also eliminates income tax? Then it's just going to be sales tax. And is that enough money for the government? It certainly should be. I don't know if you saw one of the latest Doge interviews where their goal is to save the country a billion dollars. I think it was a day and they're actually accomplishing that or finding that in savings. Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't seen the interview but I heard that. Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the first quarter of the interview. It's actually quite good and the guys that are on this thing are like. Speaker 1: Oh, did we lose you, Danon? Or did I freeze? All right, so I think we lost Danon. It looks like my clock is still ticking. So hopefully Danon will get back to us here shortly. But yeah, so cutting the size of the government, as Danon was saying, And then eliminating tariffs and eliminating income taxes, you know, that would be huge. That would be extremely huge. You would see, I think, the economy of the U.S. explode like you've never seen before. The question is if that's going to happen, because Trump can't eliminate income taxes on his own. That has to go through Congress. There's questions whether he can even impose these tariffs on his own. That's going through Congress right now. Senator Rand Paul is leading the charge on that one that I seen this morning as well. So if it happened, that would be awesome. The economy in the U.S. would explode and trade around the world would explode if we're able to eliminate tariffs. If that is the outcome where we're able to eliminate tariffs for a lot of countries, except for those who don't want to play ball, that could be extremely beneficial. And then eliminating the income tax, that's just going to have a net, a huge net positive for all Americans. With this right now, we're just going to have to wait and see exactly what happens going forward, but we got Danan back. Looks like you're on your phone. Speaker 2: I am on my phone. I lost internet, which was super cool. Speaker 1: Fun, fun. I was just replying to what I heard you talking about with the limiting tariffs and income taxes and using having just the sales tax and stuff like that. And I was thinking that, you know, that the economy would boom if that does happen. And we could cut the size of the government enough to just pay for it from a decent size sales tax. Speaker 2: You can hear me right now, right? Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: Okay, sweet. I'd like to point out the timing at which I lost the internet. So clearly, I said something that NSA didn't like. Speaker 1: Yes, there you go. Get the conspiracy theorists gone. Speaker 2: Yep. So clearly I am 100% correct in what I said. Speaker 1: But yeah, I feel like our kind of our conclusion on this that the goal of these tariffs is to decrease the world's tariffs as much as possible. If that is the case and it works out that way where there's a majority of countries that just say, okay, we're eliminating all U.S. tariffs and Trump is like, okay, the U.S. is doing the same. And then we can figure out how to eliminate the income taxes, which has to go through Congress. The economy in the U.S. just explodes. But if that doesn't happen, then we're going to be hurting. Speaker 2: Yeah, but I believe the world economy will explode. Speaker 1: Yes, definitely. Yeah, big time because the U.S. is just the largest economy in the world. So if our economy explodes, that's going to, you know, as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats or all ships. Yeah. Speaker 2: Man, I'm still having strange connectivity issues. Speaker 1: Yeah, your phone seems to be working fine. Speaker 2: Okay, good. I had full, this is crazy. So I just lost my internet in the house and I had full 5G and I just swapped over to two bars of LTE. So I think I'm getting, I think I'm getting attacked. Speaker 1: Yeah, they're shooting you with some special weapons trying to shut off your cell phone service and your internet. Stop talking about tariffs. All right, cool. Well, we can continue talking about tariffs here, but let's jump on to the Diminis story here from Supply Chain Drive. So this was included in the tariffs announcement that Trump did on April 2nd. It's gotten a lot less talked about for obvious reasons than the tariffs. Diminished exemption for Chinese imports ends May 2nd. Amazon sellers should prepare. Starting May 2nd, the U.S. will officially end the diminished exemption for shipments from China and Hong Kong, meaning low-cost packages under $800 will now be subject to duties and fees. Postal shipments will face flat duty charges of $25 to $50 per item with possible formal entry procedures required. The policy change primarily affects sellers relying on direct from China fulfillment, such as those using suppliers through Shane, Temu, or similar platforms. Amazon sellers sourcing from China should expect higher costs, delays, and potential disruptions, and may need to explore US-based or alternative sourcing options. Now, I did read somewhere else as well, or maybe it was in this article, that once all of the logistics of charging for these small packages are in place, he mentioned that it will likely expand to other countries as well outside of China and Hong Kong. Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that in the case of Amazon haul, which, uh, Amazon just announced, Hey, we're so proud of ourselves. We just brought Amazon haul to desktop as well. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: I think I tagged you in my post on that. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: Um, you know, This is a good thing because one thing that I hate and have hated to watch happen is the flood of junk products that have. Just float into the country. I have, there's, there's even one that, that I got scammed with and I consider myself a fairly well-educated consumer at this point after 15 years of e-com, um, where I bought something and I showed up, it showed up and despite me verifying the measurements, something changed between the product page and the checkout page, and I didn't catch it, and I received this completely useless. Unknown Speaker: It was a. Speaker 2: like a filter for the window tint for home windows. And I got this. I'm like, what is this? I contact the company, boom, domain's gone. Nobody's there. