Happy Wednesday and welcome to your morning wrap of the latest business and political headlines from around the world.
We begin first in the United States, where the White House has taken aim at Amazon after a report the company considered displaying the added costs of tariffs on certain items, CNN reports.
Washington DC-based news publication Punchbowl News first reported that Amazon will soon “display how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs – right next to the product’s total listed price”.
After the US President Donald Trump was informed about the report, he called Jeff Bezos directly to complain, according to two senior officials CNN cited.
“Of course he was pissed,” one of the officials, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told CNN. “Why should a multibillion dollar company pass off costs to consumers?”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the move a “hostile political act”.
But Amazon said the idea was only considered for its spinoff website Haul, which sells items below US$20, but the change wasn’t rolled out.
“This was never approved and not going to happen,” an Amazon spokesperson said.
The confusion prompted Amazon’s shares to fall by 2%, but they recovered some of those losses in afternoon trading.
In other tariff related news, Reuters reports that Trump is likely to soften the blow of his auto tariffs after automakers pressed their case with the administration.
The changes to the 25% vehicle tariffs will provide auto companies with credits for up to 15% of the value of vehicles assembled domestically. According to a senior White House official, these could be applied against the value of imported parts, allowing time to bring supply chains back home.
Parts subject to those tariffs would no longer be subject to Trump’s other tariffs, including 25% duties on Canadian and Mexican goods, 25% levies on steel and aluminium, as well as 10% duties applied to most other countries.
Meanwhile, CNBC reports that sportswear giant Adidas will raise prices on all its US products due to tariffs.
The company did not say by how much, other than to say that higher tariffs will eventually cause higher costs for all its products sold into the US market. It said given the uncertainty around tariff negotiations between the US and different countries, it could not make any final decisions around pricing.
The company made the comments alongside the release of its first quarter results, which showed its net profit increased by 155% to €436m on the back of revenue climbing 12.7% to €6.15 billion.
In other news, Mark Carney has won Canada’s election after a campaign dominated by the country’s relationship with the US.
The Financial Times reports that Carney’s Liberal Party was on track to win the largest number of seats but it was still unclear whether it would be able to secure a majority as counting continued.
His party capitalised on a patriotic surge in light of Trump’s tariffs and comments about making Canada the US’s 51st state. But the election was closer than many polls anticipated, with voters flocking to both the Liberals and the opposition Conservatives at the expense of smaller parties.
In a speech, Carney said he would resist Trump’s threats.
“America wants our land, our resources, our water. But these are not idle threats, President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, ever happen,” Carney said in Ottawa.
Mark Carney.
To Gaza, where the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees says the enclave is facing widespread hunger after nearly two months of an Israeli blockade barring entry of humanitarian supplies, Al Jazeera reports.
“This siege, just to give context, is four times longer than the siege imposed [by Israel] in the beginning of the war. You may well recall there was a two-week siege period when the war started a year and a half ago. Now we’re speaking of almost two months of tight siege,” UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said during a news briefing.
Militant group Hamas says Israel’s use of “starvation as a weapon” against Palestinians in Gaza represents a “contempt for the international community”.
Turning to Spain, where the country’s power grid operator has ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of the massive power cut yesterday that crippled the country, as well as Portugal and parts of France, the BBC reports.
Red Eléctrica said it “cannot draw conclusions” until they get concrete data.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said investigators were trying to pinpoint the cause, and then would take measures "to ensure that this does not happen again".
