(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump’s tariffs haven’t sparked a major inflation spike yet, but Amazon has reportedly raised prices on hundreds of everyday items over the past several months.
On average, prices across a range of low-cost items, including deodorant and protein shakes, increased 5.2% on Amazon from Jan. 20 to July 1, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of pricing data from e-commerce firm Traject Data.
The Journal analyzed nearly 2,500 items and found that while Amazon’s prices rose on 1,200 of its cheapest household goods, competitor Walmart lowered prices on those same items by almost 2%.
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An Amazon spokesperson pushed back on the findings in an email to NewsNation, accusing the Journal of “cherry picking” 2,500 items out of the “hundreds of millions” it sells.
“This story is false and misleading,” the company spokesperson said in a statement. “We have not seen the average prices of products offered in our store change up or down appreciably outside of typical fluctuations across millions of items on Amazon.”
According to the Journal’s analysis, a can of Campbell’s New England Clam Chowder cost $1.98 on Amazon in January but rose 30% to $2.58 by July.
Meanwhile, a stackable metal basket from Ohio-based Dayglow was selling for $9.31 before mid-February, but as of July 1, Amazon had raised the price to $19.99. Dayglow’s CEO told the WSJ the company hasn’t changed the prices it charges Amazon despite paying more for its imported goods.
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In a late June interview, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that the company hadn’t seen significant price increases due to tariffs, thanks in part to “a lot of forward buying” ahead of the levies.
The Journal found that the average price of the more expensive products analyzed — defined as the top 50% of items by price — has fallen about 2% on Amazon since January. Still, that’s a smaller drop than comparable items on Walmart and Target’s sites, WSJ’s report shows.
Amazon’s prices can fluctuate for many reasons and are often driven by complex algorithms that account for seasonality, demand and competitor pricing. In its statement to NewsNation, Amazon noted that many of the products analyzed were more frequently out of stock on competitors’ websites.
Economists have warned that Trump’s tariffs are likely to drive up consumer prices and contribute to inflation, but so far, the effect has been muted. Part of that is because Trump has paused some of his harshest levies — a reprieve that’s set to end Aug. 1. Another factor could be that not enough time has passed for the full impact to materialize.
In June, consumer prices accelerated 2.7% from a year earlier, the highest annual increase since February, according to the Consumer Price Index, though still well below the 8% levels in 2022.
The Journal’s analysis found that imported goods and products with mixed origins — domestically assembled with imported components—faced even steeper hikes on Amazon compared to domestically-made goods.
Last month, a separate Reuters analysis found that prices for Chinese-made goods sold on Amazon have been rising faster than overall inflation, a sign that tariffs are starting to filter through to American consumers.