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: And this, so this, this came in, this was a product that came in direct from China. Speaker 1: Yep. You're lagging a bit again. Unknown Speaker: Uh oh. Speaker 1: Yeah, you're lagging a bit. Speaker 2: NSA is after me again. Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll let it catch up for you. But yeah, that's, that's the big issue with like Temu and Shine and other companies like that direct from China. China's the main one, right? So we talked about China, but it could be coming from anywhere. You know, they have no liability in the United States. And you have no recourse if they just disappear like that. You're not going to go over to China and be like, hey, give me my stuff or give me my money back. They're going to laugh in your face if you try to do that. So that's the biggest problem with this diminished loophole that there was and why it's a good thing of going it away, because it levels the playing field between sellers coming from overseas and sellers that are based in the United States. Now, ideally, I would like to see to go along with this. We need more regulation decreases in the United States, lower income taxes and lower taxes overall in the United States to make U.S. companies more competitive. And that's something we have to do to go along with the tariffs, along with eliminating this diminished loophole as well. Then you're just jacking up the price on American consumers, right? You're just doing protectionism at that point. If you're just having the tariffs and eliminating this loopholes and not fixing the United States. I think that's the goal. With Doge, they're cutting the size of government. And there are talks about eliminating the income tax for anybody under $150,000 a year in the U.S. in income. And then they're cutting regulations and things like that as much as they can do on an executive level. The income taxes they have to get through Congress along with more advanced deregulation efforts needs to go through Congress as well. So that'll be the question if those can get through because the Republicans in the House I think only have Like a two-seat majority or three-seat majority in the Senate, I believe it's a one-seat majority there. You have to get 100 percent of Republicans on board and or get some Democrats on board, which can happen. There's people on both sides. There's Republicans that are voting against a lot of the things that Trump wants to do, but there's also some Democrats that have voted with the Republicans in some cases to do certain things. We'll have to wait and see. Everything is up in the air, what's going to happen with the tariffs and with the diminished loophole, whether that's going to result in higher prices overall or if it's going to go the other way and countries eliminate their tariffs and then the US eliminates their tariffs, decreases income taxes, decreases regulations. It's all going to come down to that. We're going to see A lot of hyperbole over the next month as this all shakes out, you're going to see, you know, the legacy news media talking about how it's the end of the world and Trump is, you know, pushing grandma off a cliff and killing all the old people. They're going to talk like that. And then you're going to have the, uh, you know, the newer media and the conservative media talking about, you know, Trump is doing the greatest thing since sliced bread and you know, everything is going to be perfect. The reality is gonna be, as always, somewhere in the middle there. So we'll have to wait and see what actually happens. So I'm excited to see changes that somebody's trying to do something, right? I've wanted stuff like this to happen, especially the cutting of government for a long time. I think we're extremely bloated and spend way too much money and it harms businesses, all the regulations and stuff like that. We'll have to hurry up and wait and see on that, but I am leaning towards, like I said, I try to not make rash conclusions on what Trump does because he always tries to do the shock and awe, and then in the end, it ends up being something different. So I have a feeling this is going to play out in an overall lowering of tariffs. Potentially a elimination of the income tax for a lot of people and a lot of deregulations. So that is my prediction, but we will wait and see. In the interim, there's going to be a lot of craziness, stock market all over, prices probably going up on Amazon and other places before it's going to get better. We'll see. That is my prediction though. And if you're out there watching, I see we've got a bunch of people watching live with us. Throw your comments in the chat. I'd be happy to bring them into the live here and talk about them. Or if you have questions on something else that's not related to this, happy to answer those questions as well. And hopefully Danan will jump back on here with us as well. If not, I will just keep giving you as much of my opinions and thoughts as possible here. But let's go ahead and jump on to the next news article here. So we've got 65% of Amazon sellers raised prices in 2024, but shoppers still noticed. But shoppers still noticed. I think something got cut off there. Sorry. A new report from SmartScout reveals that 65% of Amazon sellers increased their prices in 2024. Largely due to rising FBA fees and the introduction of two new charges, the inbound placement service fee and low level inventory fee. Despite passing these costs on to customers, nearly 60% of sellers still report reported lower year over year profitability. Prime members are noticing the price hikes more than the average US adult, especially on essentials, which may be contributing to a dip in online shopping as a response to inflation. For Amazon sellers, the data underscores the growing challenge of maintaining profit margin while competing on price in a marketplace increasingly burdened by platform fees. So we talked a lot about a lot that is involved in this earlier, right? You know, the competition of TikTok shop that we mentioned. We need more competition against Amazon. We also reported earlier as well that Target is spending millions of dollars to improve their e-commerce store as well to step up their competition with Amazon. Walmart has been doing a lot of moves as well. If we can get more competition with Amazon, that could potentially help bring fees for Amazon sellers down That they can then possibly pass on to the customer. To lower prices on Amazon or help increase their profits. I've seen an erosion in my profits. I'm sure everybody out there watching has probably seen the same and or having to raise their prices. Now, I do mostly wholesale more than private label, but companies that suppliers that I buy my products from have sent out notices that Prices of products are going up. I've got one here on May 1st that their prices are going up. So I'm going to have to adjust my prices on Amazon comparatively to offset those increased prices. So combine the increased fees on Amazon along with tariffs You are probably going to see more increases in prices before we see any kind of decreases. The improvement in the economy that we could potentially see from a limiting of an income tax This is going to be delayed from, you know, it's going to be further back than the price increases. So there's going to be pain before potential gain. So I would predict that in 2025 overall, we're going to see an increase in prices on Amazon as well as sellers. Just they have to pass these additional costs on to the customer because the average e-commerce company, if you're in a really good position, you're making a 10% profit. Possibly 15, 20% if you're doing really good. There's some of the bigger resale companies, they're only doing like three, four or 5% profit margins on the products that they sell. So they can't really eat those profits and they possibly could push it back on the supplier. That's one thing, if you're a private label seller out there, You're definitely going to want to talk with your supplier with these tariff increases about them eating some of the tariff increases, lowering their prices for you, essentially, or, you know, not increasing their prices as much as maybe they would have. A lot of times suppliers will do that. And if you haven't ever negotiated your pricing with your supplier, you're probably paying too much anyways. We had someone on a few weeks back talking about when he's working with a supplier, He essentially has like eight, eight to 10 back and forth with that supplier. And there's a period where he does not, he just stops replying to the supplier and lets them negotiate with themselves to bring the prices down. So if you're a private label seller and you have not negotiated hard with your manufacturer, you're probably paying too much and can get it cheaper. Now, with that said, you have to be a little bit careful with that because if you push too hard and get prices cheaper, they could potentially start undercutting the quality of your product. So along with those price discounts, you're going to want to make sure that you are getting inspections of your product and making sure the quality is being maintained at the lower pricing. You're going to have to either get a discount from your supplier or eat a little bit in your profits or push it on to the Amazon seller with these tariff increases that are going to hit you in the short term, especially if you have anything coming in right now. I feel really bad for anybody who has stuff coming in in April. Now with that said, we've known this is coming for a while, so hopefully you either got it in under the wire before this happened, the tariff increases, or you can delay it here a couple months to see how this shakes out. These tariffs that Trump put on here that we were looking at, the reciprocal tariffs, these aren't going to be final, I can almost guarantee you. These are a negotiating tactic that Trump is going to use to try to bring down the tariffs of other countries. If you have goods that are gonna be coming in, try to delay those into May, I would say, if not into June, if at all possible, to see how this shakes out. Otherwise, hopefully you got it in under the wire. So let's see. With that, that pretty much sums up everything I've got on all of this. You know, TikTok, I'm rooting for Mr. Wonderful and the Liberty Project to come in under the wire and pick up TikTok on that. I do not want Amazon to come in and snag that because it's decreased competition, right? We want more competition for Amazon. Competition brings down prices and for us sellers that could relate to lower fees. Last week we mentioned that Walmart is getting into the logistics game just like Amazon is. And so with that increased competition in the logistics game, we could potentially see a decrease in shipping prices, a decrease in trucking prices, and things like that in that area. A decrease in potentially even 3PL prices if Walmart gets into that area. So the more competition, the better. Hopefully, whoever buys TikTok is able and willing to keep TikTok shop going and growing to be more of a competition with Amazon. And then we're just going to have to wait and see on the tariffs and everything else. So yeah, I think I have probably talked all I can on that. So we'll wrap it up there a little bit early since Danan hasn't been able to come back on. But that's all right. I think we had a good session here and I appreciate everybody out there joining me. This is always a lot of fun every Friday that I have with you guys. Every Friday, 1 p.m. Eastern Time, we talk about the latest news and how it relates to Amazon sellers and how it impacts you guys out there and how you can improve your businesses and things like that. Join us next Friday, same time. And so with that, I hope you all have an awesome weekend and happy selling out there. Weather this storm with the tariffs until we get through to the other side and hopefully it ends up positive. So with that. Happy selling everybody. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening fellow Amazon seller and always remember success is yours if you take it. Speaker 1: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.